Define big system, though. There's a club in my town which has a really amazing sound system - it regularly gets complimented by high-profile touring DJs who play there. The club or the PA system is not exactly big, it's just really really good.
I haven't played there yet but definitely am very curious for when I do. I wanna try the difference between MP3 and AIFF during sound check.
The 'big system' line is, in my opinion, DJ bullshit people repeat because they read it on here.
It doesn't even make sense. 'Your files will sound good up to certain volume levels, but if you play them loud then the quality isn't good enough.'
Yup, it doesn't make sense. "Big system"...honestly, things like a limiter that is used, for example, make such a \*massive\* difference.
It's not like a huge line array has a clearer sound than a well-configured soundsystem in a small club that has been selected and tuned for the acoustics of that specific space.
I think people really mean "high-quality system" when they say "big system".
Not to mention, of course, that some of the worst sound I experienced was at big events with supermassive PA...
Big systems just donât have the response time to play those added details in lossless. With good headphones you can tell (sort of adds that little extra 5% sparkle) but as you scale up the driver, you now have to move more air mass, and replicating that little extra sound quality is very uncommon. After all that, youâd have to have an audience that can tell the difference as well.
Iâm all for amazing line-array setups, and you definitely can get great big sound systems, but theyâre usually calibrated to the room or space to a tea. Most of the time, 320 will still shine in most venues
What utter bullshit. Do these people even know how mp3 compression works and what it is based on? That has n o t h i n g to do with levels.
If anything, louder music is percieved less accutately by our ears and can even start to become pure ear smudge...
People used mp3s before flac was even a thing and on older hardware, nobody had space anywhere to put on a larger collection of wav or aiff files. These were maybe a thing during the Cdj 1000 era when everything was on CDs.
Chris Liebling has 320kbps mp3s running on 4 decks. Nobody ever complained.
As a lead sound system tech for large sound systems, it absolutely does make sense.
Think of it in the bass frequency range, lossy audio files by definition introduce artifacts, but do so in a way that keeps them below audible levels compared to other frequencies. When you're playing on a couple subwoofers, no big deal. But take that same music and put it through 48 2x18 high quality subs with a high quality signal chain, and those artifacts get amplified to well above the audible level, along with everything else. Not to mention the decrease in bit depth and resulting limits to dynamic range which again become more apparent on large high quality systems.
Plus there's also the decrease in resolution resulting from AD/DA conversions throughout the signal chain (digital into cdj, analog to dj mixer, digital internal in the mixer, back to analog out from the dj mixer, into digital mixing board, analog out into digital amps and finally analog out to speakers) and a lower quality starting point will absolutely suffer more issues than a higher quality one.
In pro audio the standard is generally 192k/24bit+ (now becoming 32bit floating point) as a minimum for all digital signal chain devices.
We spend upwards of $20k on mixing boards. Spend the $20 on a bigger USB stick.
I've done A/B comparisons with a high-end DAC and studio reference headphones. It's near impossible to hear the difference between lossless and a properly encoded and gain-adjusted MP3. The same would go for a big system. However, those who insist that there is a significant difference aren't necessarily wrong.
In tests where the waveform of a properly encoded, and the gain-adjusted 320kbs MP3 waveform is subtracted from the uncompressed waveform, the only difference you'll hear is noise and nearly inaudible, very low transient information. Given that it's a lossy format, it may (arguably) actually be a cleaner sound on a loud system - if the file is done right. Herein lies the problem.
The encoding isn't the issue - not really. It's more likely that it's the gain of the encoder, which more often than not (even when downloaded directly from the artist or label) produced a file where 1 to 3dB of the low end is flattened out due to clipping.
***This is what people are actually complaining about when they state that they can hear a difference when an MP3 is played on a loud system.***
The thing is, all mp3s are not created the same. One of the things that I've noticed consistently is that many loud MP3s (heavy bass, low dynamic range) are clipping the low end because the gain is up too high in the file. My theory for those who insist that 320kbs MP3s don't sound good on a loud system is that the gain in the file is clipping the audible sub-bass.
It's my opinion that the reason for this is because MP3 is an older format. It may still be relevant, but the encoders are no longer being developed. Back in the day when MP3 was the only compression method being used, music was far more dynamic. Nowadays music is almost always produced with loudness in mind - less headroom.
***For those who insist that you lose something on a loud system when playing an MP3, I challenge you to run your mp3s through a program called MP3gain - it's a free program that's been out for quite some time.
I run every single MP3 that I own, even those downloaded directly from sources such as Beatport, through this utility using the "no-clip gain" setting. It does not re-encode the file. It merely modifies gain information in the MP3 header. I've noticed that nearly 95% of my MP3s were clipping in the bass region.
For the cost of typically less than 3dB of loudness in an MP3 file, this utility will fix the clipping issue and give you more dynamic range. It will also, in my humble opinion, Make MP3s played on a loud system sound nearly indiscernible from an uncompressed file.
By all means, use uncompressed files if you want to. However, if you want to use MP3s, this will make them sound better than you know.
Hey man; this is a SUPER interesting theory.
