DJ's; How often do you play MP3's in your set?

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-- DJ's; How often do you play MP3's in your set?
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Posted by Lomeli on Dec-21-2007 02:46:

I only spin mp3's because I can't afford vinyl at the moment.

Posted by Allayla on Dec-21-2007 03:22:

didn't read the thread but it all depends on the way the track was mastered, some wav's sound like terrible mp3's

i wouldn't suggest playing any compressed music out in a club, i buy wav's simply because i want to hear the song exactly how it came from the studio, plus wav's are a better investment

Posted by Cool1g on Dec-21-2007 03:27:

quote:
Originally posted by donnybrasco

So all-in-all, I feel at least comfortable enough to say that you are correct in assuming that you gain no appreciable advantages by converting MP3's back to .wav in the purely auditory sense...once the damage was done in the original conversion, I am pretty sure that it can't be turned back around.

yeah - that was basically my question. I was just curious for my own knowledge. thanks.

Posted by donnybrasco on Dec-21-2007 05:47:

quote:
Originally posted by Clovis
Do you know exactly what type of file/source each track every DJ is playing comes from? Sasha had a few tracks that sounded bad at Vanguard, and some that sounded HORRIBLE on NYE last year, and he plays all wav. Or were they secretly mp3s? Or was his gain just too high? Or sidechaining set wrong?

You can pretend you always know the difference, but in practice, you'd be hard pressed to prove that...just think about it.

No, I'm not saying that I can tell for sure when a DJ is playing an MP3 and that it is, in fact, sounding like crap solely because it's an MP3. I think you're mis-understanding what I'm saying. I'm talking about cleaning up weak links in the audio chain. In my studio, if I'm getting a noise problem from a mic., I trace through the entire path to find it (mic. switches, cable connections, EQ, out-board gear, side-chains, other open faders that may have me fooled, etc.). I don't just assume it's only one thing and, after trying the one thing and it doesn't work this particular time, I then just give up on fixing the problem altogether.

When bad sound is being heard in a club, it can't exactly be traced to the MP3 every time, but it probably could often enough that it warrants looking at. Playing a .wav of the same song MAY not fix things, true, but NOT playing it makes no sense, when as part of cleaning up the path, you NEED to do it in order to MAYBE fix the problem, if not at least eliminate it as a potential issue altogether by doing so. See what I'm saying?

quote:
Originally posted by djillicit
Now, the same with MP3 vs WAV. Yeah, there are clear quality issues, but in the end it's not the only quality that determines which takes its final hold...

You've brought up and EXCELLENT point here, in that there is a certain irony when it comes to audio these days. For most consumers (and club-goers) today it seems, as far as they're concerned, they've topped out when it comes to the quality level of the audio they want to hear! It's what we're arguing about in fact here, lol. There is no denying that MP3 is quite inferior, but when half the professionals can't tell the difference, you can rest assured that almost NONE of the consumers can!

CD's became common place over 20+years ago! And yet, today, the technology at hand could EASILY surpass that consumer quality level and bring us superb, true "studio-quality" sound (at three times the sampling rate of CD's), if we chose to have it. And what is it that everyone wants? MP3's!!

I guess it just saddens me knowing how beautiful music COULD be (on the consumer level) versus what people settle for. It's that settling that brings us the CD and MP3 standard by which we all have to live.

But that's free market at it's best (and worst) for you.

Posted by LionsLair on Dec-21-2007 08:20:

quote:
Originally posted by callme
maybe all of you need to man up, stop being vaginas and play records

