softcore

Ummmm, hold on! What I implied earlier was the fact that what you are hearing (and seeing in Spek) is how the track was actually produced. If that’s not the case, in other words, if the track in any other form (vinyl in this case) sounds different, then you were right in your first message: something is obviously wrong and you should complain to Beatport – its either their mistake or the digital distributor-label mistake.

Arent we humans such a funny species? You complain about prejudices (laptop DJ complains being bashed from analogue purists) one day, the next day you accuse others of being fake (laptop DJ bashes iPad DJ).

We will never learn, will we?

José Reach, post: 11543 wrote: I second Eros.
However, now I don’t know which book I should choose!

I can’t buy like three books in a row and read them all. I’m currently doubting between the book “The Secrets of House Music Production” and “The Dance Music Manual”.

I’d go for the “Dance Music manual” as it covers a lot of the basic questions a beginner could have about the “basis” of what consists a dance track. You can apply what you learn from it on either house, techno or trance. Its more general and theoritical approach should be what a beginner wants to read. 😉

@eros Thanks for the kind comment man! I somehow feel I have to give back to the web,after all through the web I got all the knowledge I wanted (and still do) when I first started production. Couple that with the polite and nice mood of DDJT and you can understand why Im always happy to contribute to such discussions!

Haroon K, post: 11499 wrote: On the other hand if you can be more goal orientated its better to finish a track, learn from it and do another one – which is what the pro’s do I guess.

Absolutely spot on…If I was allowed to give only one piece of advice for production, if there was a top 20 list of advices this would be my no1:

ALWAYS, always, finish the track you started.

Many beginners (and not only) fall into the trap of “ok lets see where this sound leads to, or hey lets see what this synth might add to my track” or the other trap of “hey its almost done, and its not like Im gonna release it or anything so why bother finishing the last details”. By finish I mean have a wave file ready to be played on a typical audio player.

I can only say this…..you learn more from a mediocre (for your own taste) full finished, exported wave file from your DAW than 100 unfinished DAW projects, searching for the perfect sound – true story. There are many details in the final stage just before exporting a finished track that you wont get to learn if you are always fiddling with ideas on a project you started 10 months ago. Also, you won’t be able to test your final track’s audio qualities on various systems (therefore realise and learn what “sound” and its reproduction on various system means) if all you got is a weird DAW-specific file format.

Thanks for bringing this up Haroon!

Are you sure you press the buttons which assign each deck to the headphones? Are you sure the monitor mix knob is not turned all the way to master?

This is a misleading question…..Controllers are “tools”….As such, the BEST controller is the one that suits YOU BEST. I dont believe there is a universal answer to that as there never was a universal answer to the BEST DJing software or the BEST DAW. It all comes down to personal preference and opinion. That being said, Im pretty sure the BEST controller for me is my BCR 2000 teamed up with an iPad, which I havent purchased yet.

Usually you will see at the tags of an mp3 file the encoder used….and usually it will be the “lame” one…..Im not aware of any program in case you want to make sure…I think its semantics after all. I believe the main reason for audible difference in mp3 files of the same kbps is the fact that they had once been “downgraded” to lower kbps and then re-encoded to higher kbps like you also mentioned earlier.

Became a member possibly during your absence…nevertheless my wishes to get well soon and make more DJ sets rockin the house! 😉