Need to burn flac to CD for DJing - any advice

Dark Light

Dark Light

Dark Light

Associate
Joined
16 Nov 2011
Posts
1,058
Location
127.0.0.1
I am DJing for the first time so I need to burn high quality flac tracks to CD that will maintain all quality and of course be able to play in a CD player. Never done this before, so any advice?
 
Stuff said:
Are DJs really bothered by high quality sound when in clubs etc? Genuine question..
Click to expand...

Yes of course we are, even more so when playing a Funktion-One system.
What made you think us DJ's are not bothered about the quality of our music we play out :confused:
 
Stuff said:
Are DJs really bothered by high quality sound when in clubs etc? Genuine question..
Click to expand...

I used to be annoyed when I found DJs in bars and clubs using MP3s with the attitude that "if I can tell the difference between 192k MP3 and FLAC on a £30 pair of headphones, surely the difference should be clear on a club PA system". In reality most club sound systems have a lot more to worry about than the detail loss between 192k MP3 and FLAC. Combine that with people who would be too drunk to notice anyway and I get why it doesn't really to a lot of DJs.
 
Most DJs don't care about the quality of what they play, hence why they chuck the gains up to the max and redline the balls off the mixer in an attempt to trick the processing into making the music louder.

The ones who don't are the exception rather than the rule.
 
Caged said:
Most DJs don't care about the quality of what they play, hence why they chuck the gains up to the max and redline the balls off the mixer in an attempt to trick the processing into making the music louder.

The ones who don't are the exception rather than the rule.
Click to expand...

I find it shocking when i see DJ's red line a mixer, so many new noob DJ's these days have no idea on how to use club system makes me sad:(
 
It depends what your definition of good quality is, from that I can tell from speaking to people is that 256kbit or 320kbit is good with 192kbit ok but not that great and where 128kbit has been used but is too low. But in my opinion anything lower than 256kbit is too low and 320kbit is good but optimally you should be getting flacs of about 1mbit. But of course the quality of a multi thousand pound sound system compared to a random video on YouTube with a laptop or music with £2 headphones is completely different. Furthermore if you were talking to someone that walked at Imax they would probably say that anything less that 20mbit would be too low.
 
Spook187 said:
I find it shocking when i see DJ's red line a mixer, so many new noob DJ's these days have no idea on how to use club system makes me sad:(
Click to expand...

Unfortunately they are the reason why there has to be so much limiting and compression at the higher volumes, because while leaving it all out would make music that seldomly needs the headroom sound better, most of the time the club owner would come back to a load of cooked drivers.

The other option is to employ someone to keep an eye on things whenever a DJ is playing so they can react accordingly if they are a 'good' one, but nobody has money for that any more.
 
20mbit will be multi-channel though, so you couldn't make a direct comparison to a stereo data rate.

FLACs vary wildly depending on content, I have as low as 320kbps (yep, lossless 320k!) and as high as 1144kbps, both 16bit 44.1k, level 5 compression, only difference is content.
 
Stuff said:
Are DJs really bothered by high quality sound when in clubs etc? Genuine question..
Click to expand...

It depends on the style of music being played. Most dance DJs are audiophiles, very particular about the sound and how the mixing is done. The DJs and target audience will know if it's the file being played is lossless or lossy, and they can distinguish between different bitrates.

However, if it's the local meat market playing Rhianna, Britney and the current reality show carp, playing track after track without mixing, then the sheeple won't have a clue.
 
Monserrat said:
It depends on the style of music being played. Most dance DJs are audiophiles, very particular about the sound and how the mixing is done. The DJs and target audience will know if it's the file being played is lossless or lossy, and they can distinguish between different bitrates.
Click to expand...

That's hilarious. Distinguish between different bitrates? People can't do that once you get past obvious artefacting on reference systems in perfect rooms, there's no chance of it happening on a club system.
 
Monserrat said:
The DJs and target audience will know if it's the file being played is lossless or lossy, and they can distinguish between different bitrates.
Click to expand...

Never have i been in any club and thought i could tell the difference between some decently encoded lossy stuff and lossless. Christ most people can barely tell the difference with a decent pair of cans. You must be talking about lossless and really low bitrate lossy stuff, because otherwise i just cant see how anybody in any club could ever tell the difference. I mean, the music will be incredibly loud, meaning the tensor tympani will be working over-drive to compress the audio, There'll be absolutely no stereo imagining because we arent talking about two drivers here, but a club filled with speakers....

How can you possibly tell anything in that environment ?
 
First of all are you going to be using CDJ's?

If so use cue cards (SD cards essentially) if possible, so you can jump to certain points in the track.

Make sure the mixer is in Stereo not Mono.

With regards to what format, WAV or FLAC is good.
320kbps MP3 is acceptable.

You might have to redline the **** out of it, there is a loudness war and louder is better :rolleyes:

Depending on genre/where you're performing, if it's dance music then please don't play animals.
 
Okay guys, I was referring to bitrates below 224. Granted, I am moderate/severely deaf, but I can usually still tell through hearing aids, depending on the device(s) outputting the music :-)
 
Distinguishing between different bitrates? Hmm!

Flac/WAV won't help you if you're hooked up to speakers that have been over driven and abused for years on end.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom