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JonB67 View Drop Down
Young Croc
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote JonB67 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 January 2018 at 9:16pm

So are all mp3s terrible evil shit or are 256 or 320kps ok?

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jacethebase View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote jacethebase Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 January 2018 at 9:22pm
Originally posted by JonB67 JonB67 wrote:

So are all mp3s terrible evil shit or are 256 or 320kps ok?




In all honesty, from experience if you heard a 320 that has been properly coded on a system that was set up well you would more than likely be ok with it. I am not saying I'm ok with MP3 as personally I think it's the worst thing to happen to the music industry ever.

256 and below are binners.

You would certainly notice the difference between it and a wav.
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JonB67 View Drop Down
Young Croc
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote JonB67 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 January 2018 at 9:23pm
Where efinque? Got a source?

Edited by JonB67 - 06 January 2018 at 9:28pm
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JonB67 View Drop Down
Young Croc
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote JonB67 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 January 2018 at 9:24pm
we've been using 320 and im trying to work out if we bin the library and start again with wavs
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BJtheDJ View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote BJtheDJ Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 January 2018 at 10:28pm
I do remember reading more than once in the long-ago past (most likely in Hi-Fi News) that the BBC's PCM (or maybe it was NICAM) digital distribution for VHF radio gave an equivalent to slightly less than 128kb/sec mp3.

Damned if I can find any reference to it on the web now <sigh>.

I do, however, remember coding my own mp3s from good-quality vinyl back in the day at 128kb/sec stereo and friends being amazed at being unable to reliably hear a difference; playback system was into a Citronic SM607 and then to an Amcron DC300a mkII feeding a pair of JBL L100's.  (TL072's in the Citronic had been swapped out for NE5532's (or was it 5534's - can't remember which was the dual)).

Even more surprising was coding my old rock'n'roll 7-inchers (stop  sniggering at the back there) at 64kb/sec mono and being very pleasantly surprised.

Spent many many hours editing WAV files to remove clicks and pops (especially my reggae 12s) to make CDs and then mp3s (always normalising for maximum peak waveform) and have always been happy with the results.

As time has progressed I've re-ripped those old (golden coloured) discs at 320 - mainly just in case modern programs are better and because the HD space is now available.  My ears are too shot nowadays to hear the difference in the HF myself; but I do get many comments on the excellent sound that I provide with just (most of the time) a pair of TurboSound iX12's and the addition for larger gigs of a pair of W-Audio active 15s.

Working in hotels - as I do in this latter part of my DJ career where my job is to provide what people want rather then what I think they ought to want - I see many other discos, and yes have heard some appalling sound from the red-liners out there; and it's not just the DJs but the singers with backing tracks on an iPod and the 4 and 5 piece bands with complete horn sections and extra percussion being played in from a computer.

Bad sound can be found everywhere, it's a fact of life.  The deafening wine bars and fashion stores, the person walking past you with their headphones on so loud that you can here the 'toonz' yourself; yep and the concerts (I remember a particularly bad Will Young concert at the Colston Hall in Bristol where even my wife and her friend, who had dragged me kicking and screaming to the event, had to leave at half-time) where the engineer's main aim in life has been to provide a concerto for bass guitar and kick drum - and the public by and large are now used to bad sound.

And because people have got used to it; the great thing is that when they hear decent sound (from me) they often appreciate it and come up and tell me about it.  It normally comes in the form of 'thank you for playing at a reasonable volume' when in fact it's the distortion that they haven't heard, so they think that the music's quieter.

I'm pretty certain that back in the day, when I played vinyl and later on a CDs, that my sound was no better than it is now with mp3s played not from a computer but from a memory stick and a 1TB hard drive through a Pioneer MEP7000 system with a DJM5000 mixer.

People with an axe to grind will always find some fault with what they want to complain about Smile
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colinmono View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote colinmono Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 January 2018 at 10:00am
Originally posted by nickyburnell nickyburnell wrote:

Decided it's best not to comment on anything I've heard in clubs or parties from now on.

When we had vinyl or CD there was an expected start point. Now these poxy digital, "DJ's" are using USB the quality is so variable it's not fair to judge the system. 
At a club twice recently and only two out of 8 so called Dj's had a clue about recording their USB stuff. I was blaming the (Logic) system but then DJ changed and wow.
Horrible, stop it, go away *ankers 

Yet another move forward in tech that compromises sound. Cheap SMPS, Chinese cabs, Plastic cabs, cheap powered cabs, YouTube recording, horrid sounding low end Pioneer mixers and USB DJ's.

