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In a predicament... (pg. 2)
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| Zild |
| I've had mixes go for minutes without drifting on my decks. Maybe its a mental thing, the wow and flutter on Technics is so small its not very significant. |
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| Rememberence_ |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dirk W.
I am almost positive that they do not.
Wow and Flutter is the measurement of drift that one would expect from a new turntable. Vinyl tables have that measurement, but CDs do not. What happens when you load a CD into the table, at least with my Technics, you can hear it read it very quickly, throw it all into memory and then everything from there on is controlled digitally which means that Wow & Flutter can't happen because it is not relying on anything "mechanical".
Besides all of that, I have noticed no drift on my CDs while my regular tables do a little bit. |
It's really not as complicated as that. The fact is you have to beatmatch, whatever equipment you are on. Analog pitch control allows for infinitestimal adjustments in pitch, digital does not. That's not to say that digital pitch control is not practical, it's just a technical fact. Tracks are going to drift apart after a while because you are never going to get them exactly matched, it makes no difference if you're on a cdj or a turntable, it comes down to your abilities at beatmatching. If you find that tracks don't drift when you're mixing, either the transitions aren't long enough for you to notice, or you're very good at beatmatching, or both, or you're riding the pitch. |
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| Dirk W. |
| quote: | Originally posted by Rememberence_
It's really not as complicated as that. The fact is you have to beatmatch, whatever equipment you are on. Analog pitch control allows for infinitestimal adjustments in pitch, digital does not. That's not to say that digital pitch control is not practical, it's just a technical fact. Tracks are going to drift apart after a while because you are never going to get them exactly matched, it makes no difference if you're on a cdj or a turntable, it comes down to your abilities at beatmatching. If you find that tracks don't drift when you're mixing, either the transitions aren't long enough for you to notice, or you're very good at beatmatching, or both, or you're riding the pitch. |
agreed. i was just saying that there is no wow and flutter with a digital turntable and it is only limited to its most precise adjustment. With a turntable you can have the pitches exactly lined up to the infinite decimal place, but the motor itself has a degree of error that won't allow the tracks to stay in time (that degree of error is decreased with nicer tables)
to put it better, if you have two records and two cds and you push the reset 0 button on all the tables, the cds will stay together perfectly while the vinyls can drift |
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| Rememberence_ |
| quote: | Originally posted by Dirk W.
to put it better, if you have two records and two cds and you push the reset 0 button on all the tables, the cds will stay together perfectly while the vinyls can drift |
Agreed, I was gonna say this also. But in practice, with good turntables, W&F is neglegable in comparison to the inaccuracy of a human adjusting that pitch control... riding the pitch owns you. |
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| Matthias |
| quote: | Originally posted by Screen
Matthias,
Excellent post on the pro's and cons of digital buying
My question is, what’s the difference in sound between a wav & a 320 mp3? As we know beatport wont let you download wavs, so the easiest predicament is to download the 320 (in my case) haha I don’t have the room on my hard drive to store wavs
2nd, When you burn mp3/wavs, is there a certain program you should use? I remember you telling me when you burn mp3's sound quality is lost
Is that still degrading even If I paid for the mp3 in the first place?
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Sorry for the bombardment of questions. I’m just trying to get a fair & balanced opinion (something fox news could never give);)
-darren |
hehe, I will clarify this. Quite honestly, I havent heard a 320 MP3 from beatport over a club system. Although, I pirchased an mp3 of one of the WAVs I ordered just to do a comparisons over my moniters. Honesty both sounded largely the same because I am pretty sure beatport made the MP3 from the WAV they send out...in that respect, they WAV they get comes from the stereo master of the track (dithered to 16bit, 44.1khz PCM) In other words..the red book master of the wav (commercial cd quality) I hope I didnt confuse anyone there...but I think it may be safe to use beatports MP3s over a club system without too much audio degredation, as I understand they encode all there MP3s at 320kbs now.
Let me clarify what MP3s I do NOT recommend playing out. MP3s downloaded from free peer-to-peer sites such as kazaa, soulseek, limewire, WINMX, or any of those...even the ones that are 320kbs may not sound good. Here are a few reasons why. 1) The track may have been ripped from a radio broadcast set, or any sort of live set. You cant mix those because the first and last minutes of a track are either cut off, or mixed with the tracks before and after them. In those kinda tracks..you will have unexpected tempo variences where a track may play the first 30 seconds at 128bpm, then shift up to 131, and at the end of the song change again. You dont want those...not too mention radio rips will sound HORRIBLE and probbaly have a jingle in there, imagine listening to a DJ in a club...and hear a track go "ID&T....essential..." in the breakdown. I would probably laugh my ass off.
Second of all...most the people ripping the tracks from vinyl on soulseek or wherever, are complete idiots when it comes to recording quality audio, and then encoding it to mp3. Complete ing idiots. The only way to properly rip a vinyl, is to run the rca's from the turntable (which has an Ortofon nightclub needle/stylus) through some sort of tub amp, youll probably need two tubed amps since most of em I have seen are mono. Set the input output levels on the amp identical and make sure your not sending an overdriven signal...and record that signal in Pro Tools at 24bit or higher, 192kbs. Normalize the wav (peak not RMS) then dither it down to 16bit, 44.1kbs format...and THEN encode it to MP3. WHen you encode the MP3, use a LAME encoder or the latest Fraunhofer (they invented the first mp3 encoding algorithm) and encode to 320 stereo (no joint stereo or any of that ...just plain old stereo) and set the inidicator to highest quality rather than encoding speed.
