Ableton Forum

Hi all,

I've been mainly using vinyl since forever, but, I'm wanting to get into digital downloads (wavs i reckon) and the whole Beatport and Traktor thing (possibly serato). Theres just soo many good tunes on Beatport, plus there quite cheap compared to vinyl. Of course, for special things I would always buy a release on vinyl.

So is using Traktor and Wav files from Beatport and the like sufficient in terms of quality compared to Vinyl? Obviously using a laptop and decent sound card. I guess its all ok??

Cheers.

Well, it's opening a can of worms if you asking people for digital vs vinyl sound quality! But at the end of the day there are so many other factors in the chain all the way from how the original recording was made through to the acoustic of the room where you're DJing that it's an impossible argument to resolve. I'd say wav quality for DJing is absolutely fine. Depending on many other factors, it'll probably sound *different* to a vinyl pressing of the same song, but whether you *prefer* it, I think is up to you decide...

Rave wrote:

David wrote:just soo many good tunes on Beatport

I think the opposite.

Anyhow, wave files are the way to go if you are playing out. I stopped buying them when I quit. I just get 320k mp3s now.

Why aren't you using Ableton to DJ with instead?

I might try Ableton again for DJ'ing, last time I used it was Live 4 and it was tricky to mix tracks at different tempos without an audible warping which is a no-no for me. Traktor seems to take care of much of the beat matching automatically and with no loss of sound quality. Though, Live has likely come a long way since then so I will try it again.

8O wrote:Well, it's opening a can of worms if you asking people for digital vs vinyl sound quality! But at the end of the day there are so many other factors in the chain all the way from how the original recording was made through to the acoustic of the room where you're DJing that it's an impossible argument to resolve. I'd say wav quality for DJing is absolutely fine. Depending on many other factors, it'll probably sound *different* to a vinyl pressing of the same song, but whether you *prefer* it, I think is up to you decide...

vinyl will always be my preferred audio format.. but it is heavy and expensive 'ish compared to a cheap good quality WAV. So maybe a combination of the two is the ideal scenario.

If you were to mix between vinyl and wavs, or even mp3s in a set, i think it might make for interessting combinations of sounds during your mixes.

I think you'd have to choose carefully what goes into what. I think it could be easy to make a drastic change that might make listeners uncomfortable, at least momentarily. As you probably know, just the slightest bit of abrupt change can mess up a good moment... Then again, it could enhance the moment...

Anywhere else to buy wav's other than beatport?

When you're at a club, with speakers blaring at ear-bleeding levels, the difference between wave/aiff and mp3 is irrelevant. I usually just play 320 mp3's, but sometimes I even go as low as 256 or 192.