MP3 Sound Quality

Scott Hanna said:

If it sounds good, I spend my time fixing things that could actually affect my business.

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Well said Scott!

Cap Capello said:

I like the hard limiting feature and use it religiously to make my entire library at or near equal volume throughout the collection.

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Cap, are you referring to a program like mp3 Gain?

No, Adobe Audition, Sony Sound Forge. Seems we do similar things and make adjustments as needed .

Cap Capello said:

I like the hard limiting feature and use it religiously to make my entire library at or near equal volume throughout the collection.

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In previous years, I have used a compressor (both in the DJ software, and as a hardware effect chain) to achieve a similar effect in real time....without changing the original track. For whatever reason, I have never been a fan of hard limiting the mp3 - if there ever was a technical reason, it is lost to the ages - at this point it is more habit than anything.

In the last 5-ish years, I have come to prefer the "Auto Gain" feature in Traktor over more invasive gain changes. Each track is analyzed when imported into the collection. The maximum level is found and recorded. With "Auto Gain" enabled, when the track is loaded into a deck, the channel gain is automatically adjusted up or down as needed. The net effect is that the loudest sections of songs are roughly "the same" across a set, but quieter passages in the music still remain. I may be the only one who notices, but I do like hearing both loud and quiet in the music.

steve149 said:

Music that I personally like, I will probably re-rip one day and put it into a lossless format (at least from the CDs I have). Everything else, being essentially throwaway .. the format I get is sufficient for the need.

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I have ripped my full CD collection four times over 15 years - as disc space and sound interfaces have gotten better/cheaper. The last time I ripped everything, I used FLAC, and hopefully will remain the "last time." At this point, I will always rip to FLAC and then convert to mp3 "as needed." It can be a fun trip down memory lane when I find a mp3 leftover from one of my earlier rips.

I may be the only one who notices, but I do like hearing both loud and quiet in the music.

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I do not like quiet and loud in performance with larger audiences. It's a roller coaster of audience "can hear it", then "cannot hear it", especially for anyone any distance from the speakers. This especially is true with classical compositions. Auto gain is normalization, which for uniform audio volume is fairly worthless, especially for any tracks with one significant drum note, or trumpet blare, or vocalist screaming.

I have also experienced nightmarish gain staging issues using normalization and/or auto gain. Sooner or later, I'm going to find an easier way to edit audio volume consistency within .mp4 and .mkv files. With videos presentation, it's pretty much back to basics again.

Cap Capello said:

I've done this kind of hard limit and edit throughout my digital transition beginning in 2000. Back then it was called "Cool Edit". Extra work? Absofrigginlutely. Worth. Triple the friggin' part.

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Working with Cool Edit/Adobe every day of my adult life, I have used it to "level out" the peaks and valleys on many songs.
I usually avoid using the hard limit or compressor/limiter functions, and simply adjust amplitude on the parts of the song that need it.
I worry that the presets will change the sound of the song too much, and I cannot tell until I play it on my gig rig.
But the OP is right. Amazon seems to have no quality control on their MP3's.
What really sucks is you really have no way to check the levels, or the bit rate, until you've already purchased it.
It also bothers me that you have to decide whether to buy it, based on a short 30-sec sample.

Handinon said:

Cap is 100% right. "Normalizing", MP3Gain, various Auto Gain features in DJ software, all have their place, but none fix the problem of very low level portions of the music being masked by the ambient sound in the room.

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Granted there is no "idiot" setting that will always work. WooHoo for DJs having something to do!

IME, Songs like Adele's "Hello" are the exception, not the rule. It is trivial enough to fix the exceptions, if you feel a need. In the general case, I do not find the difference in "modern" music (to include my collection of 50's and 60's music) to be "can hear it" -v- "can not hear it" with typical audiences.

With some classical pieces there *may* be issues. But, the overwhelming majority of classical music I play is for "background music," and in other situations where I WANT people to be able to converse comfortably over the music.

