You’ve got a decent mixing desk. It mixes, it equalises, it pumps out the sound. But when you try to make dub with it, something’s missing. The track’s playing, the echo isn’t building up the way you want, the bass doesn’t cut off cleanly, and the siren’s nowhere to be heard. That’s why a standard DJ mixer falls short when it comes to dub — and what you really need for that sound.
Dub isn’t a track, it’s a performance
Dub isn’t a style you just put on and leave to play. It’s a live performance. You start with an instrumental version and transform it in real time: you build up an echo on a word, you cut the bass only to let it come back harder, you send reverb through the snare drum.
Dub is played by hand. It’s that touch that’s missing when you try to do it on a mixer designed for mixing tracks back-to-back.
What’s missing from a standard DJ mixing desk
Three things, generally speaking.
No truly usable effects loop
At the heart of dub are the echo and reverb that you send out and recall at will. This is done using an effects loop — a send/return. Many DJ mixers don’t have one, or have just one, which is poorly positioned. The result: you can’t plug in your echo chamber or spring reverb and play them like an instrument. We explain the principle in detail in ‘How and why to use an effects loop (Send/Return)’.
No true band kills
Cutting the bass, midrange or treble cleanly — the ‘kill’ — is a basic technique in dub. A DJ mixer gives you EQs that attenuate, not sharp kills that cut the frequency band instantly. Without that, you can’t create those moments of silence where everything fades away except the vocals, before the bass comes back in.
No siren, no generator
The dub siren – that little generator you make sing over the mix – isn’t built into a DJ mixer. You need a separate machine, an extra cable, and a free input.
What you really need
Add it all up: a playable effects loop, per-track kills, a siren, a clean preamp. You end up piling three or four units around your desk, with all the cabling that goes with it. That’s exactly the problem a dedicated dub preamp-mixer solves: it brings it all together in a single unit, designed for dub mixing, not for stringing tracks together.
That’s what the KLEMENTZ Dub Mixer does: internal and external send/return, bass/mid/treble kills, built-in siren, and a phono preamp for your turntables. You can play dub by hand, without the pile of gear. To see where it fits into your existing setup, click here: how to connect the Dub Mixer to your system.
Frequently Asked Questions
Dub is as much an instrument as it is a genre of music
Discover the Dub Mixer — the whole art of dub in a single box, handcrafted in France and built to last.
