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a 320mp3 and a wav file.

the reason i ask this is because ive just downloaded a couple of 320mp3 tracks of dubplate.net and was gonna use them as a reference for mixing down some of my own stuff.

are they good enough to use?

whenever you mix your own tracks down always and i mean always mix them down as .Wav files. because if you mix them down to shity mp3, you lose about 90% of the data of the file becuase its compressed, thats why MP3 files are smaller than .Wav files.

just a general rule of thumb.

hope that helps

Depends on how good that 320 is. 320's are quite high quality and most people wont be able to tell the difference between them and a WAV at normal listening volumes. At louder volumes the quieter parts of tracks are most noticable.

You dont want to be referencing a badly mixed down 320.

thats why its better as wavs keep the quality and the data, but i mean if your passing a tune to a mate or something like that , then just make a copy of the wav and then convert the copied wav file to mp3. means the transfer will be quicker.

its a couple of skream tracks

FERROTYPE wrote:thats why its better as wavs keep the quality and the data, but i mean if your passing a tune to a mate or something like that , then just make a copy of the wav and then convert the copied wav file to mp3. means the transfer will be quicker.

im talking about using a 320file as a reference for mixing down

wot like levels and things

and sorry didnt read properly

my fault

FERROTYPE wrote:wot like levels and things

and sorry didnt read properly

my fault

yeah,just wondering if their is really that much difference between a wav file and a 320

if its a track from an artist who its safe to assume has had some professional engineering/recording help, then a 320 would probably be alright as a reference, but opt for .wav/vinyl/CD whenever possible. as far as relative levels are concerned though, its really all dependent on the track and your own personal taste, so i wouldnt really use other peoples tracks for reference other than to see if your overall volume matches up. just my 2 cents

well when you compress wav to mp3, you are compressing an extremely large amount of bits to fewer bits (shows in filesize), so you're obviously losing data. most of it is in frequency ranges the human ears can't hear, so you're not going to notice much of a difference between an original wav and a 320. here is a chart that shows you basically what mp3 compression does:



as you can see, the more you compress, the more high frequencies get cut out.

nice graphic

using a Skream 320 mp3 as a reference point is fine - just remember he's probably had this mastered somewhere professionally.

if your looking for a good reference pont, track down some of the SICK producers in the dubs section, get some wavs from them cause they most likely have mastered it themselves at home, which will give you a more honest sound for you to aim at.

nice1,thanks