Posted by gerard6975 on Dec-21-2007 11:15:

from JOOF's site

Quality control

There is an age-old argument with purists saying that vinyl sounds better than a CD in a club. But this may be the case purely because the sound engineer has set up the soundsystem for vinyl. Yes, vinyl does have a slightly warmer sound but there is a downside: any specks of dust or damage to the disc and 'rumble' can be heard as noise or static. During quiet spots in songs this noise may be heard over the music. Digital recordings, on the other hand, don't degrade over time, and if the digital recording contains silence, then there will be no noise. After time a worn record (vinyl) will sound 'woolly', so most sound engineers will add a little extra top end EQ (treble) to compensate for this. They also don't go too heavy on the bottom end EQ (bass) because vinyl is warmer. The results are disastrous when you play a CD: it sounds too tinny, with no bass. CDs don't need the extra treble and need a little more bass! Forward thinking clubs such as Godskitchen have the sound engineer work with the DJ, EQing the soundsystem as he plays. When the soundsystem is set he will give the DJ a personal 'pin' so that the system resets itself for the format he plays in� brilliant! Now play a CD in a club that has been set up for CDs and it will sound crystal clear and powerful. Many people comment to me how clear my sets sound and ask how I do it!

Posted by XaNaX on Dec-21-2007 13:06:

quote:
Originally posted by donnybrasco
This is what the people who created MP3 like to tell everyone, but as has been stated here by myself and others who work with sound, we can assure you that a difference most definitely CAN be heard...enough of a difference that your average listener could hear it too over time (like when a DJ is playing only MP3's all night, instead of LP's or CD's).

As for the "rest of the chain" argument, it is true that any weak link weakens the chain, but to say "because there may be other weak links in the chain, that justifies allowing the MP3 weak link", makes no sense. The goal should be to clean up your audio path from top to bottom ALWAYS.

Bottom line is; MP3 is inferior to 44.1 CD's. End of story, really.

Go ahead and keep telling yourself this if it makes you feel good. However if you do some research on human hearing you will find out that while a 44.1 CD is of higher quality than an MP3 as long as it is a properly encoded MP3 of 256kbps or greater your ear cannot hear the difference in quality. An MP3 of that quality only removes frequencies that you cannot here so there is no noticible difference between it and a full quality CD track.

Posted by donnybrasco on Dec-21-2007 14:19:

quote:
Originally posted by XaNaX
Go ahead and keep telling yourself this if it makes you feel good. However if you do some research on human hearing you will find out that while a 44.1 CD is of higher quality than an MP3 as long as it is a properly encoded MP3 of 256kbps or greater your ear cannot hear the difference in quality. An MP3 of that quality only removes frequencies that you cannot here so there is no noticible difference between it and a full quality CD track.

Let me ask you something;

What do you do for a living?

Posted by XaNaX on Dec-21-2007 14:25:

quote:
Originally posted by donnybrasco
Let me ask you something;

What do you do for a living?

What difference does that make? I've taken anatomy and I know how to use www.google.com

If I played you 10 tracks and you had to guess which ones were .wav and which ones were 320kbps MP3s are you trying to tell me that you could pick out the .wav tracks?

Posted by donnybrasco on Dec-21-2007 14:38:

quote:
Originally posted by XaNaX
What difference does that make? I've taken anatomy and I know how to use www.google.com

If I played you 10 tracks and you had to guess which ones were .wav and which ones were 320kbps MP3s are you trying to tell me that you could pick out the .wav tracks?

Most of the time, yes, I could. As can most sound engineers. The only variable factors would be how old the tracks were, what style of music, and how they were mastered (for the most part).

I'm sure I read the claims from the makers of MP3 technology LONG before you did, and long before you came to believe it as "the truth". Do you believe EVERYTHING you read? Do you especially believe everything that you read about "studies" done by the exact same people who are trying to sell you something?

And lastly, how can you be so sure that I, as someone who has been working with sound as my JOB, do not in fact know my own job? Are you in the habit of telling Aeronautical Engineers that winglets don't do a thing for reducing Wingtip vortices, or telling Firemen the best way to snuff out a chemical fire, etc.?

Whatever it is that you do, I'm sure there is some aspect of your work that I know NOTHING about. But wouldn't I be making an ass of myself if I started telling you all about what you know at your own job-skill, and what you don't, when I've never worked a day in my life at your kind of work, and have had ZERO training in your field?

Trust me (and others here); MP3's and CD's can, more often than not, be differentiated from one another.

