Question about digital music quality and DJing
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  1. #1
    Tech Convert
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    Default Question about digital music quality and DJing

    Just starting to get into controllerism and dJing!

    Was wondering about sound quality, what type of sound files do dj's use when playing at venues

    mp3's at something like 320kb bit rates? or is it something else. FLAC format? not really sure what a flac is just know it's a different way of compressing music, but i don't know much about it's sound quality

    thanks!

  2. #2
    Schreiberie Meister Afterhour Ali's Avatar
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    DJs use mainly MP3, WAV and FLAC-files. There are also a few other formats like OGG or M4A but these are the most common ones.

    WAV is uncompressed
    FLAC is compressed, but losless
    MP3 is compressed, but lossy



    While MP3 offers the smallest filesize it is the worst of the three. It does things like cutting out (for humans) unhearable frequencies to achieve that compression.
    DJs should play MP3 with a bitrate of no less than 192 kbps, but 320 is de-facto standard. There are numerous threads here on DJTT discussing that subject into the ground.

    FLACs quality is the same as the uncompressed WAV's one, because when decompressed while listening the audio-stream is the same. You can imagine it as a kind of zip-file. It makes your files smaller, but when you decompress it your files aren't damaged.
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  3. #3
    Tech Mentor levvis's Avatar
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    ^this.
    Also to add to it, the form of file you have can mean dick if the track's production quality is trash. i.e if you cop a 320 bootleg that isn't mastered (or mastered poorly) it'll sound pretty ballsy even though it's at 320kbps.
    WAV's are ideal but usually cost around twice as much and yeah are like 3 or 4 times the size. Also the common punter isn't going to be able to tell the difference so you may as well stick with mp3s

  4. #4
    DJTT Infectious Moderator photojojo's Avatar
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    Like Hedge said 320 MP3 is pretty much the standard.
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  5. #5
    Tech Guru lethal_pizzle's Avatar
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    ^this... and you can't 'improve' the quality of a compressed file by uncompressing it and recompressing it at a higher bitrate.

    I think that's all the bases covered. Again.
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