MP3, WAV or IFF - Can you really hear the difference in a club? - Discuss.
I got into a discussion the other night with a friend who insisted that buying .wav or .iff files from Beatport was worth the extra money you pay compared to the sound quality of DJ’ing with .MP3 files.
Really? Do people really stand there thinking to themselves “We’ll if this tight fisted DJ has bothered to put this hand in his pocked and pay the extra for a .wav file rather than a .mp3 then this party would REALLY be rocking”…
If you buy .wav (or .iff) files, why? What difference do you think it makes?
Of course .wav & .aiff files are better quality, but “most” people could not tell the difference between a nice crisp 320 .mp3 and a .wav, and once these files go through a sound system, it all evens out anyway
I do tend to prefer wav (or flac) when it is an option.
The ability to “hear” a difference has been beaten to death. For people who claim then can hear a difference, the results vary from “mildly annoying” to “fingernails on chalkboard.” There are people who claim they can hear a difference between a Pioneer or A&H and a Behringer. Perhaps they can, and perhaps they “only” can when the mixer is pegged in the red. How often is your mixer pegged into the red?
There are MANY different elements that contribute to overall sound quality, and there is pride of ownership in having the elements under your control as high a quality as possible.
In cases where music will be edited (e.g. Ableton), processed heavily with effects, “large” tempo or key changes, or otherwise undergone “a lot” of changes…there are good reasons to prefer “lossless” over “lossfull.” Those are also the same situations when preferring higher sampling rates.
Personally I can’t hear the difference since I haven’t gone to any extremes to try it out for myself, but if I could I would use .wav songs since they’re the best quality on paper. Although the setback for me is that they are much larger files so you would end up using more space on your disk for less music.
At least 320kbps VBR MP3’s. Nothing lower. Used to buy lossless and it’s pointless in 90% of clubs. I witnessed a sound check at BETA Nightclub in Denver which has a Funktion One sound system and even there as a curious mind I asked to hear the same song in both formats and couldn’t discern much difference.
Absolutely! Here is how I know. I was playing in a club and was having trouble figuring out why some tracks didn’t sound as good as they had at home when playing them together. Particularly going from one track to another, something sounded very “off” and there was a serious crispness difference on some tracks. When it clicked, I look and realized that I mixed from a WAV from an MP3. I noticed it several other times that night and started doing some testing after that. I downloaded, from reputable sites copies of MP3 and the same song in WAV/AIFF and then played them together, back to back etc. on studio monitors. Also tested in a club. What I found was there was clearly a difference. Especially on tracks with serious bass depth and layers (trance for example). With Traktor where it becomes VERY evident between MP3’s and lossless(now all I use are AIFF’s) is when you are using key lock. With keylock on, running at about +3-4% tempo, an AIFF sounds like a CDJ. With a 320 MP3, it just sounds, for lack of a better description, mushy.
Bottom line is, won’t even buy MP3’s anymore, and I’m always bummed when a producer puts out a free track and don’t do the wav. It isn’t doing their work justice.
I also have done a lot of reading up and listening to people in the know on the subject of good audio since then, and that has brought me to where I am today. I really wish more people would pay attention to this issue because it makes a huge difference in the feel.
Another note here that I think is VERy important. I see dj’s running traktor in the red all the time when I play with other people. FYI, there is NO headroom in digital to run in the red. As soon as its red, the signal is overloaded and distorted.
It is funny how many times I have heard and felt something is wrong when I am playing with someone and sure enough, I go over and they are running in the red. A little adjustment and bang, sounds much better. It happened two weeks ago, playing with a friend. He was totally skeptical until he adjusted it, and we were able to crank the sound louder and it sounded much more crisp. Needless to say, he adopted the “running traktor’s master at a -7 to 10” after that and commented on how it sounded much better to him. Thankfully, another convert to better sounding audio!
Finally, I’d suggest everyone read this and do a little more digging, rather than just spouting what countless others have when they say it doesn’t matter: http://www.funktion-one.com/dl/files/1789.pdf
There is also an excellent interview with Tony regarding the subject here:
I’ve failed at the blind taste test trying to distinguish between a .wav and the same file converted to 320kbps mp3 with professional studio monitors and a somewhat treated room - basically a much more accurate listening environment than any club will have. I think there is a lot of confirmation bias around this topic. I also think there is a correlation between producers who spend the extra effort to really polish their productions and producers who release tracks in .wav format that leads people to believe that .wavs sound better when it’s actually just some producers working harder and getting better results.
I will say this though - if you plan on making edits of a track or doing anything with it in a DAW, you should do it with a non lossy format. When you import a .mp3 into any DAW that I’ve used, it will convert it to 24bit and you will then have to reconvert it to mp3. Each time you do this you will definitely lose quality. I think that key lock also falls apart faster with mp3s.
