I remember going b2b with another dj and couldn’t be in the booth while she was mixing because the monitor made my ears physically hurt.
Best advice I ever got was to turn the cans and monitor all the way down, go out to the middle of the dancefloor to get a baseline for the floor volume and how the eqs are set up, then bring the monitor volume up just loud enough to hear it, then do the same with the headphones. Once you’ve calibrated it, use the line gains to level out the individual records and you won’t be constantly pushing the volumes up and destroying your ears (and the ears of everyone in the club).
