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MadSeasonAbove said:
Vinyl > .wav > .mp3

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MadSeasonAbove said:
Vinyl > .wav > .mp3

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indica said:
i have the tool discography in FLAC, and some dark as fuck ambient shit in FLAC as well, you can REALLY tell the difference, especially on my 7.1 in my room, in the dark...

flac is awesome, but i have a few mates that are resident djs and they play mp3's out all the time, you often hear them whinging about the quality but i think it's DJ code to buy tracks off beatport anyways, if you are a nice guy. a couple of my dj friends only play bought tracks, a few play whatever they can download.

i had a hand at it for a little bit, got well and truly over burning cd's. i'd love to get my hands on traktor. my mate has it, who's playing resident alongside Phil K at a local bar. It's fun as fuck to use, makes dj'ing actually wicked-tits fun and takes the stress out of carrying around cd's and whatnot.

I have sometimes heard in a bar or club when a dj mixes a track that is shitty mp3 quality... that is bad dj'ing to me, you should proof your shit, or buy it...

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millzy said:
most club sound systems now are configured for high quality mp3's. from what i hear, my dj friends who play the occasional record say vinyl sounds off now.

and, this statement is not true.

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MadSeasonAbove said:
Vinyl > .wav > .mp3

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some people may prefer the warmth of the sound of vinyl (i like it myself), but from a purely engineering stand point nothing beats digital quality. .wav is about as perfect a rendering of a file you will get when it comes to music. as far as dance music goes, pretty much anything you hear on vinyl will have been rendered directly from digital unless it's a classic that's older than 25 or so years, and even then with re-pressings they render from digital.

some people still use older hardware for making noise. for example boards of canada use reel to reel tape to get certain effects in their music. but that doesn't mean the end product isn't a digital file.

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That warm sound you're describing is what people usually ascribe to valve amps. I have a lot of old jungle and dance records from the early 90's/late 80's and it's anything but warm sounding . I have live, non synthetic recorded music to.

A friend of a friend has a friend that does record cutting, and he could get dub-plates made by bringing in mp3's/cd's which would then be put onto the cutting lathe. I have been to peacefrog records in London whilst my dad and his boss was setting up their hi-fi, and got to see their impressive 1920's cutting lathe, with original equipment in a rackmount, controlled by some rather fancy looking editors.

My dad's friend is a PA and recording engineer. I don't want to quote him because I'll get it wrong, but the gist of it is that the source material is what's really important. Records are analog, no two pressings will sound the same (but damn similar) whilst all CD's will sound the same.

Now, I've grown up all my life with CD's and it's only been recently I've heard more live music. And maybe it's partial deafness, maybe it's not, but I'm hard pressed (apart from telling one's in a studio/the other is in a church/pub/nightclub) to tell the difference between live and CD. Easy to spot it with a record. "Hiss, crackle, hisss."

I like the hisses and crackles, but usually get annoyed as it means I haven't cleaned the records enough.

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pwnasaurus said:

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indica said:
i have the tool discography in FLAC, and some dark as fuck ambient shit in FLAC as well, you can REALLY tell the difference, especially on my 7.1 in my room, in the dark...

flac is awesome, but i have a few mates that are resident djs and they play mp3's out all the time, you often hear them whinging about the quality but i think it's DJ code to buy tracks off beatport anyways, if you are a nice guy. a couple of my dj friends only play bought tracks, a few play whatever they can download.

i had a hand at it for a little bit, got well and truly over burning cd's. i'd love to get my hands on traktor. my mate has it, who's playing resident alongside Phil K at a local bar. It's fun as fuck to use, makes dj'ing actually wicked-tits fun and takes the stress out of carrying around cd's and whatnot.

I have sometimes heard in a bar or club when a dj mixes a track that is shitty mp3 quality... that is bad dj'ing to me, you should proof your shit, or buy it...

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Bullshit.  I highly doubt you can tell the difference between 320 and wav.  Between 128 and wav, no doubt, but 320 is pretty damn close to perfect.

I've been on headfi for a while and 99% of the audiophiles on there with incredible headphone setups under a blind test can't tell the difference.

