First gig and sound quality

[Duckyouck]

I'm having my first DJ gig in march, and will be playing for about 350 people (really excited!) I have no worries about the DJing side of the set, but the amount of songs I need, and the sound quality of these. I will be playing two nights, with a 6 hour set each night, which requires a huge amount of songs. My main concern is how to get the songs, knowing that the sound quality is good enough to be played in a club-setting. Is the best way to get high-quality songs to buy them off ITunes? And if so, is it a huge difference between mp3 and wav?

[backtothefront]

I'm having my first DJ gig in march, and will be playing for about 350 people (really excited!) I have no worries about the DJing side of the set, but the amount of songs I need, and the sound quality of these. I will be playing two nights, with a 6 hour set each night, which requires a huge amount of songs. My main concern is how to get the songs, knowing that the sound quality is good enough to be played in a club-setting. Usually have I just downloaded songs (I know, I know, I'm a pirate), and that is good enough for listening to through my headphones, but is the best way to get high-quality songs to buy them off ITunes? And if so, is it a huge difference between mp3 and wav?

I'll be the first to bite Welcome to the forums, advocating/admitting to music piracy is not really a good opening gambit and I suspect it is very much frowned upon by a good number of the people on this forum. That aside, if you buy your music from legitimate retailers, you shouldn't have any concerns with regard to sound quality - unless of course it's produced/mastered poorly - so yes iTunes will be fine as will Traxsource, Juno, Trackitdown, Stompy, Beatport, Amazon, etc etc. Some are cheaper than others and some will offer lossless i.e. WAV or FLAC as a slightly increased cost.

The choice is up to you, however I will say this, buy your music, you're supporting the producers that make it and you'll know you'll not have to worry about quality issues.

[Duckyouck]

Thanks for the quick reply. Is it worth paying that extra for WAV or FLAC, or will an MP3-file do just fine in a club?

[Ed Paris]

you´ll be fine with 320kbps mp3s as long as you know that they are legit! a lot of pirated stuff or blog-stuff is labeled as 320 but it´s often way lower quality.

[Duckyouck]

And 320kbps mp3 is the standard quality when buying off ITunes?

[LIVEMAU5]

I dont recommend Itunes, i bought two tracks from there, no option of HQ, both came out terrible quality.Beatport wont let you down. MP3 is fine, ive never had any issues and find it extremely hard to tell the difference between a WAV and an MP3 when going through my Traktor.

If you want generic tracks and any pop music (popular dance i mean) then beatport, the other sites people have recommended are good for less popular tracks (but are still great!)

For tracks, it depends on the venue. Club? House party? Bar?

[backtothefront]

I dont recommend Itunes, i bought two tracks from there, no option of HQ, both came out terrible quality.Beatport wont let you down. MP3 is fine, ive never had any issues and find it extremely hard to tell the difference between a WAV and an MP3 when going through my Traktor.

If you want generic tracks and any pop music (popular dance i mean) then beatport, the other sites people have recommended are good for less popular tracks (but are still great!)

For tracks, it depends on the venue. Club? House party? Bar?

I've not any significant problems with the quailty of new tracks (last couple of years) from iTunes, only maybe the odd corrupted file, which I report and they rectify. Although I can't speak for older tracks, but that might not be iTunes fault if the source audio is poorly mastered. I'm indifferent to iTunes in general, so I'm not speaking on their behalf, I tend to use Traxsource mostly.

Not quite sure what you mean by 'other sites having less popular tracks' and suggesting Beatport have the 'popular tracks'? This is purely my personal view, but I don't find Beatport particularly brilliant and suspect certain tracks/label/artists have, shall we say, more emphasis and exposure - which I'm sure many other sites might do.

OP, best thing to do is try out several sites and see what works for you. They'll all supply 320mbps MP3's (256kbps AAC in iTunes case which is approximate to 320kbps MP3 quality - it has a lower bitrate due to the audio compression tech used). They are generally absolutely fine for DJing in most situations, or for slightly more cash for for the lossless versions, which I think in the long term is a good investment.

[LIVEMAU5]

I've not any significant problems with the quailty of new tracks (last couple of years) from iTunes, only maybe the odd corrupted file, which I report and they rectify. Although I can't speak for older tracks, but that might not be iTunes fault if the source audio is poorly mastered. I'm indifferent to iTunes in general, so I'm not speaking on their behalf, I tend to use Traxsource mostly.

Not quite sure what you mean by 'other sites having less popular tracks' and suggesting Beatport have the 'popular tracks'? This is purely my personal view, but I don't find Beatport particularly brilliant and suspect certain tracks/label/artists have, shall we say, more emphasis and exposure - which I'm sure many other sites might do. .

I had a bad experience, like i said with two tracks and another track bought through my iphone and it was terrible, and that kinda just made me hate Itunes. I think their expensive and sometimes awkward too, sometimes i want one track and they make me have to buy an album for example. Im not a fan of Apple anymore, so itunes doesn't really appeal to me

The way i see beatport, if i wanted to look for, i dunno, the newest release by nicky remero or Axwell, id go to beatport since it gets all the popular artists first kinda. While if i wanted to find some new music from an artist thats relatively unknown, id head to trackitdown. I understand that you can get vice versa, but just for the sake of laziness, id go on beatport to get new "Popular" music.

Soundcloud is also brilliant for searching for new music, with the latest influx of artists and producers around due to the new bedroom studio producer surge and the infrastructure of soundcloud growing, its so easy to find some good free tracks there. legitimately of course!

On wavs, most people like wavs/flac for mixing and then recording I think. When your compressing and uncompressing and mixing and mashing up songs and stuff, you kinda want the quality to retain on the other side when its all over.

[mattmangrease]

I stick to Beatport for dance, but if you're looking for pop you might want to check out google Play as they sell music in 320, as a backup I use Amazon which is generally 256, but I wouldn't go lower than that. I believe Beatport just lowered the prices on lossless, so you might want to check that out as well.

[Duckyouck]

Thanks for all replies. The setting is a typical club, 300-350 people. Don't know much about the sound system etc yet, but it's a decent place, so I assume they have some professional equipment. Got a bit familiar with ITunes, liked what I see so far, but will definitely check out Beatport. As I need a lot of songs (12 hours of music), I'm looking for some compilation albums that includes your standard popular house music (the newer the better). I've found some, but if you know any good ones, please share!