My thoughts on Stereo Montreal after playing there

Rinzen here. I posted a couple weeks back asking for some tips on Stereo Montreal and how to approach the room. You all were nice enough to give some good insight!

I wanted to follow back with my impressions of the venue.

First off, everything they tell you about this place is true. They call it a ‘temple of sound’ and I totally see why. You feel a special vibe just walking into the place. It feels sacred. There’s an air of magic as soon as you step up those stairs and see the room for the first time.

The sound, of course, is the first thing I noticed. So clear and defined, and yet immensely powerful (without being overbearing).

They actually had a decibel meter on stage and gave me some good instructions for the volume and I was able to self-manage it the whole night which I really appreciated.

As far as the sound of the booth goes, it was the best sound I’ve ever had as a DJ. For the first time, I felt like I could completely hear the low end with full clarity. It honestly really improved my mixing and made me a better DJ throughout the night.

The other thing is, you can play tracks that maybe don’t bang on a normal system, but in Stereo, they sound incredible. Especially tracks with more dynamics that can sometimes feel lackluster, I felt way more confident to play them out.

The next thing I want to say is the crowd there is so special. For one thing, people stay SO late. I played until 9am and there were still a good amount of people there. I took them through deep house, progressive, techno, some breaks, some ambient, some trance etc and they were receptive to all of it! Met a bunch of them too and maybe just a Canadian thing, but they were so nice.

Not much else to say other than I think this is the best club I’ve played in North America (probably the world for me, but I haven’t played enough other venues outside the US)!

We are lucky it exists!

Lastly, if you want to listen to the set, I released the first 3 hours. You can listen here.