Should I get over my prejudice/ignorance/snobbery for WAV and change to mp3?

[SirReal]

I'll go with that, as with Monster Cable Pro-Copper IEMs.

If you can't hear the difference then I'm sorry you've ruined your hearing. Anytime you want to test me on my home system I'm down. I'm not saying that 320 mp3 won't "get you by" at a club. It will, especially if you're playing all MP3's BUT if, as the OP has said, most of his collection is wav then you definitely should (if you haven't blown you ears monitoring too loud) hear a difference when moving between MP3 and wav's. I've tested this on many finely tuned systems. And as far as the "monster cable" jab, I've wired many professional studios and QC'ed some of the most famous movies in the last 2 decades so unless your credentials are at least as much, you should be VERY careful about who you troll.

[nubz69]

Stick with the WAV. There are multiple reasons for this but here is my quick run down.

-You get the "whole" song - I understand and enjoy the convenience of mp3. I grew up buying CDs so I don't get paying almost the same price for a track (CD price / # of tracks) and geting less then 100% of what I pay for just doesn't make sense to me.

-Storage is cheap - the mp3 format is going to lose it's relevance as storage continues to grow. You can buy 3TB for about $150 now, in a few years you will be at 6TB.

- There is a difference - There are many people on both sides of the "I can hear a difference". "Nobody can hear a difference" debate. The fact there is a debate means it isn't definitive and most likely depends on the person and the system being listened too. Personally I can hear it and after joining me for a few listening sessions, so can my girlfriend. Granted I do have some higher end gear but you can still notice a difference in other ways. One way that we perceive a difference is through listener fatigue. I have been planing on writing an article about this and just have not sat down and spent the time yet. We don't hear listener fatigue but it does affect us, so does that count as hearing a difference? Yes. This also affects our audience in ways they may perceive, but not hear. If you want an extreme example, listen to cd or flac set for 2-3 hours on headphones or a nice set of speakers/monitors. Then listen to the same set that is from 128kbs mp3 for 2-3 hours. Aside from hearing a difference, you will feel different. 3 hours of 128kbs is very fatiguing for just about anybody. 320kbs is much closer to cd quality but if you listen long enough it will be fatiguing as well. Not exactly the feelings we want to get our audience to feel, huh? What I have found that is interesting is that the less fatiguing an audio system sounds, the more willing someone is to listen to music they may not normally enjoy as much. Granted that is anecdotal but I would not be surprised to find that to be a universal.

Lets not even mention the problems with making a mix using mp3s and then compressing that into another MP3 to share.

As they say, there is more to the story but I think you get the idea. I do want to add that if the only way you can afford the songs you want to play is by buying the MP3, go for it. You can always improve your quality later on when you can afford it better.

[JonathanBlake]

If you can't hear the difference then I'm sorry you've ruined your hearing. Anytime you want to test me on my home system I'm down. I'm not saying that 320 mp3 won't "get you by" at a club. It will, especially if you're playing all MP3's BUT if, as the OP has said, most of his collection is wav then you definitely should (if you haven't blown you ears monitoring too loud) hear a difference when moving between MP3 and wav's. I've tested this on many finely tuned systems. And as far as the "monster cable" jab, I've wired many professional studios and QC'ed some of the most famous movies in the last 2 decades so unless your credentials are at least as much, you should be VERY careful about who you troll.

OP here - think you misunderstood me. I'm WITH you on the noticeable audio difference - which is one of the reasons for my reluctance to change. I also am a fan (gulp ) of Monster Cable. My Rotel/Boston Acoustics hi-fi is interconnected and speaker-wired with MC. I use both MC Copper Pro and iSport IEMs which in IMHO are phenomenal. My 'credentials' are listening (and appreciating) experience, not professional. I did however change from MC to DJTT USB cables (with better results wrt to latency and drop-outs). Not trolling - respecting opinions like yours.

[djgstefan]

We have to change from mp3 to wav or aiff or similar. There is a different in the sound, its a matter of to learn to hear it. I have been working with some really good sound engineers in club where they can tell if I play a mp3 (320kbps) almost all the time, with out a/b comparing. As long I still play mp3 they will look at me little as an amateur.

We as DJs should always try to get the best sound ever, even if the difference is small. Better file format, better sound card, better cables, better handling of the mixer, etc. If we do that it will make a different in the end result and we can demand better sound systems without the club owner/ sound engineer says that it does not matter as we use bad stuff :-)

[mostapha]

1. Is WAV REALLY worth it?

I think so, but I prefer aiff for metadata. I'd convert to FLAC if iTunes would read them without magic. And I should really check and see if SSL can read ALAC, because that would work too.