I had a chance to do some a/b testing of flac vs 320 on a huge rig setup for a dubstep gig (*proper* dubstep, ie sub bass).
There was an absolutely enormous difference in how the bass âfeltâ and the overall warmth and power of the sound. This wasnt a small difference. It was absolutely huge across severall diferent songs going back and forth.
Given the idea is âonly information above 16khz is removedâ Id never been able to explain it, but have been adamant for years that it made a difference down low.
This is the first time Ive read a theory about why that makes sense.
For what it's worth, I was on the verge of moving to WAV when I found out about this. I played at a festival last year and I was super concerned since I've only otherwise done small venues. I spin melodic and progressive, and even in these genres it's super obvious that something's going on - since most electronic music has heavy, low bass.
I found out about the software in an audiophile forum. I still can't believe that it's been out there for 20 years and it's free. It simply adjusts the gain in the track in increments of 3dB - absolutely non-destructive, doesn't re-encode the file like Mixed In Key. It's like a miracle.
With MP3Gain, most of my Beatport tracks got knocked down 3dB, but I got my clean bass back. It's really no big deal to lose the 3dB. I just turn the gain up a little on the mixer.
Literally none of the DJs I know have a clue about it. They just think you need WAV files for big shows. Crazy.
Here's the link: https://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/
Just remember the setting "Apply Max Noclip Gain." The software was originally meant to set a common gain setting for a library or album of MP3s. I don't use it for that. I just fix clipping for individual files.
Yeh super cool man cheers; my chances of playing on a decent rig are basically zero at this point so would never actually bother doing this, but ill actually let my mates know about it who might, as ive been pushing this line for years with zero evidence to back it up hehe
FYI - Just found this YouTuber who actually demonstrates what MP3 encoding does to files without headroom in the original file: https://youtu.be/2XR9SOiphVM?si=_RfZVq1asa60UNWt
Wow such a lazy attitude in these comments. Working with AIFF is the way to go. Ideally your pc has a fast usb3 connector, then the copying doesn't take that long. Recently I had to create a new USB. Copying about 30Gb took me less then 20 minutes
Playing MP3 on a big sound system is a disgrace in my opinion.
You know it's not like I want to play the MP3s. WIth Traktor Pro 3 Plus I don't have any issues with FLAC, WAV or AIFF or whatever. The analysis is super fast and super precise and there's no "exporting" thing.
Give me a Rekordbox that doesn't choke on these files and I'll gladly use AIFF exclusively.
Do WAVs work well for you? I read about some problems when the WAV is tagged, the metadata is inserted into the track in the beginning, which then creates a glitch when you play the song
It only happens with Bandcamp wavs.. so I download AIFF from Bandcamp and donât have problems with that. AIFF is better in general, because it can contain more meta data and artwork.
The metadata also makes aiff faster to analyze than wav I find, with wav the software creates a hidden metadata file which adds time. At least the 3000's don't seem to have the same wav incompatibility issues, it's crazy they never fixed the other players with updated firmware.
fyi: never use WAV over AIFF
there are only downsides to WAV over AIFF, and 0 benefits
* every CDJ that supports WAV also supports AIFF
* AIFF has metadata (album art, artist, remixer, release date, genre, label, etc...)
* AIFF has identical sound quality to WAV
* AIFF has almost identical file size to WAV (within a few kilobytes to hold the metadata)
So in short, unless you specifically ***don't want metadata in your track files***, you should always choose AIFF over WAV
File size is very much an issue, though
I was using Sandisk Go 1TB hybrid USB-C/USB-A drive. It was incredibly slow and the more data I put on it the slower it got. Around 500GB used capacity, it became unusable with Rekordbox or even just regular file copying operations. And that wasn't even my entire library.
Also, like I mentioned in the OP, operations in Rekordbox were *very* slow with AIFF. Like file analysis and playlist export. I had to literally budget 10 hours to wait for my USB to be exported, and then when it was done, I found out that the majority of tracks were plain missing.
My computer is no slouch, Apple M1 with 16GB of RAM.
With mp3s the UX is generally fine.
Why are you using a 1TB drive? I have a 128gb sandisk and itâs enough for me to have several playlists. At least for my djing (techno and co.) i donât need more than my 2 usbs. And this filled with AIFF and WAVs.
Guys there is something that people donât realise when using external disks is make sure you have a proper 10Gps cable! A lot of the cables even though they have USB-C connectors, they are running at USB 2 speeds as they are mainly for charging. This is a real gotcha right now. I do a lot of video work and when I got my first MBP with USB-C ports I bought a bunch of cables not realizing this and it was a total clusterf*ck. On Amazon you can get cables with the speed printed on them.
My guy your problem is not storage capacity. There are 2 reasons why your Rekordbox is so sluggish:
1. You donât have enough RAM. 16gb was fine a few years ago but if you have a substantial rekordbox library like 5000+ songs then you definitely need more. 32GB will be a noticeable improvement. I went from a 16GB system to a 64GB system and the difference is night and day.
2. The other thing that will MASSIVELY affect Rekordbox, just as much if not more than RAM is the speed of the drive in question. Storing music on a 5400 RPM HDD is muchhhhhh slower than storing it on an SSD.
