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The Trials of a DJ (and Traktor) Noob!

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  • December 28, 2013 at 1:44 pm #1022605
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Thanks for the story, the good news is your new x-mas gifts kept you well and busy for a few days LOL.

    Good to add another member to the ever-growing Digital DJ Tips family tree.

    And as far as iTunes goes … just another reminder why I think it is the worst thing ever to come out of the Apple factory in my opinion.

    Greetinx and enjoy your gifts. And indeed keep us posted as you move forward on your path to full fledged DJ-ing!

    December 28, 2013 at 4:42 pm #1022633
    Terry_42
    Keymaster

    Heh yeah iTunes and Quicktime on Windows are bad…

    December 30, 2013 at 4:34 pm #1022998
    niu02kevin
    Participant

    Congrats on your new gear. You will get this sorted out and going forward, need to consider that you may need to be buying your music from someplace else. There are a ton of places, and if memory serves, there is a LONG article here on DDJTips of course, ith a list of places to buy mp3/wav files.

    And there lies a lot of the problem, iTunes doesn’t sell mp3. They sell m4a/ACC……that has a DRM (digital rights management…..iThink 😉

    You have a couple of options. I think you need to convert the songs you want to drop into Traktor, to an mp3 file. I think iTunes can even do this for you. If not, there are plenty of third party convertors. Unfortunately, this process, according to what I’ve read, degrades the file, which is already not the best quality. You may also be dissapointed to know that iTunes doesn’t sell the best quality file. I’m not going to debate whether mp3 is/isn’t as good as wav/aiff, but there are plenty of places that sell the same tune at 320kbps, which is the best quality compressed file you will find, and probably the preferred format for most DJs I know.

     

    This doesn’t mean you can’t use this music……heck use anything, just have fun. But moving forward, I would consider purchasing from the abundant locations that sell 320kbps for $0.99. Take some time to learn about the different file types, after all, you’re a digital DJ  now.

     

    Good luck.

    December 30, 2013 at 5:54 pm #1023015
    DJ Vintage
    Moderator

    Little nuance here.

    The standard iTunes format of 256-AAC is usually considered at least equal to 320 kbps MP3.

    Obviously getting the best possible quality to start with (any lossless format like Wav, Flac, etx.) is the best way to go. After that it depends on practicality. MP3s are supported by just about every software and media player. AAC obviously is not.

    I think the DRM has gone out the window at iTunes store a few years ago, but I am not 100% sure.

    In short, don’t worry if you buy stuff at iTunes. If you can though, buy from places that a) sell lossless formats and b) actually have the original versions to rip to lossless.

    After that, don’t try to mess around with it too much. If your platform supports AAC, used that format rather than exporting to MP3, the extra encoding round won’t help the quality. If you have 256 MP3 or better, don’t mess with it. If you have lossless, go for full stereo 320 MP3 to get the 60-75% reduction in disk space.

    The last might not seem important when you have two 4TB drives in your PC, but when you need to get your collection on a 32GB iPad or iPod, space suddenly becomes an issue again. The 256 AAC being smaller than the -qualitywise comparable – 320 MP3 now suddenly sounds like good news!

    A last word on lossy formats. Anything from 256 MP3 and up, is usually more than good enough for our purpose. If you are not an audiophile with 10.000 dollar sound systems, chances are very good that you won’t be able to tell the difference. We did some personal tests years ago and not one of the 10 DJ’s and sound techies present was able to consistently pick out the difference between 256 MP3, 320 MP3, 256 AAC, Wav rip and original CD.

    At 192 MP3 there were two who got it right about 40% of the time!

    So, don’t worry too much about iTunes, Beatport or any other download service. As long as you are pretty certain they ripped from a high quality source with high quality hardware and software and you get the best available quality from them (make 256 MP3 your lower treshold) then you should be fine.

    Don’t forget us DJs often play in less than optimal acoustic circumstances, in mono, over loud PAs that are not always new, in perfect shape or tuned for the room. Our music is bass heavy which has a tendency to drown out lots of other stuff.

    Hope that helps to get a bit clearer picture on the lossless – lossy discussion. And in all honesty I think the loudness war is doing far more damage to the quality of tracks than the bitrate of lossy formats.

    Greetinx.

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