HD wav files

Hey, I'm not sure where to put this but for me it's a little issue. I know a lot of people here are finicky and particular about their uploads but are those huge wav files necessary when uploading your stand alone HD file? Aren't the highest quality mp3 renderings enough for a nice sounding song? The reason I ask is .. lots of times I think it would be nice to make the drums a little louder say for instance but I can't wait for a 60 meg file to download when a great quality 10 or 11 meg mp3 would do just fine for my tastes. It would certainly lower the capacity needed for this website if wavs weren't used. Anyhoo .. just thinking out loud. Carry on. :)

Ernie

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It's a fair point, Pudsy. You're not required to upload WAVs - MP3s often do just fine. Maybe that puts people off using the HD feature as they think it has to be a WAV file?

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Maybe so Martin, maybe .. I thought that maybe was the case when I first joined here. I got nothing against using wavs .. I just find it way too slow with this site and my locale. I also, to my ear, don't hear a lot of difference between a wav and the very highest mp3 rendering that Reaper produces. All the high frequency subtleties, etc., seem to be present. Anyway, no matter .. there are times however when I know a track would sound better with the individual files that I would use if they were mp3's. Oh well.

Ernie

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I agree - the difference between a decent MP3 and a wav aren't massive unless you're a major audiophile/editor. For 99.9% of purposes an MP3 at 320kbps is more than enough. The main thing with giving the HD option for me is that I upload just my mix but without most of the processing I put on the main mix, such as compressors and reverb. Many mixes suffer with the cumulative effect of people processing mixes that have already been processed so I remove most of mine for the HD version to minimise that effect.

When I mix, I leave the existing mixes as they were - I don't process them at all usually. They are as they were downloaded 95% of the time. The only exception is I might put a high pass on a keyboard, guitar or bass to stop it clashing with my kick drum, etc. The only processing beyond that is the 'Maximizer' I apply to the overall mix to boost the levels (not compress where possible) if they need it.

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Yes, I notice you do that with the clean fresh HD upload, makes sense. And processing the already processed ... yeah I can see that. Everyone should have a perfectly fresh track to play with .. it really does make good sense. Good points, lots to learn about a good mix, goes beyond mp3 VS wav. Amazing results here sometimes I must say for people with just a simple interface and program at home. I couldn't imagine anything like this years ago.

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Yup I know a lot of people just upload the instrument-only mp3 and that's fine. That's what I do.

I'm pretty sure everything we do here will be done one day with a special guitar cable which goes directly into a phone one day lol. Into the phone (which with an app replaces things like a Zoom B3 for example), then upload right to Wikiloops from the phone.

Technology keeps improving. Cell phones have the ability to perform many functions people got used to using separate devices for. I saw a youtube video where on a table they had a pile of devices people used to use, which cell phones have now replaced.

A few examples:

Digital cameras, Voice recorders, guitar tuners, webcams for skype, calculators, remote controls for television and other IR controlled devices, and many more. People who resist smart phones aren't living out a virtue, they are simply denying themselves the wonders of the age we live in. Sad thing is it's all easy to use. They have no reason to be afraid the way they are!!!

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I hope to have a cell phone one day. haha

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Actually a high quality, 320 kbit, mp3 upload of a single instrument is fine since there are less details in a single instrument file than in a complete mix for quite obvious reasons.

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it all depends what you're after ... read about mp3 encoding to find out what's lost !
however downloading a wav stem only makes sense if you have all the seps in uncompressed format in your project ;)

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mp3 compression is based on a single, simple but very important fact: In order for two sounds to be distinguishable they must not occupy the same time-frequency space. If they do one of two things will happen:
1) if they are (nearly) equal in amplitude the timbre will change
2) if they are not equal in amplitude on the one with the largest amplitude will be audible

What mp3 does is, it analyses (with a very crude time frame windowing) each time slot and assigns valid bits to only the components it judges audible. A single instrument does not normally produce sounds that overlap in that way. Of course there are exceptions to that, acoustic grand pianos and drumsets might suffer some loss of detail.

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hmm.. that's really interesting about how mp3s are "constructed" ... who knew .. crazy kids with their zeros and ones! :)

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Hardly kids who came up with this. Well seasoned scientists at the [url=http://www.mp3-history.com/en/timeline.html#] Frauenhofer institute[/url]. And a little less known fact, the song they experimented on was "Toms Diner" by Suzanne Vega

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Thanks Nilton for the link ... fascinating stuff, got some reading to do! Very cool man.

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the phone thing is already here!
check out positive grid's bias fx..
and christ! listen to what mp3 does to bass! yuk!
i tried to explain to a friend who thought mp3 played via a blutooth speaker was ok sounding, why it sounded so crap. i gave up in the end and took him into my living room and played dark side of the moon on vinyl to him...... he went very quiet:)

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Yes, mp3 deteriorates sound. But so does analogue circuitry, loudspeakers and other transducers, background noise, ear wax etc. So it's not about if or not but rather to what extent. And the original question was whether it was necessary to upload a .wav file or if a more compact, but still high quality, 320kbps will do (for a HD upload). And since we talking about single instrument files with fewer details than a completed mix the answer is yes, 320 kbps mp3 will suffice in most cases with some exceptions

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