Signal & Gear

Pre-Fade Listen (PFL)

Monitoring a channel in your headphones before bringing it into the mix.

Pre-fade listen, or PFL, routes a channel to your headphones independent of the crossfader and channel fader, so you can hear a track the crowd cannot yet hear.

Why it matters

PFL is how you prepare a blend in private: cue the next track, line up the beat, and check the key before the audience hears a note of it.

In practice

Press the cue or headphones button on the channel you want to monitor. Use the split cue or cue mix knob to balance it against the live output.

Related terms

Split Cue Cue Mix Knob Booth Monitor

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Frequently asked questions

PFL stands for Pre-Fade Listen. It routes a channel's signal directly to your headphones before the fader position affects it, meaning you hear the track at full signal strength even if the fader is at zero. This lets you cue up and check a track without the audience hearing it.

Yes, in practice DJs use the terms interchangeably. Pressing the cue or PFL button on a channel is the same action: it sends that channel pre-fader to the headphone bus. The label depends on the mixer brand, but the function is identical.

On most mixers yes, pressing multiple PFL buttons sums all those channels into your headphones at once. This is useful for checking how two tracks blend before bringing them into the main mix. Just be aware that mixing several channels into your headphones at once can make it harder to hear pitch or timing issues clearly.

Hey, it's Ben Modigell 👋

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I DJ and produce as so I so — downtempo, minimal, dub house, tech house, and techno (releases on Spotify and SoundCloud, links above). Everything I write here comes from my own gigs, studio sessions, and library cleanups: the rules I follow, the failure modes I've actually hit, and the workflow I use when nobody's watching. If a technique didn't earn its place in my own sets, it doesn't make it into a tutorial.

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