Wav or mp3 General DJ Chat Discuss Wav or mp3 in the DJ Forum forums; ive been buying my tunes online in .wav format as i want the best quality. but ive been speaking to some djs who play out in clubs, and they buy ...

[Paulie_p]

ive been buying my tunes online in .wav format as i want the best quality. but ive been speaking to some djs who play out in clubs, and they buy 320kbs mp3 and rekon they cant here the difference!

is it really worth paying that 60p extra for a wav? what are .m4a like quality-wise (i see beatport are selling this format)

[Ben]

I just buy mp3s, cheaper lol

wouldnt know too much bout sound difference tbh, I suspect there is some but not a great deal ?

[tOM]

generally on most soundsystems in most venues you'd be hard pushed to hear a difference but ultimately wav is better quality than mp3

[Reece Duncan]

generrally i play mp3's but ultimately wavs are better as they are basically original raw recordings

[Paulie_p]

cheers guy's, does anyone know the low-down on .m4a?

[Reece Duncan]

.M4a is just another file extension of mpeg layer 4, it's just another name for mp4

[Chris Powell]

Originally Posted by Paulie_p

ive been buying my tunes online in .wav format as i want the best quality

if you want the best sound quality then you'd stick with vinyl

Originally Posted by tOM

generally on most soundsystems in most venues you'd be hard pushed to hear a difference but ultimately wav is better quality than mp3

i'll second that

Originally Posted by Reece Duncan

.M4a is just another file extension of mpeg layer 4, it's just another name for mp4

yeah, mostly used by apple for downloads and podcasts (i think) not 100% sure

[Paulie_p]

Originally Posted by Chris Powell

if you want the best sound quality then you'd stick with vinyl

I'm all done with vinyl now, even if a tune was only released on vinyl that i wanted i would record it and wack it on a cd!

ive got around 400 vinyls tho, i still have a bash every now and again.

thinkin about it' if any of you trance heads want some 1999-2001 trance vinyls i would be willing to sell mine cheaply..... anyone?

[Reece Duncan]

Yeah, apple use it the most for that stuff for some reason, presumably because they like to stick with their own formats and most people won't know what a .m4a is

[Chris Powell]

aye

[BritKitty]

320 is fine.

[Chris Powell]

Yeah I use 320s and record my mixes in 128. 320s for playing out though yep.

[DJ_Elroy]

I'll agree that 320 mp3 is acceptable for most club systems, but anything less and the lossy sound is really noticable. I buy 320 but won't pay for anything less.

Paying the extra $1 or whatever for wavs just isn't worth it for me, especially since I might play a tune for a month or so then move on.

[Lock-Stock]

mp.3 for sure .....

[DJShades]

You be surprised at what low bitrates you can get away with on (very) large soundsystems... Some of the MP3's we played in a £5m nightclub (with 2x 3 JBL Vertec speakers in vertical arrays) directly off a PC were of a truly awful quality when played on 'normal' systems (computer speakers, Hi-Fi, car) but it was barely noticable on such a mammoth club system! Combine that with the fact that most punters are three sheets to the wind anyway...

Make no mistake I'm talking about stupidly low bitrates!

I notice the difference more on a much, much, much smaller system I use every week. There I have to make sure all the tracks sound good otherwise the compression artifacts are very, very audible.

I'd say it all depends on the sound system... Most people can not tell the difference between a 192kbps MP3 and the original wav... some I know can't even tell the difference from a 128kbps MP3, mainly because they don't know what they are listening for.

[sarahsweet12]

it depends on what you want to use it for. u wont really hear the difference on a big system because the focus is on the music being loud rather then clear. on a good set of headphones however you can tell the difference so yeah if your just playing them in clubs u might as well save your money

[tOM]

Originally Posted by sarahsweet12

u wont really hear the difference on a big system because the focus is on the music being loud rather then clear.

i think the idea with club systems is that they sound lound and clear, a lot of places get it wrong.

however if you ever get the chance to play on a good quality big soundsystem (i.e. funktion1 or opus) you really will be able to hear the quality difference and you really wouldn't get away with low bitrate mp3's

i've played on a lot of big rigs that pick out noises you never even knew were there, just cause they are loud doesn't mean they don't have to be clear