mp3, flac, or wav??

[isiahfire]

Some basic stuff about file formats:

As mentioned in a previous post, FLAC is completely lossless, i.e it is 100% identical to the WAV, bit-for-bit. You can therefore convert WAV to FLAC and FLAC back to WAV without losing anything. FLAC supports sample rates up to 192KHz and bit depths up to 24 bit. The .CDA files on a CD are basically equivalent to WAVs. (Lossless, 1411kb/s) The advantage of FLAC is that it can compress files to 50% the size of the WAV without losing any information. It's also one of the fastest encoding and decoding formats. AIFF is also basically equivalent to WAV (lossless).

MP3s work by cutting out parts of the audio that are normally difficult to hear. i.e they are lossy. 320s only cut out the tiniest amount of very high frequency stuff which is almost impossible to notice except on the highest fidelity studio monitors or headphones. But there is stuff missing nevertheless, and therefore once you convert a WAV to MP3, there is no way of getting back the missing information. It is a one-way process. Lower bitrates (256, 192, 128) cut out more and more stuff, and I would argue that most people can hear that bitrates less than 320 sound worse. AAC is like Apple's version of MP3 which is also lossy.

Hopefully this helps someone

Cheers for that man, i feel a lot more clued up now!

[deadly_habit]

cool how do you check this? because to use up less memory i deleted some of my original music files because i thought that itunes has copies of them.. if you know what i mean.. now I not sure if they are still 320 or wav when playing off i-tunes....

In the column organiser select it to show the bitrate...then you will always know what quality of file you are playing..or right click on the file in itunes and choose 'Get Info' and it will show you the bitrate...

I cant really speak for a club system but on my high end hifi separates system I can tell the difference between an mp3 and a lossless format. I have done a like for like sound check with a room full of mates and all agreed, and its unlikely we are all placebo-ing ourselves

yea on a hi fi (high fidelity) system i should hope you can tell the difference, the majority of club systems are not built anything like that, plus the venues themseleves aren't usually built to be the optimal listening experience
most people who say they can tell the difference on a common club rig between formats are chatting shit

also regarding lossless formats, they're all going to sound the same, wav and aif are raw format, flac, aac, mp4 als, monkey's audio, and tta all just use different data compression algorithms and file formatting to manage that raw data

[syrup]

Aside from Wav´s/AIFs sounding a little more "crispy" to me

how can one lossless format sound different from another

i was talking lossless vs 320´s

[yaga]

Some basic stuff about file formats:

As mentioned in a previous post, FLAC is completely lossless, i.e it is 100% identical to the WAV, bit-for-bit. You can therefore convert WAV to FLAC and FLAC back to WAV without losing anything. FLAC supports sample rates up to 192KHz and bit depths up to 24 bit. The .CDA files on a CD are basically equivalent to WAVs. (Lossless, 1411kb/s) The advantage of FLAC is that it can compress files to 50% the size of the WAV without losing any information. It's also one of the fastest encoding and decoding formats. AIFF is also basically equivalent to WAV (lossless).

MP3s work by cutting out parts of the audio that are normally difficult to hear. i.e they are lossy. 320s only cut out the tiniest amount of very high frequency stuff which is almost impossible to notice except on the highest fidelity studio monitors or headphones. But there is stuff missing nevertheless, and therefore once you convert a WAV to MP3, there is no way of getting back the missing information. It is a one-way process. Lower bitrates (256, 192, 128) cut out more and more stuff, and I would argue that most people can hear that bitrates less than 320 sound worse. AAC is like Apple's version of MP3 which is also lossy.

Hopefully this helps someone

Which is basically all one really needs to know.

However, since folks do actually take freakin' mp3's to large rigs sometimes... a common misconception is that when converting a wav/flac/aiff file to an mp3, a 320kbps CBR is the best quality mp3 you can create... which it's not. The best quality mp3 you can create from a wav/flac/aiff is actually a V0 VBR. A variable bit-rate is better quality than a forcing a [constant] bit-rate when compressing audio data.

[Doc THUMP]

dont get your tracks from youtube unless thats the only place that the track is, notice i didnt say the only place you can find it, if you cant find a track look harder, if you still cant find it, move on, there's way too many good unknown tracks to search for. there are some rare cases that the youtube upload is the only copy, a friend of mine HD crashed b4 he got it to the label, so the 2 min 128kbps preview is all that exsist in the world. this is why i urge every fellow producer to give tracks away, you never know when you may need your own tracks back. its not about if music should be paid for or not, lost music is much worse alternative.

in the whole flac vs wav vs mp3 thing, just go with the highest mp3 you can get save your HD space for more tracks, i have mixed a 128 in a mix at a club, ppl wont notice at all, we as dj are alot more nitpicky, remember who your crowd is, dont get me wrong im not anti lossless, not one bit, but at this point in the game its just not worth it, when it becomes standard great, unless your primarily a music collector then of course quality then should be your main concern, but as strictly a dj you have to do the best you can with space and quality. Bottom line is you need a whole lot of high quality tracks, not a much less amount of "perfect" tracks.

[yaga]

its not about if music should be paid for or not, lost music is much worse alternative.

How does this make any sense? If it is available to purchase, it's not lost. A single mp3 off an online retailer is cheap.

...in the whole flac vs wav vs mp3 thing, just go with the highest mp3 you can get save your HD space for more tracks, i have mixed a 128 in a mix at a club, ppl wont notice at all...

I disagree 100%. Couldn't disagree more, actually.

[JensMadsen]

mp 3 320 i gotta say. i already have over 100 gb over music and my hard-disk will be full soon, so i need the precious space. If i didn't have those limits, i would go with wavs.

