Thread: Been messing around ripping vinyl..

I haven't got much vinyl but the vinyl I do have I've started to rip just for an experiment into the sound difference of 128/192/320/wavs etc.

What I've found is that wav's beat any mp3 played loud. I don't understand what happens to the file or anything once it's been ripped and I don't want to confuse myself with it but to a simpleton why do wav's sound so much better than mp3 even at 320?

Less compression mate. If you imagine a normal mp3 waveform as:

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

a wav. waveform is more

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^

if you get me, so you'll hear stuff better...

think that's what it is anyway

So, it's more structured you mean?

I have an mp3 of Doc Scott - NHS (midnite mix) which is a good rip at 320. I've ripped my vinyl of it as a wav and it sounds so much better and so much clearer.

No, not more structured, like the individual elements (like the diffent colours in Serato) are more spaced out so you can hear them better rather than everything mushed and squashed together...

God, where's Haze, stuz, and China when you bloody need 'em?

while kompressing it via mp3 various frequencies are cutted away.

e.g. frequencies higher than 18khz

normally the human ear does not hear those frequenzies.

which program do you use to convert your wav to mp3?

The bigger the file the better the sound quality, & wavs are BIG.

Originally Posted by mabaker

which program do you use to convert your wav to mp3?

I'm using Cool Edit mate.

A wav will contain much more info than an mp3 (still not as much as the vinyl itself though).
An mp3 removes bits it thinks you can't hear/don't need to hear in order to squash the filesize down.

Plus some mp3 encoders are better than others - cool edit doesn't use Lame (unless as an extra), so I'd recommend using something else to mp3 stuff up.
I use Audiograbber (and use the lame plugin).

i guess RG said it. i use wavelab but this prog is a bit more expensive.

I've learnt quite a bit about audio ripping from this thread here (still class myself as a novice and still learning!). It does seem as though MP3's are better suited to MP3 players than being played out on a hi-fi (or while DJ-ing). When ripping my vinyl, I've used Sound Switch to convert my WAV files, but set the converter to delete the WAV once finished, which has got me wishing that I'd kept the original file now. The only advantage of this is saving disc space, but I'm gonna look into keeping my WAV's in future.

To save disc space you should convert your wavs to flac, personally i think vinyl rips in flac/wav is overkill, a 320/vo vbr mp3 is good enough for me.

Do MP3's do the same job as WAV's played on a big system ie, playing in a club???

beatport sells 320kbs mp3 since ages and nearly every dj's uses them in the clubs worldwide...so the answer is YES
the audience won't hear any difference if you play the whole set digital. sometimes some 320kbs mp3's from this place here are recorded very quiet so that you can hear the difference. i use to normalize them in wavelab.
but it has to be mentioned...while saving a wave as mp3 you still loose data compared to the original wave....so it will never reach the same quality as the original.

You'll only ever need WAV's if you're playing out on a BIG sound system, for pretty much all other purposes a well ripped 320kbps mp3 will suffice! Saying that, my mate was DJ'ing at a wedding I was at a couple of weeks back using Serato & on a decent PA system using 320's all night without any issues.

As Swipez said though, it's mainly about the waveforms on tunes & you'll notice new tunes have much bigger waveforms (which you'll see on Serato, VDJ or pretty much any software used) & therefore sound louder & better.

Its all about the sonics.....