MP3 vs. WAV on Beatport
Hi everyone,
long time listener, first time caller…
Basically, I intend to go on a Beatport shopping spree, but I’m not sure as to whether or not I should go for WAVs. I know that the quality of music is paramount, but the WAV handling is £1 ($1.50) per track, which adds up quick and ends up with me being able to buy a lot less music.
So what should I go for - quality or quantity?
Do the mp3s. They’re 320s. WAVs take up precious hard drive space as well as costing you more.
there is only a very marginal sound difference between 320kbs MP3’s and Wav’s. The average punter (and dj for that matter) wont notice any difference, and even if they did they wouldnt care. only an audiophile could tell.
Hey lubwama,
I’m in the same boat as you, and I’ve decided that i will buy in WAV. My reasoning is based upon what’s said in the book “how to dj (properly)”.
They state that “WAV is a ‘loseless’ format. That means no information is lost during encoding, so your tracks will be CD quality” and “MP3 encoding works by chopping off as much musical information as it can get away with, and the first thing to go are any frequencies beyond human hearing, which means there’s no sub-bass to hit your dancers in the chest”. Some argue that 320 there no discernible difference, and they may be right, but i’m not willing to take the risk.
You might as well buy the best now, incase u find your self in a club one day playing a deadmau5 track 
IMO buy wav/flac if you can afford to. I’m going to from now on mostly. Its just worth while having the full quality tune.
320’s are fine tho.
cool. thanks for all your feedback.
To be honest I was hoping everyone would just say buy MP3s, but I suppose buying WAVs is still a lot cheaper than buying vinyl…
i do have the same opinion, but i can’t afford paying double the money for a track so i stick with 320s and so far it’s okay, i can’t hear a difference.
audiophiles can probably, medium pricerange pa speakers can’t.
I agree. If you can afford to get the wav’s, there is no reason not to. I buy the wav, then store it on an external hard drive. Convert the wav to a flac and run that in your daw. This is a good practice in 2 ways. You save space where you need it in file size by using the flac, and you have a backup of the song in the highest quality format in case something happens.
I understand that the wav’s are more expensive, and external hard drives are cheaper than they used to be but still not cheap, but they are way smaller and cheaper than any other medium.
Flac is the best of both worlds, still a compressed format like mp3 - but you can still extract a wav file (with all the detail) from it later. I try to buy FLAC 1st. Then WAV and convert to FLAC 2nd. MP3 is good for demoing tracks or if there’s no other option.
Why not pick one track and get it twice, in both WAV and MP3 formats?
Try the track on a few systems and see if YOU can hear a difference or not - Then it should be easier to decide what to do!
it’s all about the money.
if one has enough of it, wav is always the choice.