what gives ASOT that crisp clear sound? i know there's some level of mastering involved. but i'll hear a track on ASOT then go and buy the WAV of the same track and play it and it doesn't have that crispness i remember from the show. what do they do to the radioshow, and other shows that add that perfect blend of audio perfection. i want to add it to my mixes and get away from the dull sound that some good tracks have.

thanks...

There ran through a compressor. The WAV is actually far more crisp, you're probably just used to hearing the songs on ASOT.

i like the compressed sound much more than the original to be honest
and if you listen to radio rip (like slam fm broadcast), it's even more compressed, too much compressed, although that makes any kick sound nice and punchy. anyone know what compressors they use?

Well all of the ASOT episodes are made with Ableton, could possibly be a plugin for it! Do a bit of googling, see if you can come up with anything. I doubt you will get an actual answer here.

i know armin has nothing to do with that, because asot 2009 and other compilation are not compressed at all, the sound the same as WAV files
i also found asot episodes in the interenet a couple times that were NOT radio-RIPped, and they were also not compressed.

i know the guys at the radio have these expensive hardware compressors and mastering tools, but i'm sure there's a software based alternative, that maybe comes close in terms of quality.
i can't find a topic on trance.nu forums for decent compressor plug-in discussion, maybe you guys can reccomend something

theres a compressor in ableton already,

In short: Armin doesn't compress shit. The radio stations do. Unfortunately.

cool. thanks guys. i was just curious. i don't have ableton nor do i know much about it. i'll look into it tho

thanks

Compression is ruining the music. It is used to blast up the volume of tracks.
Get better headphones or speakers, and you will appreciate the quality more.

This is TruE... On TheMixingbowl.org and many other sites there is the SBD (Source by DJ) sound file of ASOT out there... Quality is 100 fold compared to
Stations Like Di.fm that use Dynamic Range Compression... here is a link might help you fellOs out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

Armin maybe using a compression but not to it FULLest extent like the stations this is the bad thing

I heard DJ Shah & Adrina Thorpe - Back To You (Aly & Fila remix) on ASOT episode 362 (is it the correct number?) and ASOT CD. When I listened to the compressed episode, everything was ok, but the uncompressed track on the CD... when the breakdown began, the sound became very quiet, and after some seconds banged at full volume. I prefer the version broadcasted at ASOT episode.

Armin uses Ableton with the Waves Gold Plugin pack, pretty sure that's the one. They have some amazing plugins.

Waves Gold Pack

Plus there's a whole lot of "i know what i'm doing with these plugins" going on

I would like to know what plugins he does use exactly to run ASOT through before we hear it though.

and they're also running the sound through some kind of plugin that boosts/quiets down high and low frequencies when they are louder/more quiet than they should be

I've actually been looking into this. The program I believe is called Platinum Notes. It normalizes volume and repairs clipped peaks and dynamics of the song. And thus making it one flat volume all the way through. It gives it this sort of compressed sound similar to that you hear on A State of Trance. I've been messing around with it this week and I'm unsure if I like it.

PM me if you want a preview of what it sounds like.

bit of a random question this one, but does armin recieve tunes as wav format??? cos if he has (320kbs) mp3's then isnt he taking a compressed file and putting it bk out as a wav once he renders the ASOT show in ableton?

It isnt Armin that compresses ASOT. It's stations like di.fm.
I just ran my latest mix through Platinum Notes and I got that same nasty compressed sound you hear on ASOT.

A little something I like to add. From what I researched, his radio shows are encoded with FhG (not lame) and are in 320 mp3 format. My question would be which software he uses to encode his asot shows with?

I know from other DJ's that they only use wav tracks both for their live sets and the creation of their radio shows, with the odd exception for an 320 mp3 track if it's really hot and absolutely not available in wav.

Once finished the radio shows are converted to 320 mp3 before they are delivered to the radio stations. The radio stations then recode them to various lower bitrates, depending on the bitrate they stream them with. So most radio shows that eventually reach your computer have already seen 2 mp3 conversions on top of each other. This partly explains the far from optimal sound quality. But then again it's all for free so who's complaining. Airwave radio was never exactly cd quality either.

I don't know myself which way Armin does it, but my guess would be he delivers ASOT in mp3 320 to the stations as well. The reason why I think this is that he often makes the show when he's on the road and therefore has to upload it from dodgy hotel room and airport internet connections. I can't imagine he would want to or often even be able to upload the full 2 hours in wav quality that way. Just this week he was complaining about the crappy internet speed in his Ibiza hotel when uploading ASOT 414.

Typically thats what many DJ's do as far as Wav to mp3 conversions go...

Also adding to this topic, I just finished listening to Ruben de Ronde's set and also noticed that very same asot sound. B) Im assuming he would know what Armin uses since Ruben works closely with him. You can grab a copy of his shows on Afterhours.fm to give it a listen. They offer download links to all the DJ's shows within 48 hours.

What has your lame post to do with the topic. Post your fooking useless spam somewhere else.

Agree.. sa4sa are you aware you are posting illegal links?