James Hype reveals ridiculous new 16-DECK DJ rig – and Deadmau5 loves itTwo decks? Yawn. Four decks? Boring! If you ask James Hype, DJs need to stop limiting themselves – and that’s why he’s just designed his very own 16-deck DJ setup.
Hype first peeled back the curtain on his buckwild idea last week, sharing clips on TikTok and Instagram of a fully surround DJ setup. The layout plonks Hype within an enclosed square of four tables, each holding four decks that he can dart back and forth between. “Maybe we’ve been thinking too small,” the video reads, while the caption adds: “This might be the best idea I’ve ever had… Or the most unnecessary.”

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Hype has always been one to up the industry standard for decks. Back in 2021, he was teaching the masses how to utilise four decks, sharing a nifty tutorial in collaboration with DJ Mag. Then, in 2024, Hype took to TikTok to ponder whether upping his number to five decks would be an interesting experiment… now, he’s taking a shortcut and bumping straight up to 16. Because why not?
It’s a revolutionary upgrade that has the DJ world pretty excited – even Deadmau5 commented on Hype’s teaser saying that “all [his] favourite DJs play 16 tracks at once”, obviously meaning Hype as he’s the only DJ to currently be doing so. Considering they had a tiny spat back in May, it’s lovely to see the pair bonding over their love of decks.

@jameshype
This might be the best idea I’ve ever had. Or the most unnecessary. Either way, it’s too late now.
♬ Confession – James Hype

As Hype notes in a YouTube video about his new 16-deck setup, he explains that “the point is not to play 16 tracks at once,” but rather “to find out how far [DJing] can actually go”. This is his attempt at pushing the industry forward, in his own unique way.
In the rest of the video, Hype walks us through the journey to making his idea reality. One of the first steps was nailing an arrangement that felt “usable in a real life”, which is how the square setup was born. “16C DJs laid out in a straight line sounds great… until you realise you’re going to be running like a hundred meter sprint to get from one end to the other,” Hype laughs.

Then, it was a case of trial and error, using a warehouse space and borrowing masses of CDJs to test things out. He then runs through some of the problems, like how “Pro DJ Link is designed to work with four players, not 16” and wondering how to network his setup together to share music, player data and potentially sync up. Then there was a question of audio; “Every deck needs somewhere for its audio to go. Four decks into one mixer is easy… But when you have 16, where does the audio go? [So we decided we’d] need one mixer for every four decks.”
“But then how do we combine all the sound from all the mixers together?,” he continues. “How do we do that without creating something so complicated that it’s impossible to actually DJ with… We wanted to make sure that adding more equipment gave me more possibilities, [rather than making] everything harder.”
While all the brainstorming has become an exciting reality, there’s still going to be some teething pains before Hype gets to work on his new toy. “I’ve still got to learn how to actually DJ on it,” he admits. “That’s probably the most interesting part for me, and [the fans]. Because right now, I don’t really know where the limit is. But I’m going to find out!”
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