Yes and no… Shitty source over compressed will be same issue… Normally going from MP3 to lossless shouldn’t be an issue if they are processed and mastered correctly. Sadly this is not always the case and that’s how come test can be somewhat irrelevant… Example downloaded an aiff from beatport off a single put into iTunes let match run its course and the 256k mp4 sounds different then the one I purchased through iTunes off a compilation release… This basically told me that what release the track is purchased on effects the mastering and processing of the file… That’s why a 320k MP3 and lossless download of same track from same release from same source will sound the same on most all sound systems… Yes if I throw in Adobe audition and watch the audio mapping there will be a difference but audible difference unlikely…
That being said I’ve lately been buying aiff tracks and letting iTunes Match them and keeping the MP4 version and saving aiff version on my server
The problem is that your conclusions look exactly the same as conclusions reached by placebo and confirmation bias.
There is an enormous amount of evidence that suggests that any audio testing that is not totally double blind, is completely worthless for drawing conclusions.
For instance, tests have shown that out of two sources, subjects will pick the louder one, and claim that the sound quality is better.
As far as your point about clipping goes, I wouldnt even call someone a DJ who doesnt understand gain staging.
But printing images for print production you can definetly tell the difference especially when you get to wide format publications… Same with cmyk vs rgb or when you get to Pantone… Print is very different though because you make be scaling images and various things and that matters heavily… Audio isn’t being scaled to a physical medium… I’m agreeing with you but pointing out a fundamental difference between audio and images… An accurate comparison would be vector vs raster?
where I find it most noticeable is in songs with white noise filter sweeps, like that used during buildups.
White noise is a TON of information at any given time filling up a lot of the frequency spectrum. MP3 works by destroying information it deems not necessary, leaving behind less than 25% of the original file information (1411 kbps to 320kpbs or less). On a large professionally tuned PA system, that white noise sweep when converted to mp3 is extremely harsh and abrasive on the ear drums due to points being squared off during the conversion to lower bit rate. when listening back in lossless quality, it is a much smoother sound and tolerable.
As well, if you play music of the bass heavy variety, mp3 does seem to cut out a substantial amount of sub frequencies below 40hz. Bear in mind you need to be playing on a really good system that can reproduce that low effectively. But for me, the club I work for has a PK Sound system installed, and I can definitely tell a difference in the bass when going from a lossless file to an mp3.
To the average club go-er, they are not going to walk into the venue and go “omg, i can totally tell he is playing lossless songs”. But as an artist, I try to live by the motto of you should do everything within your power to deliver the highest quality product possible. For me, that means leaving headroom on the mixer for levels, using lossless files, running through Platinum Notes to make them all the same gain level, mixing in key.
When it comes to audio, you’ll quickly learn that you will only sound as good as the weakest point in the chain from audio file to speaker. Do whatever you can to improve on that
I think club music is much more bass-focussed than other styles of music. So people notice the bassline and subby kicks more. But that doesn’t mean it is changes in the low frequencies that you are noticing. My guess is that it is changes in the higher frequencies which might make the bassline sound less punchy, while the actual sub content stays about the same.
I just did some unscientific experiments in Ableton. I exported a 10Hz-2kHz sine wave sweep as wav, then encoded it as 65, 130, 190, and 320kbps mp3. Back in Ableton, you can see that the high frequencies get cut off earlier and earlier as the quality gets shittier. Not much happens to the bass, though. At 65kbps you can hear some artifacts, but the rest of the files sounded identical in that area. Low frequencies are so cheap to encode, I don’t see why they would get cut out anyway. Funnily enough, if you export a low frequency sine wave from Ableton and convert it to FLAC and 320kbps mp3, the FLAC file is close to half the size of the MP3. (Not that that proves much about actual music.)
I also did an experiment just now with Steffi’s track “Yours” in Traktor. I switched between a lossless version and a 320kbps mp3 at various pitch shifts up to 2.4%, and with key lock on and off. I couldn’t notice any difference between them, but I still wish my music collection was lossless, just in case. Nevertheless, I won’t be buying wav files any time soon.
Nice post! Especially this, “When it comes to audio, you’ll quickly learn that you will only sound as good as the weakest point in the chain from audio file to speaker. Do whatever you can to improve on that”.
I wish more dj’s etc. would adhere to this. MB’s of storage are so cheap these days, having lossless shouldn’t be a problem. And before you talk about cost, remember the days of vinyls and CD’s being the only way to get this music? Even at $2.49 USD a track, that is cheap compared to what we used to pay. It will also keep you more selective about your music. Once I started buying lossless, I would say my music selection got better because I wasn’t randomly just grabbing everything out there. I have to really love to track to drop the cash. Also, be a pro, not an amateur. One last point, the more people start buying wavs, etc. the more prices should be able to come down. Or if you buy them and support other sites than Beatport, it will breed more competition for Beatport’s high prices for lossless(one of my biggest pet peeves, don’t even get me started there). Competition is good for the consumer! Think about it!
