Does anybody here play large venues with iTunes downloads?

This is a discussion that will probably still be raging long after we have music wirelessly transferred to inside our head (better for the ears too, no tinnitus).

My personal opinion is that 256 Kbps or higher (MP3 or AAC) is suitable for any PA, large or small.

The most important reason is that the sensitivity of our ears to finer details diminishes exponentionally with the increase of loudness. Prolonged measures of time in a high loudness environment cause listening fatigue which further diminishes our ability to hear finer details. Finally, consuming alcohol has an impact on it.

So, club = loud = for long = drinking = 256Kbps+ is just fine.

On the subject of editing, often editing software will decode MP3 back to WAV, then let you edit things, then endcode back to MP3. At each de- and encoding session things can go wrong. I haven’t actively compared pre and post edit MP3s of the same track, but I am gonna take a wild guess (with the above in mind) that those too will be just fine.

I know I will have a lot of people disagreeing with me, but there you have it … my two cents.

I’d agree with Terry-42. I use MP3 at 320 but when downloading from iTunes it’s 256 AAC. I’ve played on good sized sound systems and you can’t tell the difference, well at least I couldn’t. I’ve also done stints where I’ve gone back to back with a fellow DJ who’s was on decent CDJ’s and again the you couldn’t distinguish between original CD or good quality MP3/AAC being played. The quality of the file is obviously important, but the quality of your controller will also count.