The basic issue remains - I like having (and hearing) dynamics in music. I do not like the sound that hard compression brings to music (do not even get me started on the "Loudness War"), and I am willing to at least keep an eye on the channel levels in order to avoid it. This is as much personal preference as anything else....but it is my preference. For anyone else with similar preferences, the Traktor "Auto Gain" feature is a nice option to have.

Ausumm said:

But the OP is right. Amazon seems to have no quality control on their MP3's.

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I stopped buying tracks from Amazon years ago since they were all vbr files and didn't play well with RockIt and switched to Google Play. I've never looked back.

Handinon said:

I've tried various things to automate the process - the best I found so far is a VST plugin (which I use in Audacity) called "LoudMax".

LoudMax

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BA - FRIGGIN - ZINGA !!!

Mr. Handinon has a drink (or two) coming.

Just on a whim and a prayer, I downloaded that LoudMax plugin, both 32 and 64 bit. Extracting both, I put both .dll files into the PlugIn folder of Virtual DJ (both 7 & 8). The 64 bit plugin did not work, even though I'm using the 64 hierarchy. The 32 bit version was recognized in VDJ 8 as an EFFECTS module, presented two controllable adjustments (threshold & output). I played one of my more notorious roller coaster volume videos and it leveled it out, in real time, and on the fly.

What this means to me is that I may be able to halt constant gain staging issues (trim, volume, and master out adjustments) as well as keeping VDJ limiters out of the equation. The VDJ auto gain has never done the job beyond any other normalization or auto-gain technique.

What I will be watching for is if, because of the look ahead technique of LoudMax, will it produce syncing issues, audio and video. If it does, we'll be finding out how well the VDJ sync options perform.

This is still in testing and trial mode, however if it continues to perform as it has in the last 10 minutes or so, that programmer has some PayPal thank yous coming.

Granted there is no "idiot" setting that will always work. WooHoo for DJs having something to do!

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soundinmotiondj said:

This is as much personal preference as anything else....but it is my preference.

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It is personal preference and I wouldn't dare to challenge nor threaten your preferences. Good for you to hang on to them in spite of the recording industry methodology, right or wrong.

Thank you for restating the consensus of no one magic bullet or idiot setting and I sincerely appreciate the WooHoo. It's been a while.

It is unlikely that most of us can "really" tell the difference between a FLAC file, a .wav, a _high_ bitrate mp3, a 44.1 k/16 bit CD, and a 48 k/24 bit DVD track. I still do lots of the things you all describe, as a matter of "best practices" and habit. But in reality, it's unlikely we'd hear the difference (in an independently moderated, double-blind listening test with no chance for confirmation bias).

A low bitrate mp3, a truly distorted/clipped track, or just crap from iTunes or Amazon, is a different story, and I've expounded on that before. But that has less to do with parameters or "betterness" in various formats (I think), than it does with lazy transfer/encoding protocols and a general laize faire, "let them eat cake" attitude by the major digital music merchants. They don't care much about quality sound, and neither do most of the crazy kids (that don't have a clue anyway)...

GJ

For the record: I still am using 100% Compact Discs for playback. I've still got all my RPM Top Hits USA and keep my subscription current.

I don't mind lugging CDs: its one of the reasons I'm not getting fat like other DJs who're my age.....

Now there's a generalization that will endear you to your elders!! (although I did get fat from 30+ ten to fourteen day vacation cruises, not lack of CD lifting)

How about if you were to read, "Young guys still lugging CDs around means they haven't the business sense nor the commitment to their business to improve reliability."

Betcha that'd piss you off, huh?

I got fatter for a number of reasons, none of which was because I stopped using CD's, besides, the chicks still think I am sexy, they just don't trust me anymore LOL. I mean really, would you trust this face?

Chuck-- Just.... Don't do that again, please...

Cap-- "Digital file reliability" versus CD's??!? Har-dee-har-har, my manski.

GJ