Houston, we have a problem!

[dunlopj]

I simply want to make sure he does the best job the first time.

We DJ's are a very, very small part of the mp3 world.

Handiman, first, thank you for that, and secondly...that's sad but true...

 

[steve149]

BTW, Apple lossles (ALAC) is a royalty-free and open-source product and has been since 2011.

I'm not a strict Apple fanboy, but I like things that work well and easily.

Another issue with VBR is some hardware units (the Denon HD2500 comes to mind) have problems playing some VBR files. CBR is just more universally applicable.

 

[ittigger]

CBR support IS universally available. VBR support is available in alot of places but not all. I like and use both Apple and MS (and others). They all have their strong points.

 

[DJ TJ]

It just makes sense to rip your cd's in a lossless format for archival purposes and then create a more "portable" version such as mp3 that is universally accepted. That way if down the road they create a better compression scheme than mp3, you still have the lossless archive to convert from if necessary. We all know but it's worth repeating that one would not want to re-encode from another lossy format.

DbPoweramp will output both a lossless and mp3 file for you simultaneously which would be big time saver if you are planning to rip every song to both a lossless and lossy format. I'm not sure if there are other choices that do similar.

I use Foobar to rip to flac and then analyze the track with replaygain and apply to the European R128 broadcast standard level. Foobar is one of the very few programs that implement replaygain using this standard.

Loudness war - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is a tag only and in no way modifies the original archived file. If I encode to mp3 from the archive and then run it through mp3gain, it uses the replaygain tag as a reference. Since the R128 standard is about 3db less than the previous standard I set the output from mp3gain at 95db. It seems to be loud enough while still leaving decent headroom.

 

[DJ TJ]

If ripping to a lossless compressed format I would also suggest using minimal compression as it requires less cpu horsepower to decode. I'm sure someone will say "well then why not just rip to wave or aiff"?
For the simple reason that not all players interpret wave or aiff metadata tags properly.
Flac uses vorbis tags which are more universally accepted by playback and conversion software when making mp3's.

 

[DJ TJ]

Getting back to the original post, after doing a little research it seems that the Fraunhofer codec appears to be better at CBR and lame is better at VBR encoding. Fraunhofer appears to be the slightly preferred codec amongst the audiophiles and even Lame's own page admits that Fraunhofer has the edge in some areas. Lame is updated more frequently than FHG's codec so the gap in quality is probably negligible now.

LAME MP3 Encoder :: Quality and Listening Test Information

Fraunhofer is used in Itunes, wmp 11, and Db poweramp. I'm not sure what other software programs use the Fraunhofer codec but if anyone knows of any more please post them.

 

[Proformance]

It just makes sense to rip your cd's in a lossless format for archival purposes and then create a more "portable" version such as mp3 that is universally accepted. That way if down the road they create a better compression scheme than mp3, you still have the lossless archive to convert from if necessary. We all know but it's worth repeating that one would not want to re-encode from another lossy format.

I think that's just more wasted time and effort.

Every day that a song ages you learn more about how valuable it is or is not. More than two thirds of my current library I would not replace if I had to start over. I've built many music libraries over they years and they always go to work before they are complete. A working library in progress requires a good grasp of time-value assets, the order in which to assemble them and when and where they become ready to use.

For example, I was in a gas station this morning and heard: Two of Hearts - Stacy Q. I haven't played that song since it was on the Top 40 charts and have no intention of ever playing it again. That's typical of at least 2/3 of the songs in the library of any DJ who's been working and collecting for more than 10 years.

If such a song is requested in the future I will stream it from whatever next generation unlimited streaming DJ pool is just around the corner. I'm certain that within the next decade there will be no need for a DJ to own any music at all. You'll pay only for access. We are almost there right now. Your internet hot spot will also be modulated into ordinary room lighting (LiFi).

 

[Navydiver]

I think that's just more wasted time and effort.
If such a song is requested in the future I will stream it from whatever next generation unlimited streaming DJ pool is just around the corner. I'm certain that within the next decade there will be no need for a DJ to own any music at all. We are almost there right now. Your internet hot spot will also be modulated into ordinary room lighting (LiFi).

Houston, I think we may have a city boy here!
Rule 1 - never assume or rely on the fact that you will have conectivity
Rule 2 - never assume or rely on the fact that you will have connectivity
etc.

 

[Proformance]

Houston, I think we may have a city boy here!
Rule 1 - never assume or rely on the fact that you will have conectivity
Rule 2 - never assume or rely on the fact that you will have connectivity
etc.

That's so Apollo era.

 

[ittigger]

Houston, I think we may have a city boy here!
Rule 1 - never assume or rely on the fact that you will have conectivity
Rule 2 - never assume or rely on the fact that you will have connectivity
etc.

Even in the city, there are still lots of places where cell phones and hot spots don't work. In the country, good luck. Moving forward, you're going to see home and business wireless routers get more secure, not less. From a security aspect, go ahead and connect to those unsecured hot spots and WiFi routers - just don't say you haven't been warned.