I personally tested both of these things in the last few months. my 8TB 5400 HDD was substantially slower in Rekordbox operation and the additional RAM made scrolling and browsing Rekordbox far less janky
1. I don't think so. I monitor RAM and CPU usage with htop. RAM was not even eating into the upper 8GB and CPU usage by Rekorbox was 150%, which is nothing given that this computer has 8 cores, so 800% CPU load available. Rekordox was nowhere near maxing out RAM or CPU, and it still was slow / getting stuck / etc. Honestly it seems to be a coding issue. Traktor Pro 3 Plus **breezes** through the same collection.
2. Macbook Air M1 has SSD drive. There is no 5400RPM hard drive to be found in it :)
I know youâre trying to be clever / funny, but it hasnât worked Iâm afraid..
To answer your question though.
Yes, pretty much.
What do you do when youâre constantly running out of space? Do you delete the first mp3 you purchased to replace with that latest 5mb file or do you choose at random what file has to go?
Are you still using floppy disks?
The average AIFF music track is, I donât know, letâs say 60mb, my usb stick has 128gb on each of them, and obviously I donât need my whole collection for a set.
Now, onto my portable ssd for my rekordbox collection, currently using 2Tb which is my most recent stuff, lots of music is stored on my internal SSDs of which thereâs about a combined 6tb and no, Iâm not showing off, these are small numbers these days and the cost of very fast ssd storage is just not expensive.
If youâre a dj and investing time and money into controllers, mixers, decks, vinyl, digital media etc and but canât afford a 2Tb ssd, then maybe you should stick to playing in your bedroom with YouTube rips on your ddj200.
Why so salty bruh? You realize Iâm not OP? I donât have any issues with storage or format and I donât care what you do or how you do it. My comment was what is known as rhetoric, meaning you can not respond and itâs fine.
Bruh⌠Iâm fully aware youâre not op.
You replied to me with your âcleverâ rhetoric reply, you couldâve kept your thoughts to yourself but you chose to engage with me, I thought it only fair I give you a response, plus you directly asked me a question, there is no indication that itâs rhetorical.
I have unlimited storage space in case you didnât get that part, so rhetorical or not, you have an answer.
Enjoy your day
Uncompressed > lossless.
All CDJS take AIFFs and WAVS. 10 meg a minute at 44.1khz. If you can't use those, then use 320 MP3 and your life will be so much easier. Run the FLACs thru a converter to AIFF in bulk and get a faster writre speed USB stick.
BTW I found that when the USB stick is formatted with HFS (no journaling) as opposed to FAT32, file copy operations are faster (on a Mac, obviously) but then you again run into compatibility issues, because older CDJs might not be able to read HFS.
CDJ900 (pre nexus) work just fine with HFS+. I think there's like one or two models of USB-compatible CDJs that are older than that, but I've never seen them in the wild, and they're not really considered part of the modern ecosystem of CDJs. I keep a couple smaller FAT32 sticks with me in case but I've never had a problem on a vast variety of rigs with HFS+
I use 320k mp3 mostly. Maybe it will come back to bite me one day, but when I started I didnât really ever anticipate playing in a mega club. I still havenât, but I am strutting to play some festivals and clubs with void and f1 systems. I still have zero problems and have never noticed any sound quality issues. I have some files that arenât great, and I tag those as âdo not play outâ and theyâre just for house parties and for messing about with friends⌠but theyâre bad because whoever encoded them used some bad settings or something. Itâs not the fault of compression.
IMO thereâs a lot of steps in the process of getting music from data on your usb to your ears, and if something sounds bad itâs much more likely to be the fault of one of those other steps than it is to be the 320kbp mp3 compression algorithm
If everything MUST be perfect, and youâre playing in a mega club for thousands of people on millions of dollars of speakers with a professional sound engineer (or 2) running the system and tweaking it in real time to get the most out of it⌠then yeah you should probably be playing WAVs. Anything less than that setup and youâre fine with 320kbps mp3
I only DJ on my own controllers. I use FLAC & some ALAC.
CDJ-2000NXS2's plays those. Old enough gear cutoff for me.
Filesize isn't a problem. I upgraded my internal storage to a 2TB SSD for 135 euros. Laptops that can't be upgraded are just bullshit.
I prefer FLAC and WAV, especially on the home speakers. In a treated room on quality sound gear you'll notice the difference. In a venue with sound engineers and attention to the acoustics, you'll notice it. Especially if you're coming on after a set where the person before was using lossless. But 90% of the time playing out in clubs and smaller venues, meh.
Time and time again this conversation ends at the same junction. 320 mp3 is all youâll ever need if youâre a working traveling or club dj. 99% of people canât discern a difference and if you tell em you can youâre probably lying.
Ive been exclusively using FLAC for the past 5/6 years without issue. Filling USBs is quite fast on my side as well, make sure you are using quality / fast USB with the right format (I.e not FAT32 if you are using a Mac)
I did some googling and apparently M1 Macs do have a problem with general slowness when writing and reading USB drives. Most likely this is a contributing factor to the issues I've been having with large files.
I use a mix of AIFF, FLAC, and 320 mp3 and never have issues. Canât remember the last time I played on gear older than CDJ-2000nxs2 though.
