SwingDJs

MP3 is smart enough that encoding in Mono doesn't save you any space from encoding in Joint Stereo (I've never encoded in vanilla "Stereo"). it's just a bit faster. If you are using APS or APX, it would be safe to change the lower bitrate from 128 to 80 for space savings, using: --alt-pre...

1) My sound card in the machine I'm having problems with may be providing the noise while playing MP3s or WAVs 2) The CD player is toast in the machine so it can't rip as well anymore 3) I have no idea what the problem is and will never fix it, but will find a different machine that works and conve...

Since Kallman specifically mentioned Chicago, I'll throw my biased two cents in the mix. Also, I'll add the disclaimer that I haven't been out dancing in Chicago much recently, I've been getting my dancing fix with almost weekly trips to other cities on the weekends. I find it ironic that Brenda men...

... I can always tell when someone is DJing off MP3s as oppsed to wav files. That might be because of the system or bitrate of those whom I hear DJ off laptops most often. Granted, I suspect I might also be one of the few who really notices or cares about the sound quality difference between a wav ...

Please join the Chicago Swing Community as we welcome the Lindy Hop world to the 6th Windy City Lindy Exchange! WCLX 6 will be held October 15-17, and will feature 3 fabulous nights of dancing to some of Chicago’s finest swing bands, as well as local, national and international DJ’s. This year, the ...

I forgot to mention in my previous posts that most of my audio compression friends who want more quality than LAME APS provides, go Lossless. FLAC seems to be the one that most all of them prefer - http://flac.sourceforge.net/index.html I figure it will be several years before hard drive space is ch...

Older tunes often need less bitrate because they are mono recordings, not because of a lack of dynamic range. Dynamic range of analog medium is less than the potential that CDs provide, but many of the popular CDs produced today use very little dynamic range (in an effort to sound louder on the radi...

For APS vs APX: from this post by Dibrom, who developed the alt-presets: "As I've said before, and this is really no joke people, --alt-preset extreme really doesn't offer any true benefits in sound quality across the board. It sounds a tiny, little, ever so subtle bit better on some of the sam...

Awesome, thanks. That is about what I figured.

How much is the sound engineer doing in the manufacturing process?

Is there going to be a significant difference in the sound quality as well?

When I'm dancing at an event and I like the band, I make an effort to get their CD if they have one. I'm finding more and more frequently that I end up buying shrink-wrapped, home-made CDRs with inkjet labels, rather than pressed CDs. I feel like I've been cheated to pay $15 or $20 for something of ...

Oh cool, you updated your site. About time.

I was just getting into digital audio when I first read it.

Thanks again for your site, btw. Excellent resource. I'll send my comments on it over e-mail.

-Titus

Just thought I'd post a few quick notes for anyone thinking about digitally archiving their music. 2 parts: 1) Extraction Exact Audio Copy is a must to make sure you don't get jitters when you copy your CD onto your hard drive 2) Encoding The most anal way to do this would be to encode to FLAC, whic...

USB 2.0 / Firewire is essential. Larger drives are newer drives which usually means better platter densities which provide more speed, not less speed. If it concerns you, make sure it is 7200RPM, and you should be fine. I wanted a Western Digital, but ended up with a Maxtor since it was in stock whe...

Nero is probably ok to normalize tracks being burned to a CD if the tracks were copied from other CDs . When copying tracks from a CD, the most trusted way to guarantee a perfect copy is to use Exact Audio Copy . A better option for creating normalized tracks on a CD from other CD tracks is to use W...

Are any dj's who read this forum (besides Roy) going to be at the Chicago Exchange? I'm specifically curious about those staying through Sunday late night.

Thanks,
Titus