What file format are people using for their Live set tracks?

[moreofmorris]

I'm starting to take live sets more seriously now, and gathering all my tracks together. It seems odd to have them just sitting in my iTunes, so I'm putting them all into their own folder for live sets (along with my loops, my one shots, etc). Obviously, I'm then carefully warping them... But I'm curious, what file formats are people using for their live set tracks? I'm thinking I should go with a loseless format (like wav, aiff, flac?) as it seems a little odd to have them in MP3, just to then make a mix and resave the whole thing in MP3 again for distribution...

Just curious what people are using for this?

[Tarekith]

24/44.1 wav here.

[moreofmorris]

That is exactly what I'm thinking of using.

I was wondering if anyone was using FLAC, for example. You can't go wrong with straight up uncompressed WAV, as long as filesize isn't an issue I suppose.

[[nme]]

Uncompressed audio is best if you can find your songs in wav/aif format to begin with, otherwise there's no need to convert an mp3 into an uncompressed format. The downside is the amount of space uncompressed audio uses over mp3, m4a, wma, etc. - but with the available capacity of today's hard drives, this becomes less of an issue over time.

A good reference is to download some of the Live Packs from Ableton.com. You can right-click the Audio Clips in each project and see their file type. This might give you a better idea of what various artists, DJ's, and producers are working with, and ultimately, the option that works best for you.

http://www.ableton.com/livepacks

[moreofmorris]

Uncompressed audio is best if you can find your songs in wav/aif format to begin with, otherwise there's no need to convert an mp3 into an uncompressed format. The downside is the amount of space uncompressed audio uses over mp3, m4a, wma, etc. - but with the available capacity of today's hard drives, this becomes less of an issue over time.

A good reference is to download some of the Live Packs from Ableton.com. You can right-click the Audio Clips in each project and see their file type. This might give you a better idea of what various artists, DJ's, and producers are working with, and ultimately, the option that works best for you.

http://www.ableton.com/livepacks

That's useful. Thanks mate.

[Tarekith]

Just remember that Live automatically converts MP3 and FLAC to wav anyway in the decoding cache before it plays them. So by using an compressed format like those, you're actually using up MORE hard drive space since you now have the MP3/FLAC file, and the decoded wav file. Best off just using wav to begin with.

[moreofmorris]

Just remember that Live automatically converts MP3 and FLAC to wav anyway in the decoding cache before it plays them. So by using an compressed format like those, you're actually using up MORE hard drive space since you now have the MP3/FLAC file, and the decoded wav file. Best off just using wav to begin with.

Really? That's interesting... My next question was going to be how Live handles these files in the memory. I was wondering if having a massive set of MP3s is anymore or less resource intensive than pure WAVs. It seems to make sense that having uncompressed in the first place actually means less processing on Live's behalf.

So if it's MP3 or WAV, the amount of memory is actually the same, due to it converting to WAV anyhow?

[cids]

Yes, that's correct!

[moreofmorris]

Yes, that's correct!

Cool. Thanks guys.

[ChrisMack99]

I always use wav...mostly because I never saw a reason not too...there is plenty of space on my hard drive, and I preload them into my set so the long loading time isn't an issue.

A friend of mine uses AIFF. Not sure what his reasoning is or if he has any...I'm pretty sure logic exports to AIFF by default and that's his only reason (he produces in Logic and DJ's with live).

[Tarekith]

AIF and WAV are almost the same thing aside form differents in the file header. Should be no different as far as Live is concerned, in fact on OSX Live defaults to recording in AIF.

[cygnal]

Are you guys sure about mp3? I am not really seeing the mp3 decoded files. But couple of days ago, I imported 4 Gs of FLAC files, and, after auditioning and trying out some of them, my C drive filled up with 1 G of wave files... I only discovered this accidentally, by searching the C drive for any files created in the past week with a size more than 1 MB. This folder is quite hidden from view (in Win XP, it is under "Applicatin Data", which is usually hidden), so is there anyway to specify this "decoding cache" folder? I can understand FLAC needs to be decoded, but if it does this with mp3s as well, then I'm f***** with disk space problems...

[Ryanmf]

Just remember that Live automatically converts MP3 and FLAC to wav anyway in the decoding cache before it plays them. So by using an compressed format like those, you're actually using up MORE hard drive space since you now have the MP3/FLAC file, and the decoded wav file. Best off just using wav to begin with.

I was using some flac files until I learned this, then I started batch converting everything to to aiff before dropping into Live.

[crumhorn]

With USB storage available for around £0.05 per GB I can't see a reason to use anything other than .WAV