I prefer max quality because I often do edits or may sample music in my own productions. As far as quality on club systems, the actual production of the music itself tends to matter a lot more than file type when weâre talking 320 and above. Production value varies a lot with DIY electronic music by its amateurish nature.
90% AIFF, have a newer Mac and fast USBâs and SSDâs never had an issue with export time. Iâve tried the blind tests online and I can usually hear the difference between lossless and lossy 320 đ¨đťâđŹ
Don't sweat it 320 kbps is good enough for anyone. .. I even played a 190kbps track because it was all that is available on this rare unreleased trak I have and no one batted an eyelid. And to be fair I thought it was acceptable quality..
The number of people who will notice a 320 MP3 over a lossless file is insanely low, and are mostly going to be limited to DJs.
The number of people who will care is even lower.
Until you're doing heavily curated sets on massive sound systems don't worry about lossless. Personally I keep my entire collection (~250GB) on a stick with me at all times and keep meticulous playlists to organize my shit.
I use AIFF for all of my purchased tracks. Itâs definitely worth it when playing on large systems. If you purchase USB sticks with a high data transfer rate, it wonât take so long to download your music.
Strictly Lossless here. I don't care about the naysayers who state that there is no discernible difference. I disagree. I have found that the 3000s operate much better when loading Lossless files through an SD card than a Flashdrive. The SD card loads even faster than my NVMe SDD. Go figure.
AIFF only. Although I am aware that sound processing takes place anyway due to master tempo, src, etc,, I am feeling better using best possible source material.
I like to use all of the best formats and tools that I can so that I'm the only bad thing in the equaiton.
MP3 is lossy and you'd hate to start losing quality right out of the gate, and then have that cascade down whatever paths the signals take to the speakers.
That being said, most of your listeners are probably drinking and dancing and the acoustics probably aren't that great, so to them it is irrelevant.
**The issue you're having is quite likely with your USB thumb drive.** If you buy a crappy one then the transfer speed declines *sharply* as the file transfers progress. Some people say it's heat, some say it's something else. Get yourself a better USB stick or a good USB SSD and you should be OK.
Let's do some math
(let's forget that 1 GB can also mean 1024 MB in many cases)
* 1 TB = 1000 GB
* 1 GB = 1000 MB
that means 1 TB = one million megabytes
so, even if every AIFF you have is 100 MB, you can still fit ten thousand tracks on a single terabyte drive
Ten Thousand tracks
it doesnt work like that in practice though. The 1TB flash drives I got became increasingly slow the more data i put on them and at 500GB used capacity were unusably slow and I returned them.
that shouldn't work like that in practice. that happens on hard drives where a physical disk arm has jump around the disk to read data. but ssds are 100% solid state. no moving parts
if your ssd is slowing down at half full, something is not normal
it's not an SSD. It's a USB flash drive, SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive Go 1TB. Hybrid USB-C USB-A. Why? Because Macbook Air M1 doesn't have USB-A ports and CDJs don't have USB-C ports.
flash drives have no moving parts... there should be no slowdown reading when the flash drive is at 50% capacity
and as for your claim that "in practice" flash drives slow down as they are filled even to just 50%: the type of connection (usb A or usb c) is completely irrelevant to this
not gonna argue with you but how is my claim (which has been my experience with these specific drives so you can't dismiss it), not relevant to this debate?
of course it's relevant. if we're having a problem with large USB flash drives with lots of data on them, then using lossless files will obviously get you in the trouble territory a lot faster than using 320s. so it's a very valid thing to consider.
Why play lossless unless you are in a controlled studio like environment performing to a room full of audio engineers?
Nobody dancing at the club cares. Nobody at the festival cares⌠lossless IMO is for audio nerds listening on finely tuned gear in treated rooms.
You won't be able to tell the difference between 1400 kbps and 320 kbps in any club. True 320kbps MP3 (not some YouTube rip obviously) is more than enough qualit, saves more space.
For practicality I use 320kbit mp3s and so do many of my DJ friends. no one ever noticed "bad sound quality"
Thread getting downvoted; that's really something đš Wonder what's controversial about it.
Yeah everyone I know who is a pro DJ uses 320s.
Yup, same here. Not saying I know a great many pro DJs but those I do know use 320s. By pro I mean fulltime, touring DJs.
I just use 320 mp3s because I donât want to deal with huge file sizes. It sounds the same anyway.
Unless youâre playing on a big system you can get away with 320 fine.
Define big system, though. There's a club in my town which has a really amazing sound system - it regularly gets complimented by high-profile touring DJs who play there. The club or the PA system is not exactly big, it's just really really good. I haven't played there yet but definitely am very curious for when I do. I wanna try the difference between MP3 and AIFF during sound check.
The 'big system' line is, in my opinion, DJ bullshit people repeat because they read it on here. It doesn't even make sense. 'Your files will sound good up to certain volume levels, but if you play them loud then the quality isn't good enough.'
