What audio file formats are best for DJing?
DJ music collections consist of audio files of various formats. Many play music in mp3 format and are absolutely satisfied with the sound quality, others only use WAVE files and argue that mp3 quality is not suitable for a good club speaker system. Let’s try to find out how things really are.
All audio formats are globally divided into two main groups: lossless and lossy.
No loss
These are music formats in which all the musical information for a track is stored. Lossless formats come in compressed and uncompressed formats. The most popular uncompressed lossless music formats are WAVE and AIFF, and the most popular compressed lossless audio format is FLAC. Large online music stores provide the opportunity to purchase tracks in these formats.
Lossless files take up a lot of disk space. For example, the track Echomen – Substance (original mix) which is 7 minutes 30 seconds long in WAVE and AIFF formats occupies 75.7 MB of disk space, in FLAC – 48.1 MB format. The downside of the WAVE format for DJs playing from computer programs is the lack of meta information about the file. Metadata is used to store important information about a track: its key, tempo, etc. Any DJ software can read and display this data. Note that the AIFF format allows storing meta information, this is its advantage over WAVE.
At a loss
Lossy formats are always compressed music. Some of the music information has been removed from lossy files to reduce the file size. The most popular lossy format is still mp3. In this case, the degree of compression of a music file in mp3 format may be different. The higher the bit rate of an mp3 file, the less music information is removed during compression. The best quality is for 320 kbps mp3. The sound quality of such mp3s is believed to be as close as possible to lossless music files. In any DJ music store there is the possibility to buy and download 320 kbps mp3, and many DJs collect music in this format. The great advantage of mp3 is its support for meta information.
The second popular lossy file format is AAC. Files in this format are sold on iTunes and have the extension m4a. This is a newer format than mp3. AAC sound quality is said to be better than mp3. However, the file size is slightly smaller. The track Echomen – Substance (original mix) in 320 kbps mp3 format occupies 17.1 MB, and in 256 kbps AAC format (this is the least compressed version of the AAC file) – 13.8 MB.
There is a widespread belief that the sound quality of lossy files is significantly worse than lossless music, supposedly especially well heard in high-end studio acoustics or on a powerful speaker system in a club. Personally, I am one of those who do not notice the difference in studio monitors or in a club. So my music collection consists of 320kbps mp3s. I also transcode AAC files purchased from iTunes to mp3 so that all music is in the same format.
A big advantage of lossy music is the cost of the files. For example, in Beatport you will have to pay $ 0.75 for a lossless track. Multiply this amount by the number of tracks you buy and calculate the total cost of the quality surcharge.
Lossy music formats are likely to become history in the future. The speed of the Internet and the availability of disk space will allow everyone to store music in lossless formats. However, today the problem of choosing between lossless and lossy is more than relevant. In no way do I urge you to give preference to lossy formats. If you hear a difference and are willing to pay more for sound quality, then your choice is zero loss. Otherwise, you can take advantage of the obvious advantages of mp3. There is no one-size-fits-all, each DJ individually chooses the audio format for their music collection.