Posted by donnybrasco on Dec-21-2007 15:05:

Just to add; The reason they can make this claim about only removing "frequencies the human ear can't hear" is because technically, they are mostly right...BUT; For one thing, they are going off of averages in human hearing. Not everyone hears the same.

Also; Sound isn't that simple. There are what's known as "transients" in sound waves. As all of the various frequencies oscillate, interact and constantly change, they affect each other in subtle ways. You can't simply strip out the frequencies that are heard least, and then expect the other frequencies to remain exactly as they would have been, if those transients created by the removed frequencies were still present.

Posted by XaNaX on Dec-21-2007 15:24:

Ok, well since I can't test you I'll assume that somehow you as a trained sound engineer with freakish hearing can tell the difference. But your average joe with normal hearing in a club while on drugs or alcohol is not going to be able to tell if the DJ is spinning MP3s or wavs assuming the sound system is set up properly and they are using high quality MP3s so really the whole discussion is moot.

Posted by bucke on Dec-21-2007 15:44:

quote:
Originally posted by XaNaX
Ok, well since I can't test you I'll assume that somehow you as a trained sound engineer with freakish hearing can tell the difference. But your average joe with normal hearing in a club while on drugs or alcohol is not going to be able to tell if the DJ is spinning MP3s or wavs assuming the sound system is set up properly and they are using high quality MP3s so really the whole discussion is moot.

ditto. plus i'm willing to bet that most dj's who use some sort of digital vinyl software (i.e. serato or torq) are NOT spinning wavs. you're also forgetting the gargantuan size of wav's and the amount of hard drive space they would require for a dj with a serious music collection. for audiophiles, yes wav's sound a lot better, but from a djing standpoint 320kbps mp3s are good enough for the average audience.

Posted by donnybrasco on Dec-21-2007 16:54:

quote:
Originally posted by XaNaX
Ok, well since I can't test you I'll assume that somehow you as a trained sound engineer with freakish hearing can tell the difference...

My hearing is no better than anyone else's, really. My ability to hear certain things more than someone else has nothing to do with birth-right, and more to do with working with sound and training one's self to notice what's actually there. Anyone with normal hearing can be trained to do it.

quote:
Originally posted by bucke
...but from a djing standpoint 320kbps mp3s are good enough for the average audience.

Says who? The DJ? And why is it that some DJ's say the opposite of this? I'd be willing to bet the one's who say it's "ok" have several motives for it, as were stated before.

Bottom line; MP3 is about settling for less. And it IS settling, make no mistake about it.

Posted by RobertStern on Dec-21-2007 20:35:

Posted by RobertStern on Dec-21-2007 20:39:

I have bought and downloaded over 600 tracks from beatport almost all in WAV. Each on is like 70-80megs, yeah, that takes up quite a bit of space. That's why I have a 200gb HD in my Lappy!

I bet you PVD ain't playing mp3's

Posted by MikeLord on Dec-22-2007 01:07:

Why is everyone such an expert in this topic??

Posted by bas on Dec-22-2007 01:18:

quote:
Originally posted by MikeLord
Why is everyone such an expert in this topic??

All of us have PhD's in audio engineering. Can't believe you didn't know that.

Posted by MikeLord on Dec-22-2007 01:28:

quote:
Originally posted by bas
All of us have PhD's in audio engineering. Can't believe you didn't know that.

thanks... at least I know where to go anytime I have a question related to audio engineering. glad we have so many pro's and established producers here.

Posted by henryv on Dec-22-2007 01:35:

I usually burn in 320KBPS format. if i have extra cash or know somebody with the WAV ill ask. but the song has to be clean no re-encodes just digital. i preview the tracks a lot of times before actually burning the track.

I usually burn with Windows Media Player. i think its easy and fast. also i like the simple layout!

Posted by bas on Dec-22-2007 01:55:

quote:
Originally posted by MikeLord
thanks... at least I know where to go anytime I have a question related to audio engineering. glad we have so many pro's and established producers here.

Anytime sugar

Posted by RobertStern on Dec-22-2007 03:34:

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