2. Will I notice the difference?

Only you can tell that. Try soundinmotiondj's suggestion to find out.

[CENTER]1. Love the way they call it a 'handling fee'.

It's because they get charged by their ISP based on the amount of data (in GB) that people download from them. Lossless files are bigger, so they cost more to provide. Makes perfect sense.

To find out if WAV is worth it....get a track in WAV, and convert that track to mp3 @ 320. Normalize the two files to within 0.1dB.

Now "randomly" load up a couple hundred copies of those two songs in a single playlist (e.g. do not just alternate...repeat the same source 1 to 4 times in a block). Put Traktor into Cruise mode and play that playlist through S4 and listen with headphones or your monitors. Put the screen out of view. While listening, flip the faders randomly a few dozen times....this will walk the playlist to a "random" spot.

Now, attempt to identify if the track is WAV or mp3. Write down your "guess" for the next 10 tracks....then compare to the last 10 tracks in the playlist. If you can correctly ID the song source 10 out of 10 times...then you can tell. If you can not get 10 out of 10...then you can not tell. (Hint: You can not tell.)

That works.

The last time I did that, I did it with 5 copies instead of 10 using an iTunes playlist on shuffle and only one trial…so it wasn't scientific. I got 5/5 on my HD-25s. You have to listen for specific things (and know what they are), and I don't think anyone would hear them on a club system at full volume……but the difference is there, and it is audible.

Also, 10/10 isn't the least bit necessary if you understand statistics. You need to repeat the test several times (several sets of 5 or 10 guesses), take the average and standard deviation of your scores, and see if your guesses are significantly better than random using a one-sample t-test. If you do 100 sets of 10 guesses, you are doing significantly better than random if x > (.22s + .5), where x is your average score ( average of correct guesses / 10 for each of the 100 trials) and s is the standard deviation of your guesses for the 100 trials.

So, if you average 7/10 and are fairly consistent (arbitrarily defined as s = .1), you'd reach significance at α=.05, meaning that there was a 5% chance that you did that well without being able to hear a difference.

Wikipedia and excel, numbers, or a ti-83 can help you with this if you know how to use them. Or take a statistics class.

@OP, if you're having problems paying for them…I'd seriously consider buying less music. Just be really picky about the tracks you actually buy…make sure you actually have a reason to have them. That might not be possible depending on how/why/where you DJ, but it might make a difference. An extra 35% on each track is significant…but not compared to just buying half as many tracks and only focusing on the ones that will be in your set for a while.

[JonathanBlake]

I think so
Only you can tell that


Lossless files are bigger, so they cost more to provide. Makes perfect sense.

The last time I did that, I did it with 5 copies instead of 10 using an iTunes playlist on shuffle and only one trial…so it wasn't scientific. I got 5/5 on my HD-25s. You have to listen for specific things (and know what they are), and I don't think anyone would hear them on a club system at full volume……but the difference is there, and it is audible.

if you understand statistics

consider buying less music
Just be really picky about the tracks you actually buy
ones that will be in your set for a while.

- I think so too, and despite insistance from others that you can't - you can. Pariticularly on HD-25s.

- Data in South Africa is VERY expensive, so it's a double whammy (ie the cost incurred my end as well). I get their additional cost(s), but it is steep - I'm sure they get a far better rate than you or I.

- Any pointers on what specifically to listen for?

- My stats sucked at varsity - but that makes sense.

- Sound advice (pun intended) - I am being far more selective of late.

[JonathanBlake]

Stick with the WAV. There are multiple reasons for this but here is my quick run down.

-You get the "whole" song - I understand and enjoy the convenience of mp3. I grew up buying CDs so I don't get paying almost the same price for a track (CD price / # of tracks) and geting less then 100% of what I pay for just doesn't make sense to me.

-Storage is cheap - the mp3 format is going to lose it's relevance as storage continues to grow. You can buy 3TB for about $150 now, in a few years you will be at 6TB.