[deadly_habit]

dont get your tracks from youtube unless thats the only place that the track is

if it's the only place it is, chances are it's unreleased so you shouldn't have it in the first place unless the artist gave it to you

[Doc THUMP]

dont get your tracks from youtube unless thats the only place that the track is

if it's the only place it is, chances are it's unreleased so you shouldn't have it in the first place unless the artist gave it to you

i gave an example of how some unreleased tracks are lost even to the artist, i personally ripped tracks myself and gave them back to the artist, thats how i befriended him, 128 was the best i could do of course as thats what youtube encodes in, but i optimized it the best i could, he was very grateful, i can honestly say those are the only tracks i have from youtube

[Doc THUMP]

its not about if music should be paid for or not, lost music is much worse alternative.

How does this make any sense? If it is available to purchase, it's not lost. A single mp3 off an online retailer is cheap.

...in the whole flac vs wav vs mp3 thing, just go with the highest mp3 you can get save your HD space for more tracks, i have mixed a 128 in a mix at a club, ppl wont notice at all...

I disagree 100%. Couldn't disagree more, actually.

sometimes tracks get lost before they make it on the online retailer was my main point, and im speaking on before it was as easy to sell it yourself a bit, thats just my advice to new up and coming producers, dont be money hungry and horde your tracks, a track thats up for sell thats no one will buy cuz they never heard your material is just as lost imo.

what do you disagree with exactly? do you think the crowd stopped dancing and said "hey your mixing 128kbps with that v0, we cant believe you're doing this, boooo!!" lol. im just speaking from experience. i have about 100k tracks now and constantly getting more, there is no way i would want it all flac and/or wav right now, the extra time it would take to d/l lossless would put me behind, and the extra externals i would have to tote everywhere, when lossless is the golden standard(ie common technology can support it), which prolly will be in about 1.5 years then i will be happy for only lossless

[James B]

320 or 256 (VBR)?

[verre]

I'll choose 320

[tomchad2k]

As for playing out, I use MP3's. Anyone that thinks you can hear the difference between a 320kbps MP3 and a WAV on any club system is talking complete shite.

Are you deaf mate?

Granted, on nasty systems.

Dont know if anyone here is familiar with wire club in leeds, but all our djs upgraded to wav when they put in the funktion one because they sounded tinny as foook. The bass end on wavs are SO much better

Ipod headphones ghetto stereos, you cant tell

HD25s, decent monitors, and nice club systems , You (or at least I) can tell the difference.....

If money is no issue, use vinyl...

Sound

[collige]

Some basic stuff about file formats:

As mentioned in a previous post, FLAC is completely lossless, i.e it is 100% identical to the WAV, bit-for-bit. You can therefore convert WAV to FLAC and FLAC back to WAV without losing anything. FLAC supports sample rates up to 192KHz and bit depths up to 24 bit. The .CDA files on a CD are basically equivalent to WAVs. (Lossless, 1411kb/s) The advantage of FLAC is that it can compress files to 50% the size of the WAV without losing any information. It's also one of the fastest encoding and decoding formats. AIFF is also basically equivalent to WAV (lossless).

MP3s work by cutting out parts of the audio that are normally difficult to hear. i.e they are lossy. 320s only cut out the tiniest amount of very high frequency stuff which is almost impossible to notice except on the highest fidelity studio monitors or headphones. But there is stuff missing nevertheless, and therefore once you convert a WAV to MP3, there is no way of getting back the missing information. It is a one-way process. Lower bitrates (256, 192, 128) cut out more and more stuff, and I would argue that most people can hear that bitrates less than 320 sound worse. AAC is like Apple's version of MP3 which is also lossy.

Hopefully this helps someone

This 100%. LAME 320s are almost identical to lossless for DJ applications, the difference is all in the very high frequencies. Club soundsystems aren't designed to be ultra-high fidelity.

[tomchad2k]

Some basic stuff about file formats:

As mentioned in a previous post, FLAC is completely lossless, i.e it is 100% identical to the WAV, bit-for-bit. You can therefore convert WAV to FLAC and FLAC back to WAV without losing anything. FLAC supports sample rates up to 192KHz and bit depths up to 24 bit. The .CDA files on a CD are basically equivalent to WAVs. (Lossless, 1411kb/s) The advantage of FLAC is that it can compress files to 50% the size of the WAV without losing any information. It's also one of the fastest encoding and decoding formats. AIFF is also basically equivalent to WAV (lossless).

MP3s work by cutting out parts of the audio that are normally difficult to hear. i.e they are lossy. 320s only cut out the tiniest amount of very high frequency stuff which is almost impossible to notice except on the highest fidelity studio monitors or headphones. But there is stuff missing nevertheless, and therefore once you convert a WAV to MP3, there is no way of getting back the missing information. It is a one-way process. Lower bitrates (256, 192, 128) cut out more and more stuff, and I would argue that most people can hear that bitrates less than 320 sound worse. AAC is like Apple's version of MP3 which is also lossy.

Hopefully this helps someone

This 100%. LAME 320s are almost identical to lossless for DJ applications, the difference is all in the very high frequencies. Club soundsystems aren't designed to be ultra-high fidelity.

LOL at this..... set your self up for a slating.....

[clairvoyeur]

i have mixed a 128 in a mix at a club, ppl wont notice at all

not only do i seriously question the validity of this statement, but have some self respect and integrity in your work... seriously.

also maybe people won't realize "oh by jove this musical arrangement is lacking in the pristine quality i appreciate hearing when i jitterbug in the club, it must be of a disparity in digital bitrates!" but i'm sure people wonder why the track sounds like shit.