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Posted by teufel-man on Jul-14-2008 23:28:

Music formats: MP3, Wav, MP4?

I know I could probably find this info on the internets but I was hoping someone could just give me a simple, the the point explanation of the difference between different music formats such as MP3, MP4, and WAV.

Beatport gives you the option to download in all three of these formats; my question is... what are the differences and which one is 'best'?

Posted by Gen3r4l1ty on Jul-14-2008 23:38:

Re: Music formats: MP3, Wav, MP4?

quote:
Originally posted by teufel-man
give me a simple, to the the point explanation

WAV - big files, uncompromised quality
MP3 - smaller files, universal format, lowered quality
MP4 - smaller files, mac format, lowered quality.

quote:
Originally posted by teufel-man
my question is... what are the differences and which one is 'best'?

No simple answer.

Posted by teufel-man on Jul-14-2008 23:46:

Re: Re: Music formats: MP3, Wav, MP4?

quote:
Originally posted by Gen3r4l1ty
WAV - big files, uncompromised quality

How big are we talking? like 40mb?

Posted by Stu Cox on Jul-15-2008 00:01:

Re: Re: Re: Music formats: MP3, Wav, MP4?

quote:
Originally posted by teufel-man
How big are we talking? like 40mb?

At least. It's about 10MB per minute, so you're average 6-7 min version of a dance track will be roughly 60-70 MB.

The difference it's gonna make to most users is the price - nowadays most people have got big enough hard drives not to have to worry about the size of files and fast enough internet connections for it not to take too long to download a file that big. On Beatport WAVs cost quite a bit more than MP3s so if you buy quite a lot of music then it'll start to make quite a dent in your bank account.

Most people are perfectly happy playing and hearing 320k MP3s in a club - there are enough threads on here with people debating that if you give it a search - but a lot of people (myself included) prefer to get the best quality they can, so go for WAVs whenever they're available.

Posted by veezee on Jul-15-2008 01:36:

hardrive space is cheap, go for the lossless format (WAV/FLAC).

Wikipedia is your friend

Jay

Posted by Darkarbiter on Jul-17-2008 07:35:

mp3-generally 128kbps-320... sounds shit below 128kbps in comparison to other formats
AAC (he is better ofc)-Sounds a fair bit better then mp3 at higher bitrates... but below 128kbps it sounds A TON better.
Wav-Standard uncompressed cd audio. 1444kbps
FLAC-An open source standard for compressing wav files. Generally around 1000kbps for songs. Its basically like zipping the song... so it'll sound exactly the same as the wav that it came from.
ALAC-Wma lossless-Apple audio codec and windows media audio lossless. Basically the same thing as flac.

My personal opinion on mp3 qualities:
128kbps sounds quite flat and has lost a fair amount of the frequencies and the kick sounds a fair bit off.
192kbps sounds like its regained a little of the frequencies... this is the quality I'd use if i'm desperate for space for some reason. It still lacks warmth though and the strings/pads/kicks still don't impress you terribly much. I'd say this is maybe 20% better then 128kbps
320kbps The sound feels much more full and the pads/strings etc are starting to sound warm. You get a feeling for the space in the track and reverb actually sounds ok. I'd say this is maybe 30% better then 192 depending on the song
lossless (alac flac, wav, etc): The kicks sound full, the pads/strings etc sound great and theres lots of space in the track and you can really feel it so much more. I'd say this is maybe 20% better then 320... but its so worth it when you can feel the song so much more.

Concidering how cheap space is and that every time you listen to a song your probably going to be a little more bored of it its definitely worth it to go lossless. It's better to have fewer warmer amazing awe inspiring tracks then more flat sounding ones. So yeh... don't take my rough %'s as a mathematical formula.

[slightly off topic] I was listening to back to the future by kindzazda... and the really weird thing about it is, that it sounds good on youtube at 64k or whatever... it sounds crap at 192 because the synth sounds all thin yet not fully defined and sounds good again at lossless.

Posted by sgillespie on Jul-18-2008 01:38:

There's a few more:

*.wav: uncompressed, huge
*.mp3: lossy compression format. I think you lose a lot of high/low frequencies because of the compression algorithm
*.ogg: another lossy compression. Much better compression, but similar.
*.flac: lossless compression, which means there is no loss in quality. About 3x size of mp3's
*.aac: Apples proprietary format. It includes support for DRM, so I advise most people to stay away. Similar to mp3