- There is a difference - There are many people on both sides of the "I can hear a difference". "Nobody can hear a difference" debate. The fact there is a debate means it isn't definitive and most likely depends on the person and the system being listened too. Personally I can hear it and after joining me for a few listening sessions, so can my girlfriend. Granted I do have some higher end gear but you can still notice a difference in other ways. One way that we perceive a difference is through listener fatigue. I have been planing on writing an article about this and just have not sat down and spent the time yet. We don't hear listener fatigue but it does affect us, so does that count as hearing a difference? Yes. This also affects our audience in ways they may perceive, but not hear. If you want an extreme example, listen to cd or flac set for 2-3 hours on headphones or a nice set of speakers/monitors. Then listen to the same set that is from 128kbs mp3 for 2-3 hours. Aside from hearing a difference, you will feel different. 3 hours of 128kbs is very fatiguing for just about anybody. 320kbs is much closer to cd quality but if you listen long enough it will be fatiguing as well. Not exactly the feelings we want to get our audience to feel, huh? What I have found that is interesting is that the less fatiguing an audio system sounds, the more willing someone is to listen to music they may not normally enjoy as much. Granted that is anecdotal but I would not be surprised to find that to be a universal.

Lets not even mention the problems with making a mix using mp3s and then compressing that into another MP3 to share.

As they say, there is more to the story but I think you get the idea. I do want to add that if the only way you can afford the songs you want to play is by buying the MP3, go for it. You can always improve your quality later on when you can afford it better.

Well thought. Well put.

[mostapha]

- Any pointers on what specifically to listen for?

Transients, reverb tails, the character of the noise floor (mp3's noise floor sounds a bit more like pink noise than white…if the rest of your stuff is quiet enough to hear it), the tails of cymbals and snares…stuff like that. The mp3 compression algorithm just throws away detail in the highs and in quiet sounds.

Honeslty, it's not that huge of a difference. It's not like the AAC files I get from iTunes aren't listenable in my car or even in my headphones or on my (low-end) monitors (in a basically un-treated room). And if it's a burden, don't worry about it too much. There are things you can do to screw up your sound way more than using mp3s…many of which people think of as normal (like clipping a mixer's outputs or running Traktor way too hot).

The difference is audible…and it's worth disk space and money to me. I can easily see how someone could decide differently if their priorities were different. But I'd still rather just buy less music than buy crappier music.

[TCMuc]

-You get the "whole" song - I understand and enjoy the convenience of mp3. I grew up buying CDs so I don't get paying almost the same price for a track (CD price / # of tracks) and geting less then 100% of what I pay for just doesn't make sense to me.

Wutt?

I'd really like to know where you (legally) get those cheap WAVE files...


Price per track (CD Price/# of tracks) of a CD should be somewhere around 1€/1$ (e.g. 14 €/14 tracks).

A complete album in 320 kbps mp3 typically costs about 10 €/10 $, so it may be a bit cheaper than buying the CD. BUT... if you want that album as all WAVE files, you usually have to pay about 1€/1$ PER TRACK, so this will more than double the cost of the album (compare to the mp3 version), and also make it about twice as expensive as the CD version.

I also grew up buying CDs (and, mostly, records) so I don't get why I should pay twice as much for not getting any more than I did before when the difference between WAVE and (decent quality) mp3 is at least arguable, it just doesn't make sense to me...


So yes, WAVE is technically and (arguably) audibly the superior standard, but is it worth the extra buck (aka the allmost-double-the-cost-fee)? - You decide..


(Note: this calculation doesn't take into account one of the main advantages for DJs when buying digital formats: you don't have to get the whole album if you only want to play 2 of the tracks... Nonetheless, the individual tracks would still be more expensive than on CD).



To the OP:

If you're willing to keep on spending the extra buck (even though you know it's one of the biggest rip offs these days), do it.
If you say you can hear the difference you probably shouldn't switch. You can still think again once lossless formats like FLAC become widely available (and supported) as these feature 100% identical audio quality while providing advanced tagging possibilities over WAVE.

[sarasin]

I have always and only played Wav's out to big festivals etc.

I do believe that it sounds better....it HAS to.

But when i am playing in the clubs and jamming Electro, I have been using MP3's (much to my mate and mentors disgust) and have not had any issues with sound quality there.

If you not being paid big money's to be play out, then I think its fair to say, you dont need the Wav's.

If I was being paid PROPER money for my sets at a BIG show, then i would be sure to ONLY have Wav's and make my performance the best it can be. Regardless of the argument on these file types....I would do it to make myself feel like I did the most I could to sound the best.

But if I am just jamming for my enjoyment at home or for friends, 320Mp3's are the way to go I reckon.