1) Standardize on an MP3 format for ALL your tracks.
MP3s are the standard for all digital DJing tools. If you have tracks in WMA (windows media player) AAC (apple format) or FLAC (high quality lossless audio format), these tracks will NOT play on all digital DJing tools and DJ MP3 players. You don't want to get caught out in a club (like I have done on several occasions) going to play a track that is not in MP3 format, only to have it not play, and hear a horrible silence. So I suggest standardizing on MP3s.
You will want to pick the highest bitrate available - gone are the days when hard disc space mattered; nowadays your mobile phone can store about 10 albums on its own. The higher the bitrate, the more information about the music track is stored in the MP3, and the better the sound quality. So I suggest going for the max - 320KB/s bitrate.
I've also just bought some top of the range, pioneer CDJ-400s, and these things don't like VBR - variable bit rate - tracks. Since pioneer make the club standard CD players, and the feature set in the CDJ400 is likely going to be seen on the next CDJ1000MK4, which is going to be installed in every club everywhere when it comes out, I would suggest you stay with CBR (constant bit rate) tracks instead of VBR.
So unless you've got a good reason for not following my advice, pick 320KB/s Constant Bit Rate (CBR) MP3 files.
2) Set your CD ripper to extract audio from the source at the highest possible quality.
You really must do this before you start digitalizing your CD and/or vinyl collection. iTunes defaults to a *poor* quality CD -> MP3 copy that will sound *poor* (and may not even play) when you play those tunes out on a club environment. But you can change it. So set it to the MP3 format you have decided on, if you're following my advice, that is 320KB/s bitrate Constant bitrate MP3s. Here is the settings you will need in the current version of iTunes, if you choose to opt for the simple route and use that to import all your CDs:
3) Converting other files to MP3s.
In general, you want to minimize the amount of converting you do between the CD original and the final MP3. Having to convert a file means that there is a possible loss in audio quality when it is recompressed and possibly resampled. But as mentioned, I recommend you have all your audio files in the same format. So you might have to convert those old WMAs, AACs and whatever else you've got lying around. I can recommend a program called 'TuneBite' to convert different types of audio files to MP3s. It works well, is commercial, but quite cheap for what it does.
4) Burning to CD
If you want to burn your music collection to MP3 CDs or audio CDs for use with DJ CD players, which you will probably want to do at some point, you should consider the following:
a) Choice of media. Some brands of CDRs won't play in some types of digital CD player. Generally you'll be fine, but you might want to do some research first on your target CD player to see if it suffers from any problems.
b) Which program you're going to use to burn the CDs. I have found that far and away the best CD burning program is Nero for the PC. It allows you to burn at variable speeds, print out labels, index cards, supports CD TEXT, which is great if your CD player supports it, and other features. I have also seen that Toast for the Mac is a great CD burner.
c) Labelling/Indexing system - how are you going to keep track of the music on your CD? Most people write an index card, and write the title of the CD with a marker pen on the CDR. I have been buying LightScribe CDRs, which allow you to print the CD label onto the top of the disk, and have been printing out index cards using Nero for each CDR to keep in my CD wallets underneath the CD.
5) Keep backups of your music files.
Now you have all your music in one place, you certainly don't want to lose it all. I suggest purchasing an external hard disc for your backup needs. I recommend something like a Western Digital My Book drive for backup. Note that you will not want to use this driver as your external hard disc for playing MP3s live, because it's a slow drive. However it offers a good ratio of MB/money.
That's all for now. Feel free to chime in with any questions if you want.