 

[Navydiver]

That's so Apollo era.

What a coincidence - we got our first TV just before the Apollo 11 moon shot - I was 9 but remember it somewhat vividly in glorious Black and White on our HD Philco Ford set. I guess you could say I am somewhat "of that generation" given the title of this thread

 

[DJ Bobcat]

What a coincidence - we got our first TV just before the Apollo 11 moon shot - I was 9 but remember it somewhat vividly in glorious Black and White on our HD Philco Ford set. I guess you could say I am somewhat "of that generation" given the title of this thread

When Apollo 11 lifted off, I was sitting on the beach in Titusville just across the Indian River from the launch pad. My girlfriend and I spent the night on the beach, along with scores of others from all around the country. We were so close, we could feel the ground rumbling beneath us as the rocket lifted off. It was very cool! Little did I know, I would attend Buzz Aldrin's retirement ceremony in the C-5 hanger at Edwards AFB only a few years later.[emoji4]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Navydiver]

When Apollo 11 lifted off, I was sitting on the beach in Titusville just across the Indian River from the launch pad. My girlfriend and I spent the night on the beach, along with scores of others from all around the country. We were so close, we could feel the ground rumbling beneath us as the rocket lifted off. It was very cool! Little did I know, I would attend Buzz Aldrin's retirement ceremony in the C-5 hanger at Edwards AFB only a few years later.[emoji4]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Way cool and now I am thoroughly jealous! When I was at Eglin AFB, Florida for EOD School in Sep 95 we got hammered by Hurricane Opal (Hurricane Opal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) - Eye of the Hurricane came right over top Eglin AFB at the time and completley destroyed the beach front for the whole 6 months we were there. It was so bad they evacuated the Base and cancelled Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD aka "The Hurt Locker" Training) school for a couple of weeks. We jumped in my car which I had driven clear across the continent from Victoria, BC here and made our escape. We were simply told to get away and not come back until the all clear was given. So what did I do? I went to Cape Canaveral of course! In fact they did have a STS-73 Shuttle launch (NASA - STS-73) planned for when we arrived after a couple of previous scrubbed launches where one was because of Opal (I think we went to Crystal Springs to see the Manatees first). We bought tickets for a good launch vantage point and sat through the lengthy count down until T minus something like 20 seconds or so. Unfortunately there was a computer glitch - as I recall all the onboard computers had to agree before launch could carry on and one was out of limits for some reason. At the end of the day they scrubbed the mission and I never got to see the launch which finally went 20 Oct 1995 when we were back on course! Can you spell B-U-M-M-E-R? I do have a badge for that mission somewhere here in my office I think that I bought at the souvenir shop which did eventually get off the ground only I wasn't there to see it. Grrrr! Some people have all the luck eh?

Back row left dude is me

Opal caused about US$5.1 billion (1995 dollars) in damage, making it the third costliest hurricane at the time. Most of the structural damage occurred near the coastline on the Florida Panhandle, due to intense surge. Amazingly enough, nearly a mile of U.S. Highway 98 near Eglin Air Force Base was completely destroyed. The pavement was nearly replaced by mounds of sand left behind after storm surge

 

[B-Sharp]

For what it's worth, I did the same analysis on the Ellie Goulding song. I get my music from TM Studios' PrimeCuts MP3 download service, which provides 320kbps CBR files.

It just makes sense to rip your cd's in a lossless format for archival purposes and then create a more "portable" version such as mp3 that is universally accepted. That way if down the road they create a better compression scheme than mp3, you still have the lossless archive to convert from if necessary.

Better compression schemes already exist, but they're not universally accepted.

In regards to it making sense to rip your CDs in a lossless format, it does... in a perfect world. But truthfully, you're not building a Smithsonian archive. Unless you plan on listening to all of those songs for your own pleasure when your well into your 90s (when your ability to hear things will probably suck anyways), what's the point? I know that hard drives are cheap and you should ideally rip to the largest and least-compressed format that you can, but as time passes we're playing our music through smaller, lower-quality speakers, and most songs will become less relevant over time (as mentioned by Proformance).

If you already have the lossless versions on CD, ripping them to a lossy format for archival purposes and then creating a more portable lossy version is nothing but a colossal waste of time. You'll also have to keep up with it going forward - creating multiple versions of songs that you probably won't even like. You're also forgetting that most lossless formats don't have as robust of a tag structure as mp3 files. Data that's important to what we do - things like genres, years, and even tracknames and comments - isn't associated as easily with other formats as it is with MP3.

Good talk.

 

[Proformance]

In regards to it making sense to rip your CDs in a lossless format, it does... in a perfect world. But truthfully, you're not building a Smithsonian archive.

If you already have the lossless versions on CD, ripping them to a lossy format for archival purposes and then creating a more portable lossy version is nothing but a colossal waste of time.

