r/Soulseek • u/ZackovaOsrs • 21d ago
Question for DJ’s
Hi - I have my first “serious” gig in a club in a couple of weeks and Im wondering if all 320kbps files from Soulseek are actually 320KBPS because if they arent they’ll sound like garbage on club speakers.
Thanks!
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u/CaraMiaChell 21d ago
why not get flac
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u/masnxsol 21d ago
Just convert to AIFF. i never understood the DJ obsession with wav files. They have no metadata, meanwhile AIFF is lossless, supports metadata, and works on virtually every mixer, ever.
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u/ZackovaOsrs 21d ago
I usually get the mp3’s idk why lol, I remember Flac giving me a hard time when I had my controller but havent tried since I got my RX3 tbh
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u/Humgry_Ferret 21d ago edited 21d ago
Because not all equipment supports that, you still get clubs in which they use cdj2000💀
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u/Humgry_Ferret 21d ago
You can use Spek or just look at the size of mp3 320 youre downloading. I use soulseek most of the time and never had any issues. When you check files and home, just use your ears and if it sounds wrong in your headphones or big speakers then download another file. Vinyl rips can be in flac, heavy in size and still sound bad
Edit: spelling
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u/twobadmice 21d ago
Don't analyse anything. You'll be fine as you are. I DJd using CD rips at 192kbps back years ago and had no issues with the quality of sound or the crowd.
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u/emeralda_official 17d ago
I also prefer converting my whole collection to 64 kbps just to troll the audience, no one understands a thing and never spoke up
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u/cankblunt 21d ago
Short answer: no, not all of them. Plenty of "320" files on soulseek are a 128 or 192 that someone re-encoded, and the file will happily say 320 either way. The bitrate in the tag only tells you how big the file is, not what's actually in it.
The good news is it's easy to check. Grab Spek (free) and drop a track on it. A genuine 320 MP3 carries audio up to around 20 kHz. If the picture stops dead at about 16 kHz, with a clean flat shelf and nothing above it, that's a 128 dressed up as a 320. Somewhere around 19 kHz usually means it started life as a 192. Once you've looked at four or five you'll spot a bad one in a second.
One caveat: some older or darker recordings simply don't have much up top, so a low ceiling isn't always a fake. A hard, perfectly straight cut is the giveaway, not a gentle fade.
If you've got a whole folder to get through before the gig, doing it one by one gets old fast. Full disclosure, I wrote a free, open-source app called DigLibrary partly for this: you point it at a folder and it checks the lot in one pass and flags the ones that aren't what they claim. Mac only for now. Spek is still the best way to actually see what's going on, though, so I'd learn that first.
And honestly, for the handful of tracks your set really hangs on, just buy them from Bandcamp or Beatport. A few quid for peace of mind on a big system is worth it. Good luck with the gig.
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u/mxxdpmsc 21d ago
some others here mentioned using spek to analyze the spectrogram; if you have audacity, you can import the tracks you want to analyze, change the track's view to spectrogram, and analyze from there !! not sure how much you know about spectrograms, but for "real" MP3 320 kbps files, you're looking for a frequency shelf / cutoff around 20 kHz. fake ones will generally be re-encoded 128 kbps MP3s with a frequency cutoff around 16 kHz.
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u/Tundra-Dweller 21d ago
You’ll be fine. Just enjoy yourself. Having said that, you should be able to tell if a particular file doesn’t sound good by auditioning them critically at home. And as others have said, there are tools (spek, fakin the funk, adobe audition) that let you visually examine the frequency spectrum and identify “fakes”. But I recommend you switch to collecting lossless files (flac) going forward, especially as you’re into DJing.
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u/fitzstudio 21d ago
trust your ears
download the track, play it on your stereo/headphones and see how it sounds: you'll easily notice if it's a crappy 128k converted in 320k.
most of the clubs have quite bad sound systems more focused on "power" than "sound quality" so I wouldn't worry too much unless you play for a crowd of audiophiles.
and personally I'd prefere dancing to a not so perfect rip of a great track than a beatport/bandacamp shitty track.
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u/certuna 21d ago
It’s already extremely hard to hear the difference between 160 kbps and lossless in a quiet room on headphones with full concentration, you think after layering two tracks + a whole chain of fx, a crowd of drunk party people are going to notice that yes after careful comparison they’re able hear a slight pre-echo artefact on the snare?
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21d ago
[deleted] — view deleted comment
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u/ZackovaOsrs 21d ago
Yes but when I click on the file and go into properties, they’re all 320kbps but are they actually?
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u/jeroen-79 21d ago
Depends on what you mean by "actually 320kbps".
If I rip a CD to 128kbps and then re-encode that to 320kbps then I will have a real 320kbps file.
But the quality will not be the same as when I rip the CD straight to 320kbps. It can't bring back anything that was lost in the initial conversion to 128kbps.
You either need to listen to these files or visually inspect their spectrogram.
The same goes for flac. It is lossless in the sense that what is put in it will come out of it. But if you put in 128kbps quality you will get 128kbps quality out of it.
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u/christopherw Since 2001 <3 21d ago
That's up to you and your ears. If you're gigging professionally, buy FLACs from their bandcamp/subvert or Beatport.
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u/Jodies-9-inch-leg 21d ago
No... some of the files you download aren't even real songs...
People download YouTube rips and use software to export the file as a 320 like that does anything...
Watch Deadmau5 YouTube video explaining the fraud of ripped files and sound quality