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Visionary Tools said:

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millzy said:
most club sound systems now are configured for high quality mp3's. from what i hear, my dj friends who play the occasional record say vinyl sounds off now.

and, this statement is not true.

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MadSeasonAbove said:
Vinyl > .wav > .mp3

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some people may prefer the warmth of the sound of vinyl (i like it myself), but from a purely engineering stand point nothing beats digital quality. .wav is about as perfect a rendering of a file you will get when it comes to music. as far as dance music goes, pretty much anything you hear on vinyl will have been rendered directly from digital unless it's a classic that's older than 25 or so years, and even then with re-pressings they render from digital.

some people still use older hardware for making noise. for example boards of canada use reel to reel tape to get certain effects in their music. but that doesn't mean the end product isn't a digital file.

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That warm sound you're describing is what people usually ascribe to valve amps. I have a lot of old jungle and dance records from the early 90's/late 80's and it's anything but warm sounding . I have live, non synthetic recorded music to.

A friend of a friend has a friend that does record cutting, and he could get dub-plates made by bringing in mp3's/cd's which would then be put onto the cutting lathe. I have been to peacefrog records in London whilst my dad and his boss was setting up their hi-fi, and got to see their impressive 1920's cutting lathe, with original equipment in a rackmount, controlled by some rather fancy looking editors.

My dad's friend is a PA and recording engineer. I don't want to quote him because I'll get it wrong, but the gist of it is that the source material is what's really important. Records are analog, no two pressings will sound the same (but damn similar) whilst all CD's will sound the same.

Now, I've grown up all my life with CD's and it's only been recently I've heard more live music. And maybe it's partial deafness, maybe it's not, but I'm hard pressed (apart from telling one's in a studio/the other is in a church/pub/nightclub) to tell the difference between live and CD. Easy to spot it with a record. "Hiss, crackle, hisss."

I like the hisses and crackles, but usually get annoyed as it means I haven't cleaned the records enough.

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teamkiller said:
i've seen those double blinds.  People are aware of more than they're consciously hearing.

don't disrespect the system, don't disrespect the audience.
if the situation is casual, be causal.  if the vibe is important, and you have equipment capable of powerful magics, don't fuck around.

edit: by the way, with my own music i can defintely hear the difference between wav and 320

could i say one is better than the other?  no.

do i like to listen to my own music in 96k 24bit wav?  yes, because it sounds like it sounded when i was making it.  you spend 50 hours on a track, you're pretty familiar with really faint details.

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pwnasaurus said:

Bullshit.  I highly doubt you can tell the difference between 320 and wav.  Between 128 and wav, no doubt, but 320 is pretty damn close to perfect.

I've been on headfi for a while and 99% of the audiophiles on there with incredible headphone setups under a blind test can't tell the difference.

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teamkiller said:
nah you can't like upgrade file quality after the fact.  I my music isn't that good or nuanced or anything, but working with something so long you know it really intimately.  Its always crisper working directly within the DAW vs mp3, sometimes shockingly so.

They've shown people are sensitive to frequencies they can't hear, up to 100khz

Even most .wav chops off everything after 44khz.  I suspect there is a loss of felt but not heard harmonics.

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nuentoter said:
reel to reel tape is where its at for quality.

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Viveka said:
Well, since the transients don't line up it's tough to make much of a comparison...

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i know I uploaded same track in wav and mp3 into audacity both starting at 1.1.1. and I do not know why they do not line up.

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occollegeboi said:
mp3 is very low quality audio. It distorts the true sound of the audio. I find that aac (what apple uses in iTunes) is much much more true to the way music should sound. I don't use iTunes to rip cd's. I use Max for macintosh. I use the m4a encoding and I always do the bit rate at at least 256 if not 320.

As with wav, wav is completely lossless, but it takes up way too much space on a hard drive (or whatever storage medium one is using).

If you MUST use mp3, make sure it is at least 192 bit rate. 128 is pretty shitty if you ask me.

I prefer FLAC over wav though because flac takes up way less space.

