Best soundquality for CDJ series?

I find it ironic that Steve Jobs cared about sound quality and listened to vinyl. He was the single person who did more to harm the cause of sound quality than any person in history. I was always annoyed with Steve Jobs about that. MP3 should never have become such an acceptable format. It was a shoehorn to solve an Internet bandwidth issue that no longer exists. MP3 should be eliminated from this world at this point. There is zero excuse for the existence of MP3 anymore. I frankly wish that Pioneer would dump all support for the MP3 format.

As for 24 bit FLAC, I again don't see the point of running encoded audio, even when it is "lossless." Just use uncompressed audio. I would love to be able to download 24 bit AIFF files. You say you prefer vinyl, well guess what? Vinyl is the ultimate in "uncompressed" audio recording. So a 24 bit WAV or AIFF would be closer to vinyl than a FLAC file.

In that first video you linked, you can see a Pioneer CDJ-2000 in the Funktion One studio (at 00.57)

Also, here's an interview with Tony about the CDJ-2000 when it was just launched: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbJkVtrj82s

This subject has been debated at many lengths before on these boards... We feel Pioneer are heading in the right direction.

"This subject has been debated at many lengths before on these boards... We feel Pioneer are heading in the right direction."

Can you please give me a link. I would love to read a official statement from a Pioneer sound engineer about it not the salesman. Thank you.

Yes the CDJ2000 has a better DAC on board. I do not request that the CDJ series has 96/24 output but at least a digital out that supports this standard. So we can connect any cusom DAC to it we want. This is equivalent to me to chose your needle/cartridge and phono preamp on a turntable. I hope you understand my point of view. Some people are perfectionists, Steve Jobs to name one, and I do not think it is the wrong direction.

Sorry for the typing mistakes. I am busy right now.

@ Alex. The CDJ-2000 has a digital output which does bypass the internal DAC, if I understand correctly. And it does support 24 bit.

However, the DAC which Pioneer put in the CDJ-2000 is absolutely top notch quality. Much better than the DaC in the CDJ-1000 MK3. So if you have an analog mixer then it would probably be best to use the RCA outputs on the CDJ-2000 and take advantage of the internal DAC.

If you have a digital mixer, then i believe the best option is to use the digital output and minimize the number of D/A and A/D conversions. Fewer conversions = less signal degradation.

According to Tony Andrews, "MP3 is kid's stuff"  and should never be used in a professional environment.

Nice one, Brother!  ;)   I'm with you 100%.

yeap, I agree.

All fine and dandy, but there's not enough content available in 24/96.  Just like when people ask about music videos.  If you look at even 3 years ago,  it was only a tiny sliver of even NEW videos that were being released in HD format.

As Gavin says, it's a step in the right direction as the Pioneer players currently allow for AIFF and WAV playback at 24/48.  Yes, you may produce at 24/96 or even 24/192, but still, 24/48 is better than most of what's commercially available for DJs anyhow.

This are of course solid arguements from the perspective of a Pioneer businessman but to me in the field of engineering and audiophile hifi gear it sounds like a "excuse". It is the old conflict. Budget vs. quality.

Why is there no 24/96 downloads available? I say because of the lack of support in the tools. Not the other way round.

If Pioneer is a company dedicated to quality and perfection the TOP of the line product would get THE BEST functionality on the market. No compromise here. However money is important and 80-90% of DJs do not appreciate music output quality.

Strange that Traktor and Serato did the effort to develop the 24/96 support? Why that: competition between both companys.

I think the CDJ-2000 is not forever and in 5 years we willl see a CDJ-3000 and some day CDJ-4000 that could support the standard as we need a few more arguments to upgrade*.* And "space" to save files as well as downloading speed will be then so cheap that we can think of downloading.

Sorry for my bad english, I hope you appreciate my stand of view althoug I represent a minority.

these things are overrated..

If you look at straight facts about human hearing and mathematics then you will see 24/48k is good enough for 99 percent of the time..

