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Ableton vs. Serato vs. CDJ SOUND QUALITY

Hello...

I have a pair of CDJs and also dabble with Ableton...

My question to you is this: when comparing the sound quality of ableton and CDJs... CDJS appear to have a much more powerful PUNCH to the bass... where as Ableton comes off as a lil muddy... is there anyway to bring the sound quality of CDJs to Ableton?

Also, how does Scratch Pro compare to these two in regards to sound?

THANKS!

mmm....the mixer is responsible for this.

Are you running from the headphone out on your computer? If you are you may want to look into getting an audio interface instead.

quote:

Originally posted by Watts Are you running from the headphone out on your computer? If you are you may want to look into getting an audio interface instead.

What this person says is correct.

It does also have to do with the mixer, but really, garbage in, garbage out.

The quality of the A/D converters in most professional CDDJ decks are pretty good (not audiophile good, but good) and are surely better than most consumer computer/laptop soundcards.

nah dude i have a firewire 410

use a DJM800

i have heard some producers complain about the output of ableton. this was awhile ago though, so no idea if it has been improved or not....

as for serato vs cdjs....personally i feel serato sounds a bit more "digital" than cdjs. may be down to the wires (i have shit ones), but something about the serato box also makes me wonder if it really can match with cdj A/D converers. or it could be the USB...or my 5 year old laptop.

sorry, not much help here, but would appreciate it if someone else could enlighten me also.

if you are using wavs exclusively in ableton it sounds great



it just starts to sound like ish when you have crap quality sounds, also when people who have no fucking studio knowledge start putting stupid amounts of stuff on top of each other doesn't even matter if its in key, it turns into a frequency nightmare


the best way to use ableton for djing for sound quality is to use a high end external mixer and have all of your channels running into the mixer individually ie. ableton channel 1 -> pio800 channel one, chn 2 -> chn 2... etc. That allows you to do all the EQ outside the box which is going sound a lot less muddy.. (unless you really know what you are doing in ableton)

Unless you need to use more than one channel, I would just go S/PDIF somewhere on the DJM-800

DVS units usually provide some coloration of sound. The most similar to pure CDJs would probably be Traktor Scratch due to the specifications of the audio interface.

Whats so special about the Traktor interface, looks like a standard USB prosumer interface?

Marcus007 have you considered the warp type you are using: beats or complex? Are you using VBR MP3 etc?

Also speeding up a song on CDJs will raise the pitch making bass move higher up the freq giving more prominence to high / mid bass on a home system.

quote:

Originally posted by Allied Nations the best way to use ableton for djing for sound quality is to use a high end external mixer and have all of your channels running into the mixer individually ie. ableton channel 1 -> pio800 channel one, chn 2 -> chn 2... etc. That allows you to do all the EQ outside the box which is going sound a lot less muddy.. (unless you really know what you are doing in ableton)

this is exactly what i do

and i dont touch the fxs in ableton... only on my 800

and yes i use mp3... could this be the problem?

quote:

Originally posted by Marcus007 this is exactly what i do and i dont touch the fxs in ableton... only on my 800 and yes i use mp3... could this be the problem?

Depends on the quality of the Mp3, the type of music that it is, and if you are pitching it far up or down.

Get some good quality uncompressed PCM files (wav/aiff) and see if you notice any improvement.

Mostly what everyone has said in this thread.
Having a decent external USB 2.0 / Firewire soundcard with stable ASIO 2 drivers always helps.
Best to leave the Ableton EQ's and levels alone and use the external mixer for this purpose.

Don't consider using less than 320 Kbps mp3's, ideally wav's / aiffs.

On a related note, is there anyway to modify Ableton's main tempo to change in key as you increase it? By default, the key does not change regardless of whether tempo is slave or master cause of the time stretching algorithm.

you will lose sound quality with this is if you are playing mp3's.

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