Hey guys, firstly i just wanna say.. WOW this site is fantastic! The controller mods, gear reviews and user suggestions are quality.
Now.. on to the topic at hand.
After doing some reading i keep hearing about the importance of audio quality of the mp3s we’re all playing out of traktor, SSL, VDJ, MixVibes etc.
Now before i knew the significance of bitrates I would rip or download audio without sparing a thought for the quality.. it all sounded the same from laptap speakers or an ipod.
Now however, i want to ensure my library is of the best quality for DJing so my question is is there anyway i can convert my older mp3s to a higher kbps without ripping them all again? (via some programme or whatever)
Also what exactly is an acceptable bitrate for your mp3 files?
Sorry if these are nooby questions… i dont really know the ins and outs of how audio files work.
Im sure some talented member of the DJTT community knows a way
word. the ony time using a 192 would be acceptable in my opinion is in Dj mix because you have to option of compressing the entire mix to 192.
Personally I junk all the 192s that come with my arrivals, can’t be bothered being teased by a shitty 192 it’ll just piss me off that I can’t get the 320
one thing to keep in mind is that not all compression algo’s are created equal. mp3 is a pretty dated standard and stuff like Ogg and AAC well surpass mp3’s quality. so imho Ogg and AAC should do fine at 256.
as for mixes, remember that if you mix together various compress tracks and compress the results, you will get artefacts. so if you take one 320kbit mp3 and mix it with another one you will loose audio quality even if you encode the resulting mix at 320kbit again. so saying for mixes you are fine with lower bitrates because you can distribute them at lower bitrates does not make sense.
Would there be a noticable drop in the quality of audio if you were to bring a 192 in after a 320? has anyone ever done this?
and what about samples? if i have one word samples.. just at the start of a mix or sumthing will low sound quality be a huge issue? or for example sampling harder, better, faster, stonger in an akai pad style set up over a beat (been done to death i know) would the mix suffer as a result of the audio of the sample?
^ if it’s just a sample that’s not as bad because most the distortion occurs in the low and high frequencies which sound really bad for beats, but you may not even notice for just a one shot vocal clip or whatever.
if you were to bring a 192 song after a 320 song, it would only be noticeable if the entire mix was at 320. but if you compress the entire thing to 192 im sure it would be difficult to tell the difference since 192 isn’t really that terrible to begin with.
anyone jump in if i got it wrong, but im pretty sure thats how it is
thats a good point. if you do use lower quality files, try not to make huge jumps .. or when you have no choice make sure you “mess things up” sufficiently with effects when you make the switch.
You’ll be fine playing out with 192kbs tracks. we’ve played them on a 10k system with 300 punters with no problems at all. Of course 320kbs is what you want to aim for tho…or even better, .wavs
peace
QFT. I wish DJs would be more realistic. 5 years ago, the thought of downloading an .mp3 (legally/illegally) at 320 kbps was unheard of. So what do you think everyone was playing on their CDJs if it wasn’t an actual retail CD?
I seriously doubt a crowd in a club would hear any difference between 192kbps and 320kbps, mostly cause of acoustics, ambient noise and not to mention all the people talking, dancing and screaming… on top of the small audible difference. But then again, whaddoayeknow
Plus, timewarping tracks is a good way of bringing out compression artifacts, but a few % here and there doesn’t make much of a difference
For me it seems as though high bit-rate mp3s are better at dealing when slowing down a track inside Traktor.
Lower bitrate tracks seem to have some audio artifacts when slowed down too much. Perhaps because there isn’t as much audio information to stretch over a longer amount of time. If one follows my meaning.
