Audio Quality for Serato DJ Pro

Catch the fake 320s hiding in your crates.

A file can claim 320 kbps or lossless in its tag and still be an upscaled 128. Crate Cleaner reads the real frequency ceiling of every track, so transcodes can't hide behind a tag, and ranks them so you know what to replace first.

Try it free on your librarySee how it works
macOS · Free trial · No card · Runs on your real Serato library
The Audio Quality page showing counts of fake, suspect, warning and clean tracks, with a table of fake files listing measured versus claimed bitrate and one-click Fix buttons
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Verdicts, clean to fake
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Spectral windows per track
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Click to fix
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Files changed to detect

The method

The spectrum doesn't lie.

Lossy encoders cut off high frequencies at a ceiling set by their bitrate. A real 320 keeps content up to around 20.5 kHz; a 128 upscaled to a 320 tag still stops near 16 kHz. Crate Cleaner samples three windows per track, finds that brickwall, and maps it back to the bitrate the file was really made from.

A detail view of the quality table showing tracks with a FAKE verdict, their claimed bitrate against the measured frequency cutoff, a score, and a plain-language explanation of why each was flagged

The verdicts

Four honest verdicts, biased to protect real files.

Every judged track lands in one of four buckets. The scoring leans conservative on purpose: a genuinely dark master or vinyl rip is never called fake for a gentle roll-off, and low-sample-rate files are never punished for frequencies they physically cannot hold.

Clean

Genuine encode

Content reaches the ceiling its format and bitrate should. Nothing to do.

Warning

Gentle roll-off

High end fades early but rolls off gradually. Often a dark master or vinyl rip, not a transcode.

Suspect

Probable transcode

A cutoff a step or two below the claimed bitrate. Worth a closer look.

Fake

Confirmed upscale

A hard brickwall far below the tag. A low-bitrate source wearing a 320 or lossless label.

In context

Ranked into your Top Fixes.

The fake-quality count is not buried on a settings screen. It lands on your Library dashboard as a ranked fix, so replacing transcodes sits alongside every other cleanup, ordered by how much it improves your library.

The Library Overview dashboard with a Top Fixes panel highlighting Replace fake-quality tracks alongside the library health score and inventory

How it works

From scan to a clean library in three steps.

Detection is completely read-only. Analyzing your library never changes a byte of a single file.

  1. AnalyzeCrate Cleaner scans each track's spectrum in the background and stores a verdict and score.
  2. ReviewFilter to fake, suspect or warning, and read the measured versus claimed evidence for each flag.
  3. Replace or repairSwap in a real copy, or send fixable files straight to Audio Repair.

FAQ

Questions DJs ask.

What is a fake 320?
An MP3 tagged as 320 kbps that was actually encoded from a lower-bitrate source, such as a 128. The tag says 320 but the audio has the frequency ceiling of the smaller file, so you are carrying low quality under a high-quality label.
Will it wrongly flag my dark or vinyl-sourced tracks?
It is built not to. Gradual high-frequency roll-offs, which is what dark masters and vinyl rips look like, are capped at a warning rather than called fake. Files with a genuinely low sample rate are never called fake for frequencies they cannot contain.
Does analyzing my library change any files?
No. Quality detection is entirely read-only. It reads audio to measure the spectrum and writes only a verdict into Crate Cleaner's own database, never to your files or to Serato.
How accurate is it?
It uses the same spectral brickwall method as established transcode detectors, sampling multiple windows per track and biasing toward protecting authentic files, so false fakes are rare.
What do I do with the tracks it finds?
Replace them with a real copy, or repair the fixable ones in place with Audio Repair. The dashboard ranks the whole batch by impact so you can start where it matters most.

Find out what's really in your crates.

Free trial on your real Serato library. Scan for transcodes before paying anything.

Download for macOS

Keep reading

More of what shipped in 2.1

Guide

How to Spot a Fake 320kbps MP3 (and Fake FLAC)

New in 2.1

Repair the fixable tracks losslessly

New in 2.1

Build Serato crates from Spotify playlists

Feature

Find duplicates and keep the best copy