There are two main reasons to connect a laptop to a DJ mixing board. One is to play music off of the laptop, the other is to record onto the laptop. No matter what your purpose is, there is always a way to hook these two items up together. Read on to learn hook up DJ mixing boards to a laptop.
Instructions
1. Examine the laptop and the mixer to see what kind of connections they can accept. A laptop will have both microphone and headphone jacks on it, and a mixer will always have RCA inputs and outputs. This alone is enough to hook up the two components.
2. For a basic connection, you can run an RCA-to-mini (1/8 inch) cable between the two. To go out of the laptop and into the mixer, plug the 1/8 inch connector into the headphone jack of the laptop, and the RCA adapters on the other end of the cable into the spot on the mixer that you want them (Input 1, for example). To connect from the mixer to the laptop, run a cable from one of the outputs on the mixer, preferably Main Out or Record Out, to the microphone jack on the laptop. These connections can both be hooked up at the same time to allow audio to go both in and out of both items.
3. If you need a higher quality of audio, you can get adapters that plug into your USB port on the computer that have better connections. This will allow you to use RCA-to-RCA cables, or even XLR's if you need the best quality. If you want to go this direction, simply plug the cables into the same corresponding inputs and outputs, but with the better cables.
