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Poor download quality
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Poor download quality

J Moak 11:21 PM - 20 January, 2016
Aside from free mp3's off of soundcloud I mainly buy my music through beatport and iTunes. Having said that iTunes is a gamble because often times when you analyze the file on serato dj the file off of iTunes is of poor quality and then there goes $1.29 out the window. Are there any ways to avoid having this happen or to re-analyze the file so it's a higher bit rate so I don't have to buy another song?
Dj-M.Bezzle 12:31 AM - 21 January, 2016
Quote:
Aside from free mp3's off of soundcloud I mainly buy my music through beatport and iTunes. Having said that iTunes is a gamble because often times when you analyze the file on serato dj the file off of iTunes is of poor quality and then there goes $1.29 out the window. Are there any ways to avoid having this happen or to re-analyze the file so it's a higher bit rate so I don't have to buy another song?



Become a recording artist and produce your own music
Al Poulin 2:37 AM - 21 January, 2016
All of the songs I get from ITunes are MP4 262kbps of which I convert to MP3 versions that show up as 320kbps in Windows Media Player. All the songs I've bought off of ITunes (roughly 2000) have been of excellent quality. Perhaps your ITunes settings aren't optimal?
DJ Reflex 2:42 AM - 21 January, 2016
Quote:
All of the songs I get from ITunes are MP4 262kbps of which I convert to MP3 versions that show up as 320kbps in Windows Media Player. All the songs I've bought off of ITunes (roughly 2000) have been of excellent quality. Perhaps your ITunes settings aren't optimal?


Al Poulin... Just curious why you convert iTunes tracks to MP3??? Why not just play them as .mva files at the 262 kbps rate? Aren't you subjecting your songs to increased loss in quality when you convert them?
Al Poulin 4:37 AM - 21 January, 2016
All of my music is in WMP (most of it ripped from store bought or ERG/Multii Music CDs at 320kbps), so only the Itunes download need to be converted so that all of my music is in WMP and in MP3 format. I personally HATE Itunes as a music player, it is one of the least intuitive piece of garbage programs I have used. Love the Itunes store, however... WMP is just easier to work with for me. Itunes downloads represent a very small portion of my music collection.

Al
AddamXavier 5:11 AM - 21 January, 2016
Transcoding is a bad practice in general because you are potentially losing quality (going from a lossy file to a lossy file) and changing it to a 320kbps mp3 disguises the actual quality of the recording. So if you were to compare the transcoded file to an 320 mp3 ripped from a CD, the transcoded one would be worse sounding even though it would look the same on the surface.

If you have DRM'ed songs, it would make sense to remove DRM, but if it can be played in Serato, why would you change the file type? WMP 12 supports mp4's according to this as well: support.microsoft.com so anything you purchase in itunes now should be playable in WMP. you can also download codec packs to get mp4's playable in previous versions.

I'm not criticizing you for your process (although it could potentially leave you with worse quality songs than what you purchased), we all have our own workflows, just wanted you to be aware you shouldn't need to transcode if you use WMP 12.
DJ Art Pumpin Payne 6:16 AM - 21 January, 2016
Transcoding aside - I also convert my iTunes downloads to 320 MP3's - I like to be consistent (All Mp3 or Mp4 video). I still keep the original AACs on my main computer.

By default iTunes likes to convert to 128 MP3s (great for iPods and earbud headphones) but you can do a custom settings in Prefs to convert to something better for the club.

I also think Amazon bitrate is 256 MP3 for their music.
Hanginon 1:43 PM - 21 January, 2016
Please don't forget that there is more to the sound quality of the song besides bitrate. I have downloaded paid mp3's from Amazon, and when you look at the file in an editor such as Audacity, the gain is so high that almost the entire file is clipped. Not by much, maybe 1db or so, but enough that I no longer get mp3's there. They (or wherever they get it from) certainly could do a better job ripping.