In the mobile type market there is a trend for retro at mo. These guys with their Citronic 110w consoles and period Fane cabs sound tons better than nearly every wedding/band I've been to in the last 10 years.

Rant over

I kind of agree and disagree with your original post Smile.

I totally agree that there are some awful DJs out there playing some awfully produced material over crappy cheap kit.

I don't think it's useful to blame digital / USB per-se though, as has been said before the quality can be very high when done right.

I think the problem is more due to the way the barrier to entry for music production (and dj-ing) has come down so much. When I started djing I used to travel to London from the Midlands to buy vinyl, so once you factor in the train fare there was a real incentive to really listen to what you were buying and be selective.

The cost (in terms of effort and actual money) of a new track now is so low it's easy to be less picky, which results in DJ's playing crappy productions. Add in the fact that to get a vinyl release in the first place the tracks would need to be half decent and mastered properly.

A large proportion of new releases these days are mastered really badly, smashed into a brick wall limiter and downright painful to listen to at high volumes. The loudness wars are a big problem. I'd like to see the big online music sellers put a dynamic range rating next to tracks to help educate todays buyers. Perhaps a dynamic range rating on CDJ screens too, with a big "Poor quality track" warning that flashes on the screen when you load something that's been maximised to within an inch of it's life! Traktor / Serato could easily add that feature too, everyone's ears would thank them.

As far as MP3 goes... again it's not really the problem, a well produced track will sound great even at 128kbps. 256kbps has been shown to be indistinguishable from WAV in proper blind tests. Having said that, DJs should use uncompressed formats whenever possible in my view - these days there is simply no reason not to. If you record your sets then even more reason to use uncompressed tracks, since the likelyhood is you will end up re-compressing the recording to MP3 or similar when you distribute it.


Edited by colinmono - 08 January 2018 at 10:03am
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Earplug View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Earplug Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 January 2018 at 5:45pm
"I kind of agree and disagree with your original post "

+1


Last DJ night I did was perfect example. First up were a couple of guys with a load of classic vinyl - all old ska and rock steady stuff from the 50´s and 60´s. It should have been a pleasure listening to them, but their turntables were awful - some no name plastic crap - and the desk was a horrible little 2 channel Numark piece of rubbish. They´d obviously spent all the cash on the vinyl and couldn´t afford any better. The result was really sad - no dynamics, no bass-end and just a mess.  Cry

Then I had a typical laptop-based DJ, but at least with decent gear and a proper desk - and she (yes, she Smile) understood about dynamics and making full use of the system, rather than just red-lining all the time. Result - the system came to life, the public started dancing and the atmosphere changed from slightly depressing, to a real blast. Chalk and cheese.



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Conanski View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Conanski Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08 January 2018 at 6:28pm
Originally posted by JonB67 JonB67 wrote:

we've been using 320 and im trying to work out if we bin the library and start again with wavs


It's real simple, play the MP3 track and the wav source it was derived from at the same time(synced) through the same system and listen with your back turned while somebody else switches back and forth between tracks. If you hear a hugh difference then your decision is obvious, but if you can't reliably pick out the MP3 over the wav then don't waste your time. My 2c on this is if the MP3s were well done you will have a very hard time picking them out.

The facts are MP3 do eliminate some content, that is no secret it is the basis of that type of data compression. I saw a neat video one time that used Audacity to extract the difference between a wav and MP3, that difference was something you could hear and there was no mistaking what the track was when played back. But there have also been numerous online comparisons between MP3 and other formats and in all of them it is anywhere from remarkably difficult to impossible to hear a difference. Some people do manage to hear a difference but it takes a controlled environment(dead silent) with a high resolution audio system that isn't being pushed as well as a trained listener that focuses on specific characteristics. None of this applies to a live music environment where there is substantial ambient noise and speakers are being pushed towards their performance limits, in that environment it's going to be much harder to hear a difference and reliably attribute it to the source type alone.


Edited by Conanski - 08 January 2018 at 6:32pm
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote mitchiemasha Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 January 2018 at 5:27pm
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