Gobo Studios · a DBA of Monterey Skates LLC · Monterey, CA · (831) 264-8797 · gobostudios.com
Gobo Studios is Max Troyer. I DJ and KJ events around Monterey and the Central Coast, and I write the software that runs them. Both halves are the same job, and each one keeps the other honest.
The services half is a working DJ, lighting, audio, and karaoke outfit. School dances, company parties, and private events, mostly within an hour of Monterey. I take the booking, I load the van, I run the night, and I pack out.
The software half is four products for the people who run events: a karaoke system, a lighting and visuals engine, a rental-fleet tracker, and the plugin that ties the first two to VirtualDJ. They are sold to other operators, and they were all built to solve a problem at one of my own shows first.
That is the whole company. There is no third half, no account manager, and nobody subcontracting your date to a stranger.
The calendar is built around school, corporate, and private events. A small wedding is possible by enquiry — send the date and you will get a straight answer about whether we are the right fit.
Monterey Skates put a pop-up roller rink inside the Monterey County Fairgrounds and ran it from May 2025 to March 2026. More than four thousand skaters came through the door. It was a runner-up for a Monterey Bay Parent award.
A rink is not a gig, it is a venue you have to operate. Music every session. Lights that hold a room’s energy for hours without anyone babysitting them. Hundreds of pairs of rental skates going out and coming back, every one of them needing to be safe. Karaoke nights on top of that.
Nothing off the shelf did the whole job, so I built the missing pieces while running the place. The lighting rig, the DMX engine, the karaoke system, and the gear tracker all came out of that room. They were not prototypes. They were what we used on the floor, every night, with real customers in the building.
The tools are not a side business that happens to share a website. Each one exists because a specific part of running an event was breaking.
Paper slips get lost, the same three people sing five times, and the KJ spends the night managing a list instead of running the room. Now singers scan a QR code, request from their phone, and a round-robin keeps it fair. Other karaoke products sell the same phone-request idea. Ours came from needing it at our own show, which is why the parts nobody demos — declines, latecomers, key changes — actually work.
Sound-to-light boxes listen through a microphone and guess. SceneRig reads the deck directly through VirtualDJ, so it knows the tempo and where the beat is, and locks to it even when the DJ bends the pitch. Nineteen generative scenes on screen, thirteen patterns out to the DMX rig, and a visualiser that lets me build a show at home before load-in.
Scan a tag out, scan it back in, and the system tracks how long every item has been in service until it flags one for a deep check. It ran our skate fleet. It works the same on skis, bowling shoes, bikes, or anything else that goes out and has to come back safe.
A plugin that turns the decks into a REST endpoint on localhost:8082 — deck status, playback control, library search, live audio levels. macOS and Windows, no Pro licence required. SceneRig and KaraokeFlow both ride on it, and it is free for anyone else building against VirtualDJ.
The person on the phone is the person at the table on the night. If I cannot cover your date, I will say so rather than hand it to somebody you have never met.
Every track is purchased or comes from a professional pool subscription. Karaoke tracks come from licensed commercial catalogues. No rips, no audio pulled off YouTube. Full-quality files on local drives, so nothing drops out because a stream stalled.
Clean edits when you ask for clean edits. A do-not-play list we actually follow. For school events, an administrator can stop the music from where they are standing without finding me first.
Load-in and sound check happen before doors. Nobody watches us build the rig, and no guest hears a level check.
I am completing Live Scan clearance under California Education Code 45125.1. If your district requires clearance on file before I am on site, tell me early — it takes about two weeks to come back.
One price, with the gear list attached, in writing. Travel is its own line. Nothing new appears on the night.
| Legal entity | Monterey Skates LLC |
|---|---|
| Doing business as | Gobo Studios |
| Based in | Monterey, California |
| Serving | Monterey Peninsula, Salinas Valley, Santa Cruz County, and the Central Coast |
| Phone | (831) 264-8797 |
| Web | gobostudios.com |
| In writing | The booking form reaches us fastest, and the contact page has the rest. |
Tell us the date, the room, and roughly how many people. You will get a straight answer about whether it is open and what it costs.
Gobo Studios, Monterey, California. A DBA of Monterey Skates LLC. (831) 264-8797.