WHERE CAN A DIGITAL DJ GET LOSSLESS AUDIO TRACKS? Loco Dice echoes the sentiment, saying, “I play lossless files because the format contains uncompressed audio, gives me the maximum audio quality, and doesn’t fail when I combine digital files and vinyl records.”Īs a digital DJ, your primary job is to deliver great sounds to the audience – so there’s little reason why you shouldn’t start out with the highest quality audio so that you preserve as much of the original quality as possible. “As I want to guarantee my fans the best audio experience for every set.” And he’s definitely not the only one.
Whether in your DJ setup or DAW, you’ll notice that the higher the sample rate, the more information there is to “pull apart” when you slow it down, resulting in fewer artifacts and the closer to a master it will sound.Īs a result, many DJs and audiophiles insist that there’s a lot of territory beyond sounding “solid” – and on the right system, there is a difference, it may not be the difference between good or bad, but it could be the difference between good and “freaking insane.” Two such artists committed to lossless audio include Sander Van Doorn and Loco Dice, as interviewed on Beatportal earlier this year:ĭJ extraordinaire Sander van Doorn prefers “playing lossless files only,” he says. One of the biggest differences in quality happens when you start to change the tempo of the song.
But when you’re playing at festivals or clubs with nice sound systems, you’ll want to make sure the files in your setlist will not limit the potential of the sound system.Īn overwhelming majority of performing DJs have a library of 320kps MP3 files – as even on large club PA systems the 320 MP3s will sound solid. (Funktion One systems – like in the image below – will eat 192kbps MP3s for breakfast).īut when you’re making adjustments to the the audio, changing the tempo, pitch, and/or key, and processing it through your software and hardware and ultimately out to the mixer – you’ll really start to notice very quickly the level of quality you’re dealing with, and any artifacts will start to be noticeable, especially on a really nice system. For many casual, non-DJing uses, a lower quality audio file is completely acceptable – when you’re listening to YouTube videos on laptop speakers, you’re not exactly pushing the requirements of audio fidelity. With lossy audio, you’ll want to pay close attention to the bitrate (see below), and a typical size for a 3:30 long song is just over 8MB. The most common form of lossy audio is MP3, although other less-supported and/or older formats like AAC, WMA, OGG, and MP2 still haunt many a music library. The more compressed, the more data is missing. Lossy audio files are compressed versions of tracks that have parts of the data removed to reduce the size of the file. Their file size tend to be large, and it’s not uncommon to see an compressed WAV that’s 30-40MB for a song that’s about 3:30 long. Lossless formats include WAVs, FLACs, AIFF, and Apple Lossless. They can be uncompressed or compressed, but their compression retains all of the original data of the recording or final master. Lossless audio files are files that are used as masters. While the image above makes it pretty clear as to what the results of different compression can do to an image, Here’s a quick refresher on the two groups of audio files out there: LOSSLESS AND LOSSY AUDIO: WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
Read on to find out the best practices and how to be ready for the future. Many DJs don’t notice a big difference in file type and bitrate until they’re blasting the track on a high-end club system and find the track just isn’t hitting hard enough. As Serato’s DJ software programs gained FLAC support on Monday, we decided it’s time to write an article that discusses the best options of the variety of formats that digital audio files come in.