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Thread: Is YouTube audio good enough for DJing

  1. #11
    Deez Beats! KLH's Avatar
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    I feel the need to point out that any quality issues inherent in a sound file is magnified significantly as the venue gets bigger. Listening in headphones is not equivalent to hearing sound amplified in a large open space.

    As the venue gets bigger, any quality issues inherent in a sound file becomes noticeable by everyone. This includes questionable source recording, encoding rates, encoding codecs, connectivity to the main mixer, and connectivity to speakers.
    -KLH
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    I've read the books like How to DJ right... to learn about... beatmatching, phrasing w/e , Speed Test Scrabble Word Finder Solitaire but when I go to mix...

  2. #12
    BanHammer™⚒️ Manu's Avatar
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    Been there tried that in studio/headphones/car. Would not try in live conditions

    Like I said, just put two well mastered tracks side by side, then slot a youtube rip in between. By the way, the main guy from Funktion One said the same thing about 320k mp3, maybe we're onto something. On the other hand, I lost count of noobs ripping their files off and wondering why the sound quality is gone to


  3. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by KLH View Post
    I feel the need to point out that any quality issues inherent in a sound file is magnified significantly as the venue gets bigger. Listening in headphones is not equivalent to hearing sound amplified in a large open space.
    I remember doing a blind test before (just using a PA system in my kitchen) between a 320 mp3 and a wav and vinyl i bought from the same artists, of the same song, I got my friend to put the faders of each track up and down at random, and as far as i remember i could not tell the difference. or it really was negligable to me. have any of you done a blind test on this? have you been able to spot the mp3 every ​time?

    I also compared a bunch of other things like original pressing vinyl, vs second pressing, and original pressing vs digital remasters. and compared 128kbps ro 320, in all of those cases i could notice the difference and it was quite distinct.
    BUT , i would say only in a side by side comparison, if i went into a club and just heard a DJ playing i cant tell you that i would be able to identify a 128kbps mp3 just on hearing it. do you think you could?


    Quote Originally Posted by Manu View Post
    Been there tried that in studio/headphones/car. Would not try in live conditions

    Like I said, just put two well mastered tracks side by side, then slot a youtube rip in between. By the way, the main guy from Funktion One said the same thing about 320k mp3, maybe we're onto something. On the other hand, I lost count of noobs ripping their files off and wondering why the sound quality is gone to

    also, if DJs are getting their music from dubious sources, you dont know how many times it has been encoded and re encoded for whatever reason. this is one big reason to stick only to legit sources. Its a bit like eating food from a bin, you don't know where it has been.
    as a visual demonstration, Just take a JPG and put it into photoshop and duplicate it a number of times, eventually, it disintegrates, even though the resulting file will have the same specs as the original file had, so, im no techy, but i imagine the same thing happens with music when it is shared around. I wonder if this contributes to the bad impression some people have of the MP3 overall.
    Last edited by DJ Matt; 09-29-2021 at 12:41 PM.

  4. #14
    BanHammer™⚒️ Manu's Avatar
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    Yes, that's exactly it, take a photocopy of a photocopy of photocopy principle. There's a guy called Alvin Lucier who did an experiment of this, copy of a copy etc.


  5. #15
    I've done the blind test between 320k mp3 and lossless.. trying to identify which one is the mp3. It's very hard, especially if you are doing it with just a few tracks... 320k is not that bad.

    But I'll tell you what happened.. is that after listening to each 4/5 times I was able to reliably tell them apart. BUT.. I guessed wrong! What I thought was the lossless, was the mp3, and vice versa. So, if you randomly played me the mp3, I would tell you it was the wav, if you played the wav I would tell you it was the mp3.

    So obviously I found this perplexing and wanted to figure out what it was about the mp3 that made it sound "better".. or more to the point, why I thought the wav sounded "worse"... What it turned out to be was that the sound system in our apartment.. which at that time was a proper DJ sound system with two EV tops and two 18 inch JBL subs (we live in a loft), was not tuned properly.. the high pass on the subs was not sharp enough. So the mp3, which had its lowest bass cut off, sounded cleaner because it didn't have any content below the tuning frequency of the subs. But the wav did, and it didn't sound good because of that. When I adjusted the processor, the whole situation reversed. And I'm sure that if I'd used a more hifi system it would not have gone down that way. But yea, keep in mind I encoded those files myself with a good encoder, 320k, highest quality setting, joint stereo.. so it was the best example of an mp3 possible.

    But what I've come to realize is that some tracks compress really well and others compress really poorly. It's all about how dense they are.. how much competition between frequencies... You can't just listen to one or two tracks and decide that they sound the same. If you're out at a club with a really good sound system and you hear a great set with all high quality tracks.. for let's say two hours.. and then right afterward another set with low quality sources.. the difference becomes clear.. the second set will just lack something. As an engineer who brings my system out to events I'm hyper-aware of how the system is supposed to sound because I tuned it and I own it.. so when a DJ comes on and starts playing low quality files I can hear it right away. And you can feel the energy on the dancefloor isn't the same as it was either. The people out there may not be able to tell you exactly why the energy is less.. but it is.





    So

  6. #16
    you know, i did a mix yesterday and following our conversation and I paid special attention to the sound quality ,and did it at fairly high volume on studio monitors
    I was using all WAVs and the sound really was remarkable by comparison with how I had been previewing the tracks prior to buying them on spotify and youtube, I think the problem is that I (like many people perhaps) have become accustomed to shitty sound due to listening to most of my music at home on spotify / youtube and using blue tooth speakers, so you actually begin to forget what good sound sounds like
    not having done a gig yet for 19 months also contributes to it i think

  7. #17
    BanHammer™⚒️ Manu's Avatar
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    Told you

    I have friends like that, one who I love like a brother, streams youtube from his phone bluetooth to his little 10x10 inch pioneer all in one cube, cranks the volume up with tiny speakers and says sound great doesn't it. With a smile on his face while breaking my ears

  8. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Manu View Post
    Told you

    I have friends like that, one who I love like a brother, streams youtube from his phone bluetooth to his little 10x10 inch pioneer all in one cube, cranks the volume up with tiny speakers and says sound great doesn't it. With a smile on his face while breaking my ears
    well my excuse is that I dont want to bother my housemates LOL thats why I dont use the proper speakers often enough in the house

  9. #19
    BanHammer™⚒️ Manu's Avatar
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    It's just the old lossless vs copies of lossy discussion. As long as you apply the good old Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem, you're good. And yes indeed, if you're doing all your stuff in headphones, you won't notice as much difference.

    By the way, quote from the guy,

    Tony Andrews, co founder of Funktion One

    ''We get the speakers right, they all come without any EQ correction, which is cheating, and have very low levels of distortion," he says. "We're also anti-MP3. If you put an MP3 out through one of our systems, and then a WAV file, you'll hear a huge difference. It's because most others are inferior. We're always astounded by the number of so-called professional DJs using MP3s and putting them out over live systems. It shouldn't be encouraged!"

  10. #20
    In general, no. The original audio has been compressed and altered. Seek out the original audio elsewhere.

    I’ve previewed countless records on YouTube. The actual Hi-Fi 12” sounds completely different. Sometimes radically so. YouTube is great for the democratization of content. As for cheap rips, well, you get what you get.

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