I have a folder with songs from Beatport at 320kbs
I burnt that folder onto a CD-R & went to my residency (haven't played from a compact disc in about 3 years)

At the bar is a Pioneer CDJ1000 mk3 and a DJM909 Mixer running into their Mixer board located in the sound room Via XLR cables. I put the CD in and hit play just to have something playing while i connect my SL1 box and fire up scratch live. after hooking it all up i began mixing the other song from the same folder and i had to turn the gain on the serato channel to about 1 o clock just to get the level to hit the first yellow light on that channel.

Just to be clear, the channel with the CDJ going straight into the mixer gain knob is set at around 10 o clock and for me to achieve the same gain levels on the serato channel i had to turn that gain to 1 o clock. Even after mixing the song in immediately noticed it does not sound punchy, crisp and full as compared to the CD output.

Auto gain in serato is set to 92db and the master gain knob is set to 2 o clock.

Why does playing from a cd player sound so much better?