Yup, it doesn't make sense. "Big system"...honestly, things like a limiter that is used, for example, make such a \*massive\* difference. It's not like a huge line array has a clearer sound than a well-configured soundsystem in a small club that has been selected and tuned for the acoustics of that specific space. I think people really mean "high-quality system" when they say "big system". Not to mention, of course, that some of the worst sound I experienced was at big events with supermassive PA...
Big systems just donât have the response time to play those added details in lossless. With good headphones you can tell (sort of adds that little extra 5% sparkle) but as you scale up the driver, you now have to move more air mass, and replicating that little extra sound quality is very uncommon. After all that, youâd have to have an audience that can tell the difference as well. Iâm all for amazing line-array setups, and you definitely can get great big sound systems, but theyâre usually calibrated to the room or space to a tea. Most of the time, 320 will still shine in most venues
What utter bullshit. Do these people even know how mp3 compression works and what it is based on? That has n o t h i n g to do with levels. If anything, louder music is percieved less accutately by our ears and can even start to become pure ear smudge... People used mp3s before flac was even a thing and on older hardware, nobody had space anywhere to put on a larger collection of wav or aiff files. These were maybe a thing during the Cdj 1000 era when everything was on CDs. Chris Liebling has 320kbps mp3s running on 4 decks. Nobody ever complained.
As a lead sound system tech for large sound systems, it absolutely does make sense. Think of it in the bass frequency range, lossy audio files by definition introduce artifacts, but do so in a way that keeps them below audible levels compared to other frequencies. When you're playing on a couple subwoofers, no big deal. But take that same music and put it through 48 2x18 high quality subs with a high quality signal chain, and those artifacts get amplified to well above the audible level, along with everything else. Not to mention the decrease in bit depth and resulting limits to dynamic range which again become more apparent on large high quality systems. Plus there's also the decrease in resolution resulting from AD/DA conversions throughout the signal chain (digital into cdj, analog to dj mixer, digital internal in the mixer, back to analog out from the dj mixer, into digital mixing board, analog out into digital amps and finally analog out to speakers) and a lower quality starting point will absolutely suffer more issues than a higher quality one. In pro audio the standard is generally 192k/24bit+ (now becoming 32bit floating point) as a minimum for all digital signal chain devices. We spend upwards of $20k on mixing boards. Spend the $20 on a bigger USB stick.
192 is a recording standard, not a playback standard.
Depends on the system.
For sure. I mean that could be said of anything though. Specs vary.
I've done A/B comparisons with a high-end DAC and studio reference headphones. It's near impossible to hear the difference between lossless and a properly encoded and gain-adjusted MP3. The same would go for a big system. However, those who insist that there is a significant difference aren't necessarily wrong. In tests where the waveform of a properly encoded, and the gain-adjusted 320kbs MP3 waveform is subtracted from the uncompressed waveform, the only difference you'll hear is noise and nearly inaudible, very low transient information. Given that it's a lossy format, it may (arguably) actually be a cleaner sound on a loud system - if the file is done right. Herein lies the problem. The encoding isn't the issue - not really. It's more likely that it's the gain of the encoder, which more often than not (even when downloaded directly from the artist or label) produced a file where 1 to 3dB of the low end is flattened out due to clipping. ***This is what people are actually complaining about when they state that they can hear a difference when an MP3 is played on a loud system.*** The thing is, all mp3s are not created the same. One of the things that I've noticed consistently is that many loud MP3s (heavy bass, low dynamic range) are clipping the low end because the gain is up too high in the file. My theory for those who insist that 320kbs MP3s don't sound good on a loud system is that the gain in the file is clipping the audible sub-bass. It's my opinion that the reason for this is because MP3 is an older format. It may still be relevant, but the encoders are no longer being developed. Back in the day when MP3 was the only compression method being used, music was far more dynamic. Nowadays music is almost always produced with loudness in mind - less headroom. ***For those who insist that you lose something on a loud system when playing an MP3, I challenge you to run your mp3s through a program called MP3gain - it's a free program that's been out for quite some time. I run every single MP3 that I own, even those downloaded directly from sources such as Beatport, through this utility using the "no-clip gain" setting. It does not re-encode the file. It merely modifies gain information in the MP3 header. I've noticed that nearly 95% of my MP3s were clipping in the bass region. For the cost of typically less than 3dB of loudness in an MP3 file, this utility will fix the clipping issue and give you more dynamic range. It will also, in my humble opinion, Make MP3s played on a loud system sound nearly indiscernible from an uncompressed file. By all means, use uncompressed files if you want to. However, if you want to use MP3s, this will make them sound better than you know.
Hey man; this is a SUPER interesting theory. I had a chance to do some a/b testing of flac vs 320 on a huge rig setup for a dubstep gig (*proper* dubstep, ie sub bass). There was an absolutely enormous difference in how the bass âfeltâ and the overall warmth and power of the sound. This wasnt a small difference. It was absolutely huge across severall diferent songs going back and forth. Given the idea is âonly information above 16khz is removedâ Id never been able to explain it, but have been adamant for years that it made a difference down low. This is the first time Ive read a theory about why that makes sense.