Along those same lines, I identify myself as a DJ not a collector. I play music and to that end any unnecessary time spent on managing assets whose value is always fluid, or inventory that is readily available elsewhere does not serve my primary motives. Much of the work of ripping, tagging, archiving, and identifying assets is already being done by record pools. That is why I pay for these services. It is an extremely cheap price to pay compared to all the time, effort, and expense wasted on collecting. No matter how wonderful your collection - it is not, and never will be unique or valuable in this modern tech world.

 

[DJ TJ]

B-Sharp, please go back and re-read my posts.

I already said you don't want to convert from an already lossy format.
I already said that you should rip to a lossless format (Flac) with minimal compression.
Do you know what FLAC is? It's an open source version of a bit perfect lossless compression format similar to Apple's ALAC.

You're also forgetting that most lossless formats don't have as robust of a tag structure as mp3 files. Data that's important to what we do - things like genres, years, and even tracknames and comments - isn't associated as easily with other formats as it is with MP3.

I think I said that here:

If ripping to a lossless compressed format I would also suggest using minimal compression as it requires less cpu horsepower to decode. I'm sure someone will say "well then why not just rip to wave or aiff"?
For the simple reason that not all players interpret wave or aiff metadata tags properly.
Flac uses vorbis tags which are more universally accepted by playback and conversion software when making mp3's.

Vorbis comments are comparable to id3 tags including album art and are read by all the major media players like media monkey,wmp,winamp etc.
VorbisComment - XiphWiki

 

[Proformance]

B-Sharp, please go back and re-read my posts.

I already said you don't want to convert from an already lossy format.
I already said that you should rip to a lossless format (Flac) with minimal compression.
Do you know what FLAC is? It's an open source version of a bit perfect lossless compression format similar to Apple's ALAC.

I took his intention to mean it is a waste of time to archive even to a lossless format when you already have the physical CD. If you intend to dispose of the CDs because storage space is an issue - then perhaps that aspect makes sense.

I would not store CDs of songs that have not retained any play or request value. So, if it's not worth keeping the CD it's also not worth ripping the song to archive in a world where you can find it online in an instant.

This is why the whole "illegal" library issue is joke. In this particular application where DJs play less than 100 songs in a given event, piracy as a competitive advantage has no value in this current age of cheap unlimited subscription services.

 

[DJ TJ]

I took his intention to mean it is a waste of time to archive even to a lossless format when you already have the physical CD. If you intend to dispose of the CDs because storage space is an issue - then perhaps that aspect makes sense.

I would not store CDs of songs that have not retained any play or request value. So, if it's not worth keeping the CD it's also not worth ripping the song to archive in a world where you can find it online in an instant.

This is why the whole "illegal" library issue is joke. In this particular application where DJs play less than 100 songs in a given event, piracy as a competitive advantage has no value in this current age of cheap unlimited subscription services.

Cd's, even the good quality ones have an expected usable life of approx 20 years before the physical media begins to breakdown and cause readability issues. So in that regard it is worth ripping to a more preservable format (with backups of course).

I still believe you are putting too much faith in having any song you want at your fingertips.

There are many many songs that don't have any current play or request value only because people forget about them over time.
For me, being able to "pull one from the vaults" so to speak and play it for someone or everyone and then have people come up to me afterwards and say "omg, I haven't heard that songs in ages, thank you so much for playing it, you have made my night".
Well for me, having them say that just made my night! That's part of what makes me a DJ is to have that musical knowledge to be able to do that and fill the dance floor.
I would not rely on any online connectivity to look up and play the song I want at any given time.

They can have my hard drive when they pry it from my cold dead fingers!!!

 

[Proformance]

Cd's, even the good quality ones have an expected usable life of approx 20 years before the physical media begins to breakdown and cause readability issues. So in that regard it is worth ripping to a more preservable format (with backups of course).

You're not likely to be a DJ 20 years from now. Even the comment about the Smithsonian seems to have bounced right off you.
Perfectionism is just a trap that leaves you mired in extraneous and wasteful detail.

I still believe you are putting too much faith in having any song you want at your fingertips.

For me, being able to "pull one from the vaults" so to speak and play it for someone or everyone and then have people come up to me afterwards and say "omg, I haven't heard that songs in ages, thank you so much for playing it, you have made my night".

I think you are still operating as though it were 1985. You don't need your own vault anymore, a decent tool box will do nicely.

I would not rely on any online connectivity to look up and play the song I want.

95% of all requests I receive are for songs I already own, or are received prior to the event giving me plenty of time to acquire them.

They can have my hard drive when they pry it from my cold dead fingers!!!

Let me fix that for ya:
I pry yet another cold dead crashed hard drive from my fingers!!!
Nothing lasts forever.

 

[tunes4046]

I can't believe all those CD's I bought in the 80's and 90's still play so perfectly, some are over 30 years old