What bit rate should i be looking for?

Lisa8786

Hi all, just wondering what's the lowest bit rate i can get away with when playin in front of a crowd. Don't want it to sound crap but it's not always easy to get high quality tracks. 192 b the lowest?....thanks:D

R.Shackleford

Where are you getting your tracks from? 192 is grand but the higher you can get the better.

Lisa8786

no downloading from rapidshare. i assumed they were all good quality and just looked at the bit rates there and realised il hav to delete half of them. whats the bit rate on you tube songs as a matter of interst do ya know?

R.Shackleford

it differs from song to song on youtube,some sound alright but they will all sound awful over a large sound system so i dont bother downloading them. rapidshare can be a bit crap too, you can never be sure of the quality. If your gona be playing to people your just better of buying the music.

Lisa8786

hmm kinda poor tho. do you just buy them off beatport or one of those sites?

colly_06

Torrents is the way to go, most sites have a lot of 320 kbps torrents, well mostly mainstream if that's what you're looking for

Lisa8786

excuse my ignorance but what do i have to do. sorry im a total rookie

R.Shackleford

yeah beatport or junodownload, beatports the best tho i think. They can be dear alright tho! But if you look hard enough you can get nearly any track you want free and good quality but it can be fairly time consuming.

electrogrimey

Lisa8786 wrote: »

hmm kinda poor tho. do you just buy them off beatport or one of those sites?

Beatport, whatpeopleplay, iTunes Store, or you can buy compilation albums in town, most record companies bring out compilations now and then, which'll have good tracks on them.

You can generally tell by the size of a file what kind of bitrate it will be, anything under 8mb will be below 320, so try and avoid them.

If tracks are only €1 each, from iTunes etc, and 20 tracks will do a good hour set, €20 isn't too much to ask to buy a full set of high quality music. You're just shooting yourself in the foot by downloading crap quality tracks, because no matter how well you mix them, they're still going to sound weak.

Lisa8786

nice one cheers. yeah will just have to browse around i guess. don't have to replace them all so it's not too bad. i suppose its worth the money to save embarassment anyway..

Lisa8786

thanx everyone good advice there. just realised how stingy i sounded. prob only about 2euro per track :P would have been much harder a few yrs back if i had to buy it all on vinyl:rolleyes:

milltown

electrogrimey wrote: »

... iTunes Store...

If tracks are only €1 each, from iTunes etc, and 20 tracks will do a good hour set, €20 isn't too much to ask to buy a full set of high quality music. You're just shooting yourself in the foot by downloading crap quality tracks, because no matter how well you mix them, they're still going to sound weak.

Slightly OT but do I remember reading in the Traktor manual that it won't play DRM'ed tracks, like from iTunes? I don't use iTunes so I can't check. Maybe you can pay extra for non-DRM, use it however you want, tracks?

electrogrimey

milltown wrote: »

Slightly OT but do I remember reading in the Traktor manual that it won't play DRM'ed tracks, like from iTunes? I don't use iTunes so I can't check. Maybe you can pay extra for non-DRM, use it however you want, tracks?

I use Beatport and not iTunes, so I don't know, but that seems crazy, there must some way around it...

gsparx

As far as I know iTunes removed that DRM nonsense from their tracks a while ago. I'm not positive about that though.
If you like the music and play the tracks out live you should really be supporting the artist by purchasing legitimately.

garthv

192kps is pretty useless if you ask me. You want to get the best quality mp3's you can get your hands on and stick to that format. I make sure all of my mp3's are 320kps.

Keep in mind that you need to maintain a constant bitrate for all your mp3's as you will find that you will need to be constantly watching your gain when mixing tracks.

was.deevey

Keep in mind that you need to maintain a constant bitrate for all your mp3's as you will find that you will need to be constantly watching your gain when mixing tracks.

You mean just like vinyl

There at least was an option to pay extra on itunes for DRM free music, Most music I download (legitimatly) I generally run though a batch processor anyhow to normalize, it would strip the DRM anyhow.

SeanKev

320 kbps, if you need help getting a track, pm me.

b45

you should really be playing wavs or flac files if you are playing out anywhere as even a 320 mp3 will cut the bottom of the low end and the very top off the highs . you can really notice this if you play them along side vinyl like i do . there a little more expensive than mp3's on beatport but sites like boomkat do a good deal on flacs . you might not find them for free but tbh if you are going to play out anywhere you should be buying your music . i can honestly say i wouldnt rate any dj who downloads all their music from blogs , it cheapens the whole thing imo . people will probably try and defend 320's after ive said this but there really is no excuse to be playing them if you are playing in clubs .

oh and its my first post in the form , hello !

Four-Percent

Don't buy from Itunes,if you look at the size of the songs you download from them you'll see that each song is about 5mb.Definitely not good enough quality to play out.

Lisa8786

I'm only playin at a 30th not in a club. Obviously I don't wanna be crap but as it's my first gig I'l prob have a few problems. Gotta start somewhere i guess! i need mainly pop music which i can't really find on beatport and virtual dj doesn't seem to play mp3s. The files i was using are win.rar. Some of the now albums have tracks that are only 128 bit rate. y's that...?!i would have thought cds would have decent quality tracks on there.