Other then that it's just the idea planted in your head that it might actually be 3/4 times better or more depth, but you won't hear the difference in comparison to 24 bit / 48

i agree with F!rmwar3, 24/96 for playback is unnecessary for DJing and is the main reason why downloads of this quality are not available. if the demand was there from the pro's, they would be available. There are plenty of DJ systems that can play 24/96 already...

dance music in general, dj mixers, soundsystems are not 'audiophile' by their very nature. The music has a small dynamic range and is heavily compressed and limited which totally bypasses any advantages that 24/96 may offer for playback (recording is a different matter).

@alex, i disagree, i think most djs care about sound quality, they just know that a 16/44 wav or even a well encoded 320 mp3 is plenty good enough. i'm sure that pioneer will support higher bit rates in the future though for those that want it.

Phil909 is correct about most music producers these days having no clue about audio quality, and therefore compressing the crap out of their productions until there are no dynamics.  In this regard, 24 bit audio would be rather pointless if they do not understand how to take advantage of the benefits.

The best analogy I can think of is this....    what good is it to have a $500,000 Ferrari if you don't know how to drive a car in the first place?

That said, I feel that we should be trying to advance this industry back in the direction of high quality audio.  Unfortunately, the last decade and a half has done so much harm to music, and audio quality.  MP3 is probably the worst thing to ever happen to music, at least from a quality perspective.  Therefore, I would like to see more support of 24 bit files and hopefully over time the producers will learn how to make music and master it properly to the 24 bit standard.

Phil909 is also correct that 24/48 vs. 24/96 is a rather weak argument at this point in time.  I can understand an MP3 for 24 bit, or even a 16 bit vs. 24 bit argument.....   but we are getting a little ridiculous if this is about 48k vs. 96k  rates on 24 bit files.

Great so this month you release the CDJ-2000NSX2 that finally supports 96/24.. only took 4 years since I suggested this.. so to all the guys who said you do not need this what is your opinion now?

I will still tell you that 99.9% of the population can't tell the difference between a 256K MP3 and a 24bit/96k uncompressed audio file when played on a typical club system.

If we're talking festival-size sound or a multi-million dollar club, why not squeeze every bit and hertz out of that audio supply?!

"I will still tell you that 99.9% of the population can't tell the difference between a 256K MP3 and a 24bit/96k uncompressed audio file when played on a typical club system."

I agree this is true with the majority of music played with CDJs worldwide.

For me the biggest problem is still that the DJs bring bad quality music and think they can make it sound better with these super expensive gadgets.

Which major company of dj file shops is selling 96/24 flac today? I think beatport is still only doing 48/16 wav/aiff right?

I'm not sure, as I'm not playing massive systems I don't really have the need for it and thus I haven't shopped for high quality files. May as well only pay for what I'll use, right? ;)

There is no commercial source for 24 bit music files for the DJ community.  There are stores like Pono and HDtracks, but the music is almost all Pop, Jazz and Classical.

Beatport sells a max resolution of 16/44.1 WAV or AIFF files.  These are "CD quality"

Here is the issue with trying to play 24 bit music files on a Pioneer CDJ-2000 or 2000 Nexus.  If you want to use the Digital output from the player into the mixer, then you must set the player to 24 bit in the user settings.  I can tell you that with the CDJ-2000 and 2000Nexus, when the digital output is set to 24 bit and you play a 16 bit file the player screws up the sound because it attempts to up-sample.  It causes glitches in the music.  Makes it sound like it's clipping, even.

So.... let's say you had a few tracks in 24 bit.  That's great, go ahead and play them.  But then you want to play a track that is 16 bit....  well you now have to go into the settings and switch the digital output from 24 bit to 16 bit, or else you get glitchy audio.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in support of hi res music.  But the Pioneer players currently on the market don't work well enough to allow a user to play hi res and standard res without going through extra steps to change settings on the player.