Should I get over my prejudice/ignorance/snobbery for WAV and change to mp3?

[mostapha]

> “Uncompressed files are the only ones suitable for proper editing, which is a big part of my life,”

That Magda guy in that article clearly doesn't quite understand how lossless compression works...

Magda's a chick.



She's on Minus and tours with Ritchie Hawtin sometimes. She's generally regarded at one of the best at minimal.

And technically the software that she probably uses (i'd put money on ableton) can't use compressed files…it decodes everything to wav and stores it in temp files. And apparently some people have issues with that that are solved by only using wav files. So, in a way, she's right.

I'm with you…ALAC is plenty good to DJ with, but I make a wav/aiff copy if I'm going to edit anything because the DAW's going to do it anyway.

[MrPopinjay]

Oh wait, I think I do know her. I was chatting with some dude the other day who partied with her a few days back. He seemed pretty star struck :P
Her hair is awesome.

Your DAW will do it for you so why would you ever want to do it manually?

[MisterC]

A combination of audiophile snobbery, ignorance, prejudice and an ability to convince myself that I CAN hear the difference has resulted in me only buying WAV files from Beatport and JunoDownload. I am also fortunate enough to have a 500GB ASUS NJ61 that only has my (stripped) OS, Traktor and music library on it. Our currency is about to hit 8 Rands to 1 Dollar and I am reconsidering the cost of WAV upgrades. I've read the science (I'm sick of reading about WAV's "voracious appetite for disc space" and "once lost with compression, always lost to compression") but want to hear from this community.
1. Is WAV REALLY worth it?
2. Will I notice the difference?
I really appreciate the sound quality of the S4 and don't want it compromised.

I am going to enjoy this thread as i'm in the same boat but for AIFF, however I notice the difference when i'm going for TBH clearer tops clear bass no bleed...

[MisterC]

A combination of audiophile snobbery, ignorance, prejudice and an ability to convince myself that I CAN hear the difference has resulted in me only buying WAV files from Beatport and JunoDownload. I am also fortunate enough to have a 500GB ASUS NJ61 that only has my (stripped) OS, Traktor and music library on it. Our currency is about to hit 8 Rands to 1 Dollar and I am reconsidering the cost of WAV upgrades. I've read the science (I'm sick of reading about WAV's "voracious appetite for disc space" and "once lost with compression, always lost to compression") but want to hear from this community.
1. Is WAV REALLY worth it?
2. Will I notice the difference?
I really appreciate the sound quality of the S4 and don't want it compromised.

I am going to enjoy this thread as i'm in the same boat but for AIFF, however I notice the difference when i'm going for TBH clearer tops clear bass no bleed...

[JonathanBlake]

Magda's a chick.

She's on Minus and tours with Ritchie Hawtin sometimes. She's generally regarded at one of the best at minimal.
And technically the software that she probably uses (i'd put money on ableton) can't use compressed files…it decodes everything to wav and stores it in temp files. And apparently some people have issues with that that are solved by only using wav files. So, in a way, she's right.
I'm with you…ALAC is plenty good to DJ with, but I make a wav/aiff copy if I'm going to edit anything because the DAW's going to do it anyway.

SHE uses Traktor/Timecode Vinyl (Traktor logo'ed)/X1

[djproben]

Your DAW will do it for you so why would you ever want to do it manually?

Manually? you have to lay out all the bits on the floor and rearrange them yourself?

[flexmartin]

This editing scenario interests me; if you have an mp3 and want edit it -take a section for a loop, extend, chop it up in some way or whatever -you do that in some kind of editor SW, right. So when you want to save what you've done, don't you have to export it to some format or other? So if you started with a lossy format your losing even more every time you export/transcode it. But if you started with lossless you're in full control of how much you lose to gain a smaller file size.

[MrPopinjay]

Manually? you have to lay out all the bits on the floor and rearrange them yourself?

You can either drag it straight into your DAW or you can open an additional program, drag files into that, set where you want the new files to be saved to, click ok, wait for it to do it's thing, navigate to that directory and then drag it into your DAW.

I know which one I'd rather do.

[mostapha]

Yeah…me too. Having the files in one place instead of several saves a lot of disk space and takes basically no more effort.

[sobi]

Duplicate thread... mods should lock it.