we all have an approach. one mans thoroughness is another mans overthinking
I park the reference tracks right in the session and keep them muted until I need them. Then when Iām half way through the mix I start toggling them on and off.
Thats the only way I know of to get a hold of a 44.1 or 48k wave file.
I also rip audio from DVDās just to see how the mix was distributed and panned into the different speakers. I use those as references in the same way.
Same with video games. Strait out of the HDMI port of my Xbox, through a decoder, and into a digital input in the DAW.
But hell no, Iām not buying a brand new CD for $15 if its something I can find on Amazon for 99 cents. Same with movies.
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whats the quality of amazon mp3s though?
I wouldnāt hesitate to use one if it was all I had to work with or I was in a time crunch.
?? I was talking about buying a physical CD used off amazon.
lol. so in other words there is no way for me to have a decent ref track on my computer within the hour? lol
I have some decent stuff on CD but nothing really modern. Probably the most āmodernā production I have is a Jorn CD from 2008. Its got some good sounds etc, dunno if anyone would consider it āgreatā though. of coruse if I could make my stuff sound as good id be somewhat happy (for 2 minutes anyway)
says he produced it himself
Thatās not what Iām saying. Iām saying that I prefer a hi res wave file. And I just proved that I have a reference monitoring system where I can clearly and consistently hear the difference between the two.
What I am not saying is that Mp3ās are insufficient for this purpose. What I am not saying is that they are not decent. Nor am I claiming that I am above using them myself.
The question is if I can hear the difference then why am I still ok using mp3ās? Right? The answer is because though I can hear the differences, the differences are minor enough to where a hi quality mp3 still adequately serves its purpose as a reference track.
seeā¦
yeah i gotcha. I seriously doubt my ear is currently sophisticated enough to hear the difference anyway
What I might do is order some Cds for the car, stuff like Chevelle and maybe other stuff mixed by same dude (joe barresi) and in the meantine i might buy a few mp3 just for the heck of it to have something to play with today
JJ, you could also buy a single mp3 from, say, Amazon and then after you d/l, pull up its properties and see what bitrate is listed in the Details, as described above. That way youāre out only a buck, and if itās only 256kbps or less, youāll know your answer.
I think this kind of information is not heavily touted (i.e. they donāt just post the kbps value as a matter of course) on music purchasing websites because so few people care or can tell the difference. @Jonathan and the rest of us are most definitely not the typical music consumers, the vast majority of whom donāt have audiophile-quality playback gear.
When I took that test on my studio-grade cans I still missed one, if memory serves (itās been many months). Drove home the point that ā especially with my deteriorated hearing ā I canāt always tell the diff between 320 kbps mp3 and wav, when theyāre at the same depth of 16 bits. But as I wrote about in my long post I linked to, thereās a world of difference with 24 vs 16 bit depth material.
That said, I wouldnāt bother using 24 bit depth tracks for referencing because I know that hardly anyone uses that, and Iād be holding my stuff up to a standard that is artificially high. Now if I DID use 24-bit reference material and got it to match real well with my mixes, then in principle any such mix rendered at only 16 bits ought to pass with flying colors.
yeah they say they use āvariableā rate bitrate blah blah that they claim averages 256k
Donāt forget that the library has a lot of CDs. And you can often get them cheap on eBay or Amazon too, used.
There is no bit depth in an mp3 file Dave, only a bit rate.
Roger that, my post here predated my being educated in the other thread. 
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