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Warm sound?

Discussion in 'MASCHINE Area' started by Maxwell Smooth, Sep 23, 2012.

  1. Maxwell Smooth

    Maxwell Smooth New Member

    Messages:
    43
    Hmmmm I got a quick question. If you sample vinyl, and then later covert it to mp3 so it can be played on a cd, or an iPod, do you still get that warm sound that the vinyl record is known for creating. If it all ends up ending up mp3 anyway, why not sample mp3 to start?
     
  2. trusampler

    trusampler NI Product Owner

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    1,955
    That depends on your A/D converters, good quality vinyl rips to wave or mp3,usually result from quality converters.
     
  3. tomc3084

    tomc3084 New Member

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    19
    It all depends really. Usually sampling mp3s sound like crap, especially the lower end bit rate stuff. Stick with vinyl or flac/wave rips. A lot of people sample youtube stuff though which is why there is a lot of crap music out there. I am sure someone will chime in with what the exact differences are.
     
  4. Zac Kyoti

    Zac Kyoti NI Product Owner

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    418
    Because mp3 is a lossy format. It gets it's small size by throwing data away - and depending on your ears and some other physical-acoustic phenomena, even high bitrate mp3s can sound subjectively inferior to a lossless format like FLAC or WAV.

    You can get away with using mp3s to dj with granting they were ripped at a high bitrate with a good encoder. Generally with noise in clubs and crappy soundsystems, even audiophiles won't be able to discern a 320kbps mp3 ripped with LAME, from a lossless WAV file. And yes, there are always exceptions - you know who you are :)

    BUT - you are talking about using mp3s in production and rendering to mp3. NO NO NO! The first rule is never to re-encode an already lossy file into another lossy file. Doing this can and will inflict terrible consequences on the quality of the sound. Even going from 320 to 320 will reapply the encoding algorithm again, and you suffer a loss in quality. So if you must use mp3s as source material in your productions, just remember to render the file as a WAV. An mp3 should have been encoded once, and only once.

    If you rip from vinyl, making the file an mp3 won't 'destroy' the vinyl sound. It'll just make it sound like a vinyl rip that has been encoded to mp3. Just rip to a lossless format and you're working with the best. If you need an mp3 later, do it at the final stage of a 100% lossless production. (And save a lossless master!)

    I suppose it doesn't really matter if it's just for personal listening, but if you ever want to play your finished track out, don't re-encode mp3 source to mp3 master. Transcoding (something different) from a lossy format to a lossless format is OK (ie mp3 to WAV), but remember you don't get an increase in quality from this operation. It just increases the file size, but still only contains the information from the original mp3.
     
  5. faster

    faster NI Product Owner

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    932
    Why do you need to convert the "sampled vinyl" in WAV/AIFF to MP3 again?
    My MP3 player plays wav and I can make a CD/DVD in wav if I want to. The commercial CDs/vinyls you buy are a wav format, (recorded digital or analog) but are saved on computer (as MP3/aiff or whatever your settings are) to save space on HD...
     
  6. Maxwell Smooth

    Maxwell Smooth New Member

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    43
    well im just saying that most of the music people make ends up in a lossless, or mp3 format....But it does make sense if you start with better sound frequencies in the first place I can see how that would better your end result
     
  7. jpeg

    jpeg Forum Member

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    3,088
    bull crap most time u canrt tell if someone sampled from records, cd, tape, mp3, vhs or youtube if the person knows what they doing
     
    Last edited: Sep 23, 2012
  8. spencerday

    spencerday NI Product Owner

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    652
    most music sites like beatport etc do offer wav downloads as well for a bit of extra money