DJing With Mp3s

flyswatter

Is this possible on a large scale? I'm thinking of getting either Traktor or Deckadance and say for example I was DJing in a club using a laptop connected to the speaker system, would the expensive speaker system show up the quality of the compressed Mp3s? In other words, would the Mp3's sound bad coming out of the speakers? I am asking this because most of my music collection is in the Mp3 format. Any help would be appreciated.

brianc27

if the mp3's are 320kbps then they will be grand, anything less then it will be a noticable

flyswatter

Hmm...I have some that are 320, the rest range from 128-256.

brianc27

anything other then 320 will sound terrible on a big system

acman

+1 to what brian27 said, you dont want to be going any lower than 320kbps on a big pa.

Musicman2000

You might get away with even 192 kps or a HQ VBR RIP, But anything lower you will notice it bigtime

Jev/N

I'd have to disagree with the above statements - some of the newer algorithms seem to be able to create better 192 and 256 kbps tracks

tman

Definitely avoid 128 like the plague... 192 should be the bare minimum really, but even then it depends on how well they've been encoded.
Something done with itunes or WMP will sound like ****e!
320 or wave is your best bet really to avoid sounding gash, and of course you'll need a decent sound card to boot...

Do you actually own these tunes?

flyswatter

tman wrote: »

Definitely avoid 128 like the plague... 192 should be the bare minimum really, but even then it depends on how well they've been encoded.
Something done with itunes or WMP will sound like ****e!
320 or wave is your best bet really to avoid sounding gash, and of course you'll need a decent sound card to boot...

Do you actually own these tunes?

I own some of them yes, but I only have about 60 CD albums and there are 3,000 MP3's on my hard drive.

Táck

how can you tell the kbps on the tracks you have already?

i've gathered a good few over the years and when im playing them i do have to lower some and higher some to get the same quality. i know these ones arn't top notch like but how can i tell exactly?

Hagakure_irl

Táck wrote: »

how can you tell the kbps on the tracks you have already?

i've gathered a good few over the years and when im playing them i do have to lower some and higher some to get the same quality. i know these ones arn't top notch like but how can i tell exactly?

Right click the MP3, and click properties, then go to the details tab. Scroll down to 'bit rate' and you should see it.

Táck

ah thanks man, first one i checked is 128...d'oh

Preset No.3

When i had a cheap system, and played stuff on 128 it wasnt noticeable. Plug same laptop into nice pioneer mixer and decent rig and thats a whole different story.

These days, I use a mac book pro running Traktor, usb out of the mac with a Gigaport AG external sound card and play everything at least 256kps.

Big Difference!