For what it's worth, I was on the verge of moving to WAV when I found out about this. I played at a festival last year and I was super concerned since I've only otherwise done small venues. I spin melodic and progressive, and even in these genres it's super obvious that something's going on - since most electronic music has heavy, low bass. I found out about the software in an audiophile forum. I still can't believe that it's been out there for 20 years and it's free. It simply adjusts the gain in the track in increments of 3dB - absolutely non-destructive, doesn't re-encode the file like Mixed In Key. It's like a miracle. With MP3Gain, most of my Beatport tracks got knocked down 3dB, but I got my clean bass back. It's really no big deal to lose the 3dB. I just turn the gain up a little on the mixer. Literally none of the DJs I know have a clue about it. They just think you need WAV files for big shows. Crazy. Here's the link: https://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/ Just remember the setting "Apply Max Noclip Gain." The software was originally meant to set a common gain setting for a library or album of MP3s. I don't use it for that. I just fix clipping for individual files.
Yeh super cool man cheers; my chances of playing on a decent rig are basically zero at this point so would never actually bother doing this, but ill actually let my mates know about it who might, as ive been pushing this line for years with zero evidence to back it up hehe
Happy to help. Cheers! :)
FYI - Just found this YouTuber who actually demonstrates what MP3 encoding does to files without headroom in the original file: https://youtu.be/2XR9SOiphVM?si=_RfZVq1asa60UNWt
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Wow such a lazy attitude in these comments. Working with AIFF is the way to go. Ideally your pc has a fast usb3 connector, then the copying doesn't take that long. Recently I had to create a new USB. Copying about 30Gb took me less then 20 minutes Playing MP3 on a big sound system is a disgrace in my opinion.
[ŃдаНонО]
Yeah then it might be the usb drive
Fully agree.
You know it's not like I want to play the MP3s. WIth Traktor Pro 3 Plus I don't have any issues with FLAC, WAV or AIFF or whatever. The analysis is super fast and super precise and there's no "exporting" thing. Give me a Rekordbox that doesn't choke on these files and I'll gladly use AIFF exclusively.
Ofc.. only AIFFs and WAVs.. sometimes mp3 when a track is free download release and only mp3 is provided.
Do WAVs work well for you? I read about some problems when the WAV is tagged, the metadata is inserted into the track in the beginning, which then creates a glitch when you play the song
It only happens with Bandcamp wavs.. so I download AIFF from Bandcamp and donât have problems with that. AIFF is better in general, because it can contain more meta data and artwork.
The metadata also makes aiff faster to analyze than wav I find, with wav the software creates a hidden metadata file which adds time. At least the 3000's don't seem to have the same wav incompatibility issues, it's crazy they never fixed the other players with updated firmware.
You can also open it up in iTunes and then export back to WAV and you have no issue.
only problem with WAV (vs AIFF) is that WAVs have no metadata
fyi: never use WAV over AIFF there are only downsides to WAV over AIFF, and 0 benefits * every CDJ that supports WAV also supports AIFF * AIFF has metadata (album art, artist, remixer, release date, genre, label, etc...) * AIFF has identical sound quality to WAV * AIFF has almost identical file size to WAV (within a few kilobytes to hold the metadata) So in short, unless you specifically ***don't want metadata in your track files***, you should always choose AIFF over WAV
I use AIFF, file size is not an issue these days.
File size is very much an issue, though I was using Sandisk Go 1TB hybrid USB-C/USB-A drive. It was incredibly slow and the more data I put on it the slower it got. Around 500GB used capacity, it became unusable with Rekordbox or even just regular file copying operations. And that wasn't even my entire library. Also, like I mentioned in the OP, operations in Rekordbox were *very* slow with AIFF. Like file analysis and playlist export. I had to literally budget 10 hours to wait for my USB to be exported, and then when it was done, I found out that the majority of tracks were plain missing. My computer is no slouch, Apple M1 with 16GB of RAM. With mp3s the UX is generally fine.
Why are you using a 1TB drive? I have a 128gb sandisk and itâs enough for me to have several playlists. At least for my djing (techno and co.) i donât need more than my 2 usbs. And this filled with AIFF and WAVs.
Why? My original idea was to have my entire library on the USB. Hence the 1TB drive.
I've had some troubles with emergency loops using 32gb and more on older machines. Nowadays use 8-16.
I donât share your issues on an intel MacBook Pro 2012. 2TB, 4TB storage âŚ.. itâs all cheap, and fast!
Guys there is something that people donât realise when using external disks is make sure you have a proper 10Gps cable! A lot of the cables even though they have USB-C connectors, they are running at USB 2 speeds as they are mainly for charging. This is a real gotcha right now. I do a lot of video work and when I got my first MBP with USB-C ports I bought a bunch of cables not realizing this and it was a total clusterf*ck. On Amazon you can get cables with the speed printed on them.
20Gbps these days and more.. People are using shit / dated hardware then blaming something else due to their lack of understanding.
