What does sound quality depend on ?
The quality of your Soundcard OR
The quality of your Speakers OR
BOTH?
sound quality is only going to be as good as the weakest link in your signal chain.
So this can be anything from the quality of the audio file to the quality of the mixer sound-card to the quality of the speakers. Right.
Anything else ?
Right, Audio file, cables, hardware, pretty much anything that produces or carries the sound.
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Don’t bother too much about it, just try to read about how to improve sound quality of all those things mentioned above and do what is simple and reasonable. People almost won’t hear the difference, trust me.
if the sound quality of file you are playing is low, it wont matter how good anything else in the chain is, its going to sound like crap. start with high quality song files, then address everything else. it wont matter if you are playing on a funktion one rig, if youre playing 92kpbs files of tape to tape recordings of a radio show..youre gonna have a bad time
Absolutely true.
But there is also no limit on how good sound quality can be - and getting close to “optimal” can cost a fortune. For example, you can pick up a quality 2 channel USB audio interface for $150 - and get pretty darn good quality. You can also get a 2 channel A to D converter that costs $13k - probably anyone would notice the difference in audio quality, few would pay 100x more for it.
#1 The quality of the Source
Then:
The quality of your Soundcard
The quality of your Power Supply
The quality of your Speakers
The quality of the interconnects
The quality of the ears of the listener
[QUOTE]Don’t bother too much about it, just try to read about how to improve sound quality of all those things mentioned above and do what is simple and reasonable. People almost won’t hear the difference, trust me.
[/QUOTE]
But this 100% .. I’d say most people on a night out are incapable of deciding if something sounds like crap so long as its loud or something they like hearing anyhow. (and I have seen a DJ get away with an entire set of 96kbps internet bootlegs during the iMesh days…full bar, everyone danced and the only person that could tell it sounded like crap was me!)
In my time I heard some pretty horrendous sound systems; completely distorted and overdriven. When you play on something like that, nothing will make a difference.
I don’t know what it’s like now, but the Ministry of Sound when it opened was just amazing, and I think the first club to really care about sound quality. So, on a system like that cartridges, quality of vinyl, turntables, mixer, amps, speakers etc, etc. will all make a difference.
There are often arguments on whether the difference can be heard between 320kbps and lossless WAV/AIFF, but on a good system 92kbps will clearly sound worse than WAV/AIFF.
During my time in studios I did a lot of demoing of analogue to digital and digital to analogue converters, often costing £4k. I must say I am blown away at the quality of the Native Instruments A10 I have; really amazing for the money, and really good sounding phono stage for vinyl.
I remember playing on a UREI mixer and when I listened back to the recording of the night I was blown away at how much better it sounded than my Vestax.
You people have left out one very big thing when considering clean sound. Don’t over drive your inputs on the mixer and don’t clip the outputs. I don’t care how good the rest of everything is, if you’re clipping your audio it WILL sound like crap regardless of how much you spent on speakers amps and wav files.
True..
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I would add quality of venue in before the quality of isterns ears…most places these days dont do any form of acoustic treatment, to the detriment of the over all sound and experience. Go to a fancy wine bar type place for an hour, and you’ll be feeling groggy and tired by the end of is as your brain is having to make sense from various reflections, standing waves, phasing etc…
Then go to a properly treated venue…is like listening to butter.
The Stiff Kitten (R.I.P.) in Belfast was a prime example of this…Space in Ibiza too
+1, let the soundsystem/amps do their job, no need to clip at the mixer
its all about that bass. no treble
With all respect, not at all true. Some of the earliest modern dance clubs went to great lengths to make sure that audio quality was front and center. A great example is the Paradise Garage (circa late 70s). Here’s a little blurb about one of the earlier audio companies (RLA). http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2016/05/richard-long-feature
I should have said ‘one’ of the first in the U.K. (I forget it’s int’l forums sometimes) to take it to the next level. Some other clubs, like Hacienda, had a decent systems, but MOS took it further. DJ Justin Berkman who helped set MOS up wanted to model it on Paradise Garage’s system, which was legendary for its quality.
Yes, it all matter. But, good speakers normally makes to biggest different. Biggest biggest different!!! With normal laptop speakers you normally do not hear the different between 192 vs 320 kbps, your soundcard, a mixer, etc.
First buy good speakers, active around from around 400 dollar should do the trick. Or spend more if you can.
Only up to a point.
$5000 speakers in an untreated room will likely not sound any better than $800 speakers.
yes yes yes. Far more important than the quality of your mixer/soundcard or anything else is the fact that you’re using it correctly. Some mixers will compensate for crappy practices by including more headroom than the meters display, but it would be best to practice not clipping rather than relying on deceptive mixers.
I’d put speakers and ears (and as others have pointed out the room) far above any of the other things on here. Quality of source is important within reason – for mp3s anything above 192 is going to be fine. 256 VBR or 320 is better but it won’t be noticeable by 90% or more of patrons (especially in a loud club in the presence of lots of booze), and unless the recording is terrible, any vinyl or CD source will be just fine. I’d caution against anything below 192 just to be on the safe side (and personally I try to only use 320 or VBR).
Soundcard won’t make any difference to anyone unless it is complete shit (or unless you are playing on Funktion Ones to a roomful of quiet, sober audiophiles), and even then any decent soundcard will likely do fine. Same with the mixer/preamps – subtle differences may exist but nothing that will make or break your night. Interconnects are totally irrelevant unless they are crap, broken, or badly connected, in which case it will be obvious (lots of static or dropouts), but anyone spending $800 on audiophile interconnects is wasting their money.
Speakers however will make a noticeable difference, and they have to be installed properly to sound their best. In a club situation even the best speakers are competing with loud drunk conversations, but smart placement will make sure that the sound on the dancefloor is as perfect as it can get.
Above all though clipping is likely to be your worst enemy. If you own the club or you’re setting up a home system, you’re going to want to take a look at your choice of speakers, but in most cases playing out, you have no control over them anyway. Concentrate on making sure you’re putting out a clean signal and don’t worry about the rest.
If you’re at a dance club complaining about the length of decay of the high hat sound, you’re doing it wrong…