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occollegeboi said:
mp3 is very low quality audio. It distorts the true sound of the audio. I find that aac (what apple uses in iTunes) is much much more true to the way music should sound. I don't use iTunes to rip cd's. I use Max for macintosh. I use the m4a encoding and I always do the bit rate at at least 256 if not 320.

As with wav, wav is completely lossless, but it takes up way too much space on a hard drive (or whatever storage medium one is using).

If you MUST use mp3, make sure it is at least 192 bit rate. 128 is pretty shitty if you ask me.

I prefer FLAC over wav though because flac takes up way less space.

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DuNeRaVeR said:
.wav on top, .mp3 on bottom.

I see some very minor differences. 

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i didn't realize that "cd quality" was considered to be so low rung. plastic has always sounded pretty damn good to me.

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Viveka said:

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i didn't realize that "cd quality" was considered to be so low rung. plastic has always sounded pretty damn good to me.

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Well, cd's sound decent enough, completely faithful reproduction of the final 16 bit 44hz master.  The problem is that a much larger digital format is possible, but was too large for the standard media all these years. 

Using a larger digital file standard would entirely change how recorded music sounds because there is literally more "room" for sound in the mix.  A 32-bit recording environment, vs. 16-bit, has greater headroom - more physical space for the waveform to breathe.  More information can fit into a greater digital space, this means more nuances of the signal can be retained and more energy can be present in the mix before the master is clipped, ie:digital distortion is introduced(which is unacceptable). 

A crude but workable analogy is that adopting a larger audio file than 16 bit 44hz as a standard would be like buying a larger aquarium that can hold more water, more fish and extra plants and terrain for the little guys to swim around in.

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gilesypopper said:

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Viveka said:

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i didn't realize that "cd quality" was considered to be so low rung. plastic has always sounded pretty damn good to me.

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Well, cd's sound decent enough, completely faithful reproduction of the final 16 bit 44hz master.  The problem is that a much larger digital format is possible, but was too large for the standard media all these years. 

Using a larger digital file standard would entirely change how recorded music sounds because there is literally more "room" for sound in the mix.  A 32-bit recording environment, vs. 16-bit, has greater headroom - more physical space for the waveform to breathe.  More information can fit into a greater digital space, this means more nuances of the signal can be retained and more energy can be present in the mix before the master is clipped, ie:digital distortion is introduced(which is unacceptable). 

A crude but workable analogy is that adopting a larger audio file than 16 bit 44hz as a standard would be like buying a larger aquarium that can hold more water, more fish and extra plants and terrain for the little guys to swim around in.

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Care to put a figure on how perceptibly different 32 bit would sound compared to 16 bit?

Years back, when I went from 160k to 320 I noticed how much warmer everything sounded. Slightly more again from 320kb to lossless. Something like that?

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pwnasaurus said:

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gilesypopper said:

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Viveka said:

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i didn't realize that "cd quality" was considered to be so low rung. plastic has always sounded pretty damn good to me.

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Well, cd's sound decent enough, completely faithful reproduction of the final 16 bit 44hz master.  The problem is that a much larger digital format is possible, but was too large for the standard media all these years. 

Using a larger digital file standard would entirely change how recorded music sounds because there is literally more "room" for sound in the mix.  A 32-bit recording environment, vs. 16-bit, has greater headroom - more physical space for the waveform to breathe.  More information can fit into a greater digital space, this means more nuances of the signal can be retained and more energy can be present in the mix before the master is clipped, ie:digital distortion is introduced(which is unacceptable). 

A crude but workable analogy is that adopting a larger audio file than 16 bit 44hz as a standard would be like buying a larger aquarium that can hold more water, more fish and extra plants and terrain for the little guys to swim around in.

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Care to put a figure on how perceptibly different 32 bit would sound compared to 16 bit?

Years back, when I went from 160k to 320 I noticed how much warmer everything sounded. Slightly more again from 320kb to lossless. Something like that?

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Probably almost inaudibly to all but the most trained ears - I highly doubt you can tell the difference between 320 and lossless.  What kind of set up are you using to discern those differences?

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