My guy your problem is not storage capacity. There are 2 reasons why your Rekordbox is so sluggish: 1. You donât have enough RAM. 16gb was fine a few years ago but if you have a substantial rekordbox library like 5000+ songs then you definitely need more. 32GB will be a noticeable improvement. I went from a 16GB system to a 64GB system and the difference is night and day. 2. The other thing that will MASSIVELY affect Rekordbox, just as much if not more than RAM is the speed of the drive in question. Storing music on a 5400 RPM HDD is muchhhhhh slower than storing it on an SSD. I personally tested both of these things in the last few months. my 8TB 5400 HDD was substantially slower in Rekordbox operation and the additional RAM made scrolling and browsing Rekordbox far less janky
1. I don't think so. I monitor RAM and CPU usage with htop. RAM was not even eating into the upper 8GB and CPU usage by Rekorbox was 150%, which is nothing given that this computer has 8 cores, so 800% CPU load available. Rekordox was nowhere near maxing out RAM or CPU, and it still was slow / getting stuck / etc. Honestly it seems to be a coding issue. Traktor Pro 3 Plus **breezes** through the same collection. 2. Macbook Air M1 has SSD drive. There is no 5400RPM hard drive to be found in it :)
>It was incredibly slow and the more data I put on it that is not normal behaviour... this shouldn't matter on an SSD
just today i had another instance...Rekordbox analysis just kinda got hung, stuck at 35 tracks to analyze for 1 hour...đ¤ˇđťââď¸
Why? Do you have a special limitless hard drive? Edit: def a typo there
I know youâre trying to be clever / funny, but it hasnât worked Iâm afraid.. To answer your question though. Yes, pretty much. What do you do when youâre constantly running out of space? Do you delete the first mp3 you purchased to replace with that latest 5mb file or do you choose at random what file has to go? Are you still using floppy disks? The average AIFF music track is, I donât know, letâs say 60mb, my usb stick has 128gb on each of them, and obviously I donât need my whole collection for a set. Now, onto my portable ssd for my rekordbox collection, currently using 2Tb which is my most recent stuff, lots of music is stored on my internal SSDs of which thereâs about a combined 6tb and no, Iâm not showing off, these are small numbers these days and the cost of very fast ssd storage is just not expensive. If youâre a dj and investing time and money into controllers, mixers, decks, vinyl, digital media etc and but canât afford a 2Tb ssd, then maybe you should stick to playing in your bedroom with YouTube rips on your ddj200.
Why so salty bruh? You realize Iâm not OP? I donât have any issues with storage or format and I donât care what you do or how you do it. My comment was what is known as rhetoric, meaning you can not respond and itâs fine.
Bruh⌠Iâm fully aware youâre not op. You replied to me with your âcleverâ rhetoric reply, you couldâve kept your thoughts to yourself but you chose to engage with me, I thought it only fair I give you a response, plus you directly asked me a question, there is no indication that itâs rhetorical. I have unlimited storage space in case you didnât get that part, so rhetorical or not, you have an answer. Enjoy your day
Uncompressed > lossless. All CDJS take AIFFs and WAVS. 10 meg a minute at 44.1khz. If you can't use those, then use 320 MP3 and your life will be so much easier. Run the FLACs thru a converter to AIFF in bulk and get a faster writre speed USB stick.
BTW I found that when the USB stick is formatted with HFS (no journaling) as opposed to FAT32, file copy operations are faster (on a Mac, obviously) but then you again run into compatibility issues, because older CDJs might not be able to read HFS.
CDJ900 (pre nexus) work just fine with HFS+. I think there's like one or two models of USB-compatible CDJs that are older than that, but I've never seen them in the wild, and they're not really considered part of the modern ecosystem of CDJs. I keep a couple smaller FAT32 sticks with me in case but I've never had a problem on a vast variety of rigs with HFS+
I use 320k mp3 mostly. Maybe it will come back to bite me one day, but when I started I didnât really ever anticipate playing in a mega club. I still havenât, but I am strutting to play some festivals and clubs with void and f1 systems. I still have zero problems and have never noticed any sound quality issues. I have some files that arenât great, and I tag those as âdo not play outâ and theyâre just for house parties and for messing about with friends⌠but theyâre bad because whoever encoded them used some bad settings or something. Itâs not the fault of compression. IMO thereâs a lot of steps in the process of getting music from data on your usb to your ears, and if something sounds bad itâs much more likely to be the fault of one of those other steps than it is to be the 320kbp mp3 compression algorithm If everything MUST be perfect, and youâre playing in a mega club for thousands of people on millions of dollars of speakers with a professional sound engineer (or 2) running the system and tweaking it in real time to get the most out of it⌠then yeah you should probably be playing WAVs. Anything less than that setup and youâre fine with 320kbps mp3
I'm using AIFF, costs the same on Bandcamp, my XDJ-RX takes it without issues (unlike WAVs), and I don't care about file transfer times.
I only DJ on my own controllers. I use FLAC & some ALAC. CDJ-2000NXS2's plays those. Old enough gear cutoff for me. Filesize isn't a problem. I upgraded my internal storage to a 2TB SSD for 135 euros. Laptops that can't be upgraded are just bullshit.
I prefer FLAC and WAV, especially on the home speakers. In a treated room on quality sound gear you'll notice the difference. In a venue with sound engineers and attention to the acoustics, you'll notice it. Especially if you're coming on after a set where the person before was using lossless. But 90% of the time playing out in clubs and smaller venues, meh.