I realize the above sounds like a long and drawn out process, it is. And most of the people who think they know what they are doing when they rip tracks to MP3, actually have no idea what they are doing. Which is the main reason why they sound like utter . If you are converting a CD to mp3, all you have to do is rip it using Audiograbber, and convert to mp3 in the same manner I explained.
To sum up your question Darren, it may be safe to use beatport's 320 MP3s over a club system...but I have yet to do that. They sound good over a pair of Genelec moniters...but club systems, havent listened to one yet. |
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| Matthias |
| quote: | Originally posted by Rememberence_
The fact is you have to beatmatch, whatever equipment you are on. Analog pitch control allows for infinitestimal adjustments in pitch, digital does not. That's not to say that digital pitch control is not practical, it's just a technical fact. Tracks are going to drift apart after a while because you are never going to get them exactly matched, it makes no difference if you're on a cdj or a turntable, it comes down to your abilities at beatmatching. |
I will say that where the CDJ 1000s are concerned, they are the only decks where I have been able to get 2 tracks lined up to the point where I would only have to make the most minimal of adjustments with the jogwheel. The pitch faders, are accurate down to 0.02% increments (when the range is set at +/- 6%). This is 5 times more accurate than what alot of CD decks allow...which are (0.1%) I must agree though while this will allow a profession DJ who understands the concepts of beatmatching to get a near perfect layer/transition; it isnt foolproof from an amatuer who does not. The only time you will get two tracks that wont fall out of phase, is you perhaps you have 2 tracks that are the same exact tempo set at the same pitch. I think thats only possible if you're mixing in Ableton Live tho. |
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| Matthias |
| quote: | Originally posted by Screen
2nd, When you burn mp3/wavs, is there a certain program you should use? I remember you telling me when you burn mp3's sound quality is lost |
didnt see this question.
okay...when you burn MP3s...you dont lose sound quality. You are buring the decoded WAV (of the encoded mp3) Sound quality is lost..when you encode the original WAV into MP3.
For burning I use Nero while at home, and Adaptec Toast at school (Mac program). When you burn a CD, I would set the burner to the lowest speed possible 4x or 2x if available. Its time consuming, and if wont make the wave sound better...but it will ensure there are no skips in your audio when the CD is played. It will also prevent skips if your CD is lighty scratched because of the way the data clusters are written at slower burn speeds. I also recommend using the slower speeds if you burn on a PC because well...PCs suck:p Make sure no processes are running, your computer is free of spyware, and hell..after you start the burn...dont even move the mouse pointer. That should do it. |
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| Matthias |
| quote: | Originally posted by Screen
haha I don’t have the room on my hard drive to store wavs
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Long story short...here's my recommended solution for that:
This, my friend, is a LaCie 160GB firewire hard drive. Portable, small, and it was designed for people who edit video (making it more than suitable for audio). I got mine around $180...and in my opinion its the best investment I have made. Currently I have around 400 16bit WAVs, 80 24bit WAVs of different sizes for the music I am currently working on, and an assload of MP3 mixes that range from an hour to 5 hours. And the best part....Im only using lil under half the storage space. |
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| DJ_Octane |
Thansk for the advice guys, I didn't know I could be enlightened so much by a bunch of SELLOUTS!!!! LOL
J/K seriously, thanks for spreading the knowledge. |
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| Zild |
| quote: | Originally posted by Rememberence_
Agreed, I was gonna say this also. But in practice, with good turntables, W&F is neglegable in comparison to the inaccuracy of a human adjusting that pitch control... riding the pitch owns you. |
Riding the pitch owns everyone. |
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| Rememberence_ |
the only thing I enjoy riding more is Jacob's mum.
Matthias - just to point out somethin, there are ripping groups in the warez scene (piracy scene) who specialise in ripping promo vinyls and such, so kazza, soulseek, etc etc are not the only source of illegal mp3 downloads. The major groups do this very well, and know what they are doing. I doubt they go to the trouble of using tube amps when ripping from a phono source but the decent ripping groups go to a reasonable amount of trouble to release their mp3s. CDR promos of course are also very common and much easier to rip by comparison, so you see those around a lot. That said, the standard among mp3 release groups is 192kbit CBR MP3, or high quality VBR MP3 (not as abundant).
Regarding the discussion about beatmatching accuracy... I guess I'll conclude what I was saying - The accuracy of Technics 1200's, or CDJ1000mk2's, are more than enough for an experienced DJ to make a flawless transition. The fact is that if you can hear what you need to hear in the tracks you're mixing, and have enough experience, you can ride the pitch sufficiently without the crowd being any wiser. If you can't ride the pitch during a transition (and I myself have far from perfected it) and you're the kind of DJ that makes lengthy transitions, it's something basic that needs to be learned through experience (and forcing yourself to do it) in my opinion. Riding the pitch is as essential to a trance DJ as rice is in asian diets. |
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