Well, I'm sorry to hear that you're so turned off by DJs and I can somewhat understand where you're coming from. However, let me re-emphasize that all DJs are not alike, and I'd hope that you wouldn't want to be grouped in with all of the production companies and sound designers/engineers out there. Believe me, I've seen DJs do some ridiculous things and run with very poor sound and lighting setups, but a lot of times production companies aren't much better. We handle a lot of sound and lighting for one of our major outdoor events here every year and some of the stage setups from local production companies are embarrassing to say the least, so I'd be careful when being so proud of your industry and so critical of the DJ market as a whole. For the most part, I would agree, but not all DJs are alike.
Like I said, we run a full Turbosound system with Mackie amps which, I'd hope you would know, is probably the highest end gear we can run in a mobile environment. I mean it's not like we can haul along a 100 KW Funktion One system to our jobs, so we bring the best possible equipment to the events that's feasible. As far as mixers go, our Mackie d.4s are some of the top-end mixers in our industry, very high quality for serious DJ mixing. Are there even higher quality mixers? Sure, we used to run A&H Zone mixers until they crapped out on us MULTIPLE times forcing us to move to something more reliable. I'm sure A&H makes great mixing consoles, but for the $1000-$3000 that their DJ mixers cost, they are NOT worth it.
Now, if you want to talk about sound quality, I personally hate the sound of the active Mackie system and the JBL systems that are so prevalent in the production world. I absolutely love the older Mackie amps (and prefer them over QSC and Crown), but I think their speakers sound pretty poor. So, my point here is that just because you've heard and experienced a few DJs doesn't mean you know what EVERY DJ does and runs for systems. With our systems combined, we probably have more power and a much higher end audio system that most production companies in our area.
Now, I'm not sure where you're getting $150 for a job, but I haven't done an event for that price in probably 10 years, and it was most likely for some friend or something. In fact, we have a rental system that costs more than that and that takes us literally 10 minutes of setup time for one person delivered in a car. So, if you're talking about doing DJ jobs for that price, then I wouldn't even think about it either, but that's not a good indication of the DJ industry (at least not in my area). And, I'm catering to a higher end marketplace as well, we don't do cheap events. And again, that doesn't have anything to do with DJs as a whole, that's just with the people that you've worked with or heard of. If another DJ wants to do a job for that price then fine, I just know exactly what the customer is going to get when they are looking for something cheap, you really pay for what you get. Oh, and in the past 12 years in business, we have NEVER missed an event or even been late, another trait that you probably should avoid when trying to describe EVERY DJ. Probably why we don't have customers that complain, maybe you do, but that's just the level of service you provide not the industry.
Now, let's move on to lighting, and talking about American DJ (since I use their products as much as possible and have for many years). We run a fully intelligent lighting system, there isn't a single fixture in our arsenal that doesn't have a DMX cable attached to it. We primarily run our large collection of AccuSpots at every event coupled with some ADJ LED color changers to backlight our Accu pillars. But, for large production events we also have HES Intellabeams, HES Cyberlights (just retired), 4 Martin RoboScan 918 Pro fixtures, a 50mW green laser, and some other various LED washes and fixtures. So, if you want to talk about lighting, somehow I don't think that we are running complete trash. In fact, I'd be happy to put that system up against most production company's lighting system that they have. Oh, not to mention two 12' video screens that we run in a mobile environment too.
Now, back to the discussion at hand here. I've done quite a bit of research online and everyone seems to agree with my logic regarding amperage ratings. It seems that most people are in agreement that AC and DC will only use the amperage that it needs and as long as you aren't running a power adapter that is underrated for your item then you will be just fine. Just like my previous example, if I were to bring along my cell phone charger in to 30 different vehicles, all may have a different amperage output coming out of the cigarette lighter (which is MUCH higher than the cell phone requires), but the device will simply pull whatever power it needs. Now, on the other hand, if the amperage is too low then overheating and fires could occur in larger power instances (or damage to the device). Besides, this device requires 500mA not 300mA, I'm still not sure where you're getting that information from. The current manual clearly state 500mA as so far as I can tell. I would order some new power adapters from ADJ but it takes a while before I can get them shipped here and I don't have more than a couple more days before I need the controllers again.