MP3 Support

[Loolarge]

To do DJing without having to convert to wav before. Sorry if this has been requested before


Loolarge

[atomic]

I agree as i have thousands of mp'3 that I cant spin with ableton live. I would love to see ableton live have vinyl control options as final scratch. That final scratch program has been a huge headach for me and i would love to say later to that but love the use of vinyl controll. that is another post though.

[dos]

without a doubt! this is a MUST ableton!

[mcconaghy]

Honestly, why should Ableton steep so low as to supporting a rotten sounding audio codec? Just use the AIFF or WAVs. You DID support those artists by buying that music you have on MP3, didn't you? Rip a WAV from the CD. Simple, and sounds better.

Next people will be asking about .ogg files... or RealAudio or WMA support... why not Apple Lossless and Shorten while we're at it... Just use the audio file standards, for cryin' out loud!


Sorry about that, pet peeve of mine.

[thejone]

Dude some people just use MP3's, I buy mine from Beatport or transfer them from my records into aiff then MP3.
I DJ using final scratch and live.It's a covinience thing.
MP3 is a very common format, it's compact and I can be much more efficent with my drive space.
Now as far as sound quality goes, if you're the kind of guy that goes to a club and doesn't enjoy it because the DJ is using MP3's and "apparently" you can here the difference, then my friend you need a life.

[vangroover]

i thought the same thing, wouldn't it be cool to bring your IPOD and use it like a hard drive, meaning you can play all your music off the pod thru abelton ?

[Martyn]

I remember someone from Ableton saying that warping a compressed codec like mp3 is no mean feat because the only way to do it is to uncompress on the fly. Just speeding it up and slowing it down like NI Traktor is easy by comparison.

Just use something like Goldwave to batch convert your whole mp3 folder in one go, or better, as mcconaghy said, use 1st generation wav or aif. You'll find the timing is better too, after you warp a few converted mp3s it's surprising how far 'out' the timing is on them when compared to wavs. They really are a LOT better in every way.

As for hardrive space, how much is a new 80-120 gb drive these days? Probably less than the price of a good record box.

[stevie_si]

brings me nicely onto my wish
how about transient beat detection of imported wav`s to make life a little
easier when setting up a tracks whose recording medium was a bit randomly fluctulating (casette) in tempo

[olafmol]

I remember someone from Ableton saying that warping a compressed codec like mp3 is no mean feat because the only way to do it is to uncompress on the fly. Just speeding it up and slowing it down like NI Traktor is easy by comparison.

Just use something like Goldwave to batch convert your whole mp3 folder in one go, or better, as mcconaghy said, use 1st generation wav or aif. You'll find the timing is better too, after you warp a few converted mp3s it's surprising how far 'out' the timing is on them when compared to wavs. They really are a LOT better in every way.

As for hardrive space, how much is a new 80-120 gb drive these days? Probably less than the price of a good record box.

a lot of programs just decompress the MP3 into RAM memory or onto the HD when loading it into a program.....still saves lots of HD space and time....and doesnt need realtime decoding..

[robert_philp]

I remember someone from Ableton saying that warping a compressed codec like mp3 is no mean feat because the only way to do it is to uncompress on the fly. Just speeding it up and slowing it down like NI Traktor is easy by comparison.

Just use something like Goldwave to batch convert your whole mp3 folder in one go, or better, as mcconaghy said, use 1st generation wav or aif. You'll find the timing is better too, after you warp a few converted mp3s it's surprising how far 'out' the timing is on them when compared to wavs. They really are a LOT better in every way.

As for hardrive space, how much is a new 80-120 gb drive these days? Probably less than the price of a good record box.

a lot of programs just decompress the MP3 into RAM memory or onto the HD when loading it into a program.....still saves lots of HD space and time....and doesnt need realtime decoding..

I think the reality is that for large size MP3 like whole tracks for mixing with, the decoding process would be so long as to be a pain in the arse really. You'd have to wait just too long to decode and load the track.

With smaller chunks of sound you may as well use Wav.

MP3 really isn't the best quality source material to produce tracks with, but for DJ purposes i'd support the MP3 decoding to RAM idea if it was quick enough.

[gjpidgeon]

Its a complete pain in the butt having to convert mp3s... it means I have to know which tracks I am going to play before I DJ. I can't convert my entire collection its too big...

If warping is the problem then why not just remove that feature for mp3 files acid style stretches would do instead for a start...

[Kas.]

Now as far as sound quality goes, if you're the kind of guy that goes to a club and doesn't enjoy it because the DJ is using MP3's and "apparently" you can here the difference, then my friend you need a life.

I do? Well, my life (at least I preceive it as such) consists largely of audio engineering, sound design, a bit of mastering and such. As a result I´m used to listening carefully to everthing around me. I can immediately tell if it´s a mp3 on the big systems, there is a certain unpleasant brittle harshness to the high end and various other little details that get on my nerves and that I find tirering. With smaller speakers it´s not that much of a problem but there is some kind of interaction between pa´s and compressed formats that indeed does spoil my enjoyment of the night very quickly.

I know many people can´t hear it, that´s fine, but don´t start throwing about implied insults just because you are one of those, instead I´d much rather look into the posibility of using some plugins or other processors to get rid of this harsh edge for those that do hear it..

[Emissary]

I can definately hear when an MP3 is being played over loudspeakers. And it does sound a lot harsher. I think even people who have no idea about whats going on with mp3 can still notice, as when we were at a dj night at uni my friends said the music was much louder than usual (even though it wasnt) but i think they were picking up on that harshness to the sound. Mp3's suck ass for clubs but are cool on your Ipod or whatever.

[mcconaghy]

Now as far as sound quality goes, if you're the kind of guy that goes to a club and doesn't enjoy it because the DJ is using MP3's and "apparently" you can here the difference, then my friend you need a life.

I do? Well, my life (at least I preceive it as such) consists largely of audio engineering, sound design, a bit of mastering and such. As a result I´m used to listening carefully to everthing around me. I can immediately tell if it´s a mp3 on the big systems, there is a certain unpleasant brittle harshness to the high end and various other little details that get on my nerves and that I find tirering. With smaller speakers it´s not that much of a problem but there is some kind of interaction between pa´s and compressed formats that indeed does spoil my enjoyment of the night very quickly.

I know many people can´t hear it, that´s fine, but don´t start throwing about implied insults just because you are one of those, instead I´d much rather look into the posibility of using some plugins or other processors to get rid of this harsh edge for those that do hear it..

You'll find that most of the people who hurl insults like that around haven't paid for the tunes they're planning on spinning. Probably didn't pay for Live, either.

[hoffman2k]

survival of the cheapest