Sound Quality For Digital DJs: Tony Andrews Interviewed

[@DJWerkz]

This is THE best and long overdue video upload,...period! The latest generations of digital DJ's have been described as having 'cloth ears', i.e. they have been raised on poorly created compressed digital sound files and do not have any knowledge of good audio quality or how analogue equipment sounded. I am a promoter of high quality sound, it always have been about the sound quality. Great stuff Phil.

[@WeddingDJBusiness]

A very articulate interview well done guys very informative. The sound that comes out is only good as the weakest link I think the BSR said that and it's true. Look forward to the article.

[@TheSetsZone]

This has made me seriously consider whether I should pay the extra for lossless formats rather than buying my downloads as 320kbps mp3's

[@JoseHeredia]

I've decided to re-convert my CD collection to a higher quality digital format. It'll take a while, but worth the peace of mind.

[@TimpBizkit]

I thought about arranging the bits logarithmically so there are more bits concentrated into the quiet zone but then I figured when a treble wave is riding a loud bass wave (two sounds at once) there wouldn't be the dynamic range there. 16 bit gives you 32768 levels of loudness which if linear in terms of amplitude would give you around 90.3 dB of dynamic range. Slightly more concentrated into the centre and you could have 100+ dB

[@JonatasSantiago]

If you go to WAV, you lose full ID3 tagging and a hell lot of disk space if you have half dozen thousands of songs or more. If you go to AIFF, you get full ID3 tagging, but you start missing some songs that are not online under that format and still have the disk space issue. If you go to MP3 320 kbps, you keep a high quality (not the highest though), you get a lot of space and you can get files practically anywhere!

[@Reticuli]

For around 20 years, digital files have often been mastered for radio and your car. That's the problem. You can't turn these up very high without sounding overly loud and harsh. RMS is too high to begin with on them. They're not meant to be cranked up but to cut though background noise and be as loud or louder than the other tracks on the radio. This has gotten worse. Producers: not everything needs or should be the same volume in the mix! Subtlety! Has little to do with the end user. You're probably not clipping the DJMs from the 800 on unless you're really stupid. If you're using a computer, you can use the card in the DJM900 or in the CDJs and go SPDIF into the DJM. VBR is pretty bad, but 128kbps CBR and above is not really that bad. 320kbps is pretty good. Lossless is better, but again, it's the dynamic range that's the bigger issue. The frequency response is the next thing. Vinyl often sounds better because it's got wider dynamic range, usually, in how it was mastered, and has quieter treble on most cartridges. And most of all, turn the sound system down to a comfortable level, that includes Funktion One!

[@JorgeGarcia-hk6nq]

Love it, Tony Andrews

[@erionjaho]

but how can I get original tracks in wav without converting it first from mp3? any page where to download

[@DJ_CJ_NL]

i allways use a wav converter, i really can hear more depth in those files then mp3.

[@ezekii]

sorry Jonatas, but i think you should select more carefuly the tunes. you don`t need to bring thousands of mp3 to play 1, 2, 3, or 4 hours sets... i bring 3 usb, one with 16gb of wav, aiffs files and two usb full of wav, aiff files, and thats plenty tunes to play all night long.... its all about quality.

[@cram1nblaze]

0:00 his sweatshirt pops, listen

[@0x12d3]

Strongly agree. This is a really good, thought provoking video, but I truly think that 96kbps is a waste of space (to a lesser degree 24bit depth). I do respect this man's opinion. I think the biggest gain to be had in sound quality in this day and age is to end the loudness war and use far far less compression. It's insanity to produce at this sample rate/ bit depth only to add bucket loads of noise later with an L2 limiter to render it louder. Pure madness.

[@Reticuli]

96khz is more immune to the shittiness of the DAC, assuming the DAC can use it. 20/48 is technically the limit of human hearing assuming a perfect DAC, which doesn't exist. Mostly a filter issue, not 'resolution' like he's going on about.

[@YoginJ]

I like dBpoweramp for converting, older versions are free...

[@rzr82]

As a person who has been in many discussions about digital audio formats, I have many objections to this video. No, you can't "certainly" tell the difference between lossless and 320 mp3s. In fact, most people can't. Once you get onto really expensive audio setups that are even capable of rendering the absolute minute details that you lose by 320 kbps compression you -might- hear it in a double blind setting if you have good ears. There is a lot more placebo involved than one might suspect.

[@sixtx]

maddutchy if you convert mp3 to wav you won't get more information. Think about a 2 megapixel image being converted into a 10 megapixel image, 5 times better right? Well it would just be stretched out, it would probably look even worse and just be bigger. That's more or less the same thing that happens when you convert an mp3 into a wav file, you don't get any improvement.

[@TimpBizkit]

Yeah it would just blend the pixel colours together. You could theoretically use an algorithm to do the same job. Same with many megapixels but a poor quality lens.

[@anotherytnameyk]

i think im gonna start buying wavs!!!

[@Rodgigo]

Echo Audiofire