Time and time again this conversation ends at the same junction. 320 mp3 is all youâll ever need if youâre a working traveling or club dj. 99% of people canât discern a difference and if you tell em you can youâre probably lying.
Ive been exclusively using FLAC for the past 5/6 years without issue. Filling USBs is quite fast on my side as well, make sure you are using quality / fast USB with the right format (I.e not FAT32 if you are using a Mac)
AIFF only. MP3 should not be used in any professional capacity imo.
Just use mp3 320kbp.. no one will know the difference.. its nonsense
I did some googling and apparently M1 Macs do have a problem with general slowness when writing and reading USB drives. Most likely this is a contributing factor to the issues I've been having with large files.
I use a mix of AIFF, FLAC, and 320 mp3 and never have issues. Canât remember the last time I played on gear older than CDJ-2000nxs2 though. I prefer max quality because I often do edits or may sample music in my own productions. As far as quality on club systems, the actual production of the music itself tends to matter a lot more than file type when weâre talking 320 and above. Production value varies a lot with DIY electronic music by its amateurish nature.
90% AIFF, have a newer Mac and fast USBâs and SSDâs never had an issue with export time. Iâve tried the blind tests online and I can usually hear the difference between lossless and lossy 320 đ¨đťâđŹ
Don't sweat it 320 kbps is good enough for anyone. .. I even played a 190kbps track because it was all that is available on this rare unreleased trak I have and no one batted an eyelid. And to be fair I thought it was acceptable quality..
The number of people who will notice a 320 MP3 over a lossless file is insanely low, and are mostly going to be limited to DJs. The number of people who will care is even lower. Until you're doing heavily curated sets on massive sound systems don't worry about lossless. Personally I keep my entire collection (~250GB) on a stick with me at all times and keep meticulous playlists to organize my shit.
I use AIFF for all of my purchased tracks. Itâs definitely worth it when playing on large systems. If you purchase USB sticks with a high data transfer rate, it wonât take so long to download your music.
Strictly Lossless here. I don't care about the naysayers who state that there is no discernible difference. I disagree. I have found that the 3000s operate much better when loading Lossless files through an SD card than a Flashdrive. The SD card loads even faster than my NVMe SDD. Go figure.
AIFF only. Although I am aware that sound processing takes place anyway due to master tempo, src, etc,, I am feeling better using best possible source material.
I like to use all of the best formats and tools that I can so that I'm the only bad thing in the equaiton. MP3 is lossy and you'd hate to start losing quality right out of the gate, and then have that cascade down whatever paths the signals take to the speakers. That being said, most of your listeners are probably drinking and dancing and the acoustics probably aren't that great, so to them it is irrelevant. **The issue you're having is quite likely with your USB thumb drive.** If you buy a crappy one then the transfer speed declines *sharply* as the file transfers progress. Some people say it's heat, some say it's something else. Get yourself a better USB stick or a good USB SSD and you should be OK.
AIFF always. But there's 100's of 320kbps tracks on my playlist as well and maybe 2-3 256kbps... Mostly older tracks from years back.
Aiff for the win
I don't know why file size is any issue anymore storage is cheap
Let's do some math (let's forget that 1 GB can also mean 1024 MB in many cases) * 1 TB = 1000 GB * 1 GB = 1000 MB that means 1 TB = one million megabytes so, even if every AIFF you have is 100 MB, you can still fit ten thousand tracks on a single terabyte drive Ten Thousand tracks
it doesnt work like that in practice though. The 1TB flash drives I got became increasingly slow the more data i put on them and at 500GB used capacity were unusably slow and I returned them.
that shouldn't work like that in practice. that happens on hard drives where a physical disk arm has jump around the disk to read data. but ssds are 100% solid state. no moving parts if your ssd is slowing down at half full, something is not normal
it's not an SSD. It's a USB flash drive, SanDisk Ultra Dual Drive Go 1TB. Hybrid USB-C USB-A. Why? Because Macbook Air M1 doesn't have USB-A ports and CDJs don't have USB-C ports.
flash drives have no moving parts... there should be no slowdown reading when the flash drive is at 50% capacity and as for your claim that "in practice" flash drives slow down as they are filled even to just 50%: the type of connection (usb A or usb c) is completely irrelevant to this
not gonna argue with you but how is my claim (which has been my experience with these specific drives so you can't dismiss it), not relevant to this debate? of course it's relevant. if we're having a problem with large USB flash drives with lots of data on them, then using lossless files will obviously get you in the trouble territory a lot faster than using 320s. so it's a very valid thing to consider.
Why play lossless unless you are in a controlled studio like environment performing to a room full of audio engineers? Nobody dancing at the club cares. Nobody at the festival cares⌠lossless IMO is for audio nerds listening on finely tuned gear in treated rooms.
Why not just was WAV files. I use them with Rekordbox w/out issue.
I DJ with lots of Apple Lossless files
You won't be able to tell the difference between 1400 kbps and 320 kbps in any club. True 320kbps MP3 (not some YouTube rip obviously) is more than enough qualit, saves more space.
I record to flac using Ableton live Suite 11. I never use Rekordboxâs internal recording. I have more ability to edit with Ableton.