http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/220247.html

Les
thanks for that.I know next to nothing about bit torrent. It does seem as if playing a bit of music or watching a TV show on your computer just got really, really complicated.

gary - bitorrent is pretty easy - ask and you shall be informed.

Works best if you get the mindset and imagine its like a swarm of bees all around th world bring in bits of honey - or something sweet.

Load up with a bunch of torrents and leave on for 24 hours or so them you notice how it works.

My experience is that uTorrent is the best client.

I've got all 48 of Bobs Theme Time Radio Hour so far - a real treat. If you want them I can send 2 X DVDs with them compressed in (lossless) flac. Winamp has a plug in that will play flac native.

Media Monkey is the best client to convert, play or find track info off net and generate covers and songlists for CDs. Media Monkey will also play flac files and convert direct from flac to mps if you want. Neat.

Francis
I used Bit Torrent for the software. Should I remove their software and replace it with uTorrent?

I'm a novice in this---I didn't even know what Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) stood for. So why doesn't Windows Media Player 11 play bit torrent?

I have a download that has been going for 24 hours---I 've been to Canberra and back--- and it appears to be stuck on 63%---it was a multiple download--Bruce Springsteen's Peter Seeger Sessions and The Rising. That is pretty dam slow. Why so, when I have high speed broadband? I've had another go. Same slow downloads---little progress has been made all day.

Is ihe watching grass grow pace because I have my firewall working? I've taken it down to see if it makes any difference, but I'm not very happy about it.

Francis,
yes I am very very interested in Bob's Theme Time Radio. I find the eclecticism very attractive. I'm annoyed that BBC 6 Music broadcasts the programmes in 2007 to UK listeners only.

I guess you must have accessed the programmes this way?

Why do you need to use Winamp rather than Windows Media Player to play the CD's? You can see that I know next to nothing about different media players.

Francis,
I've downloaded Media Monkey The mid- range is very thin on The Band's Northern Lights Southern Cross CD

I'm not sure where you are at so apologies if I talk down or up to you.

You can install uTorrent as well as Bitorrent if fact you could even run them at the same time. But don't.

My experience (and the experience of others) is that uTorrent is a bit simpler to work with and less overheads but still has extensive geek features should you wish to go further.

As you probably know torrents are work by lots of PCs like yours and mine making available files that are already downloaded. The exciting bit is it will even distribute/ upload files that are partly downloaded. So you will be getting tiny bits of a files from possibly UK, usa, oz, south america etc perhaps from 10 machines (like yours and mine) to make up your file. That is as soon as you have downloaded something of a file you participate by uploading some of it straight away.

Another sophistivcaton is that you will to some extent (I'm simplifying here, this depends on a few things) be rewarded for what you are uploading with faster download speeds.

So make sure you have upload (seeding)on. This can be costly if you are with telstra who charge uploads.

Downloads to you depend on who is online, if there are only 3 people in the world interested in d/l or u/l "The Grateful Dead Play Kylie's Greatest Hits Live at Yasgurs Farm" then you will need to be online at the same time as those 3 in order to download. If they are in Ca. they might be night owls or they might be at work. Similar issues with weekends / holidays. So leaving on 24/7 is important.

Older less popular torrents are a problem, new popular are easy as torrents rewards greater numbers of users unlike server based files.

I'd suggest trying some known popular and new files to see what your speeds etc are like. I'd suggest downloading the latest Bobs Theme time from bt.dylantree. As you know there will be a lot of downloaders/ uploaders. The latest one I have is 48 - New York. I can't get thru to the site to see if 49 is up yet.

I get the satellite ones from "Tbuick" not the streaming ones from a name like "poet" or something. Better quality imo.

You need to test with an "easy" file such as above as there might be firewall issues with your settings on PC or modem that are effecting rates.

However its a very human process - people do forget and switch off their machine or forget to fire up their torrent to allow uploads.

I'l leave my machine on over the weekend so at least one will be available.

MediaMonkey or any player shouldn't, as far as I can see, effect the middle range or any other sound, but Ill look around.

I've always used "lossless sound compression" since the early days of trading live music etc. MP3s even at high bitrates lose/ drop information to compress. That information can never be recovered. Lossless, as you might guess compresses without loss, so that when uncompressed ALL the information is intact. In fact you can compress / decompress infinitly, if done correctly (its pretty bloody simple and the best software is free).

Until recently hardly any players (for pc or poddy things) played direct from say FLAC lossless compressed files. Now Winamp (with plugin) and mediamonkey do so you don't have to decompress. AFAIK no DVD/ cd players can playback lossless yet. Some poddy things, iRiver is one, I think, can play back compressed lossless.

There are other lossless as well as FLAC but flac seems to have won dominance with the music nerds.

I only use lossless as I can't see the point in deliberately tossing away information / sound. It's my biggest objection (aside from DRM) to buying music digitally - inferior product.

Of course if people are listening on $50 pc speakers then quality hardly matters.

I just re-read your comments:

I get Bobs Theme Time from
http://bt.dylantree.com/

Trade/swap friendly artists - legal:
http://bt.etree.org/index.php

Torrent FAQs:
http://wiki.etree.org/index.php?page=BitTorrent

More than you'll ever want to know about FLAC:
http://wiki.etree.org/index.php?page=FLAC

I have a download that has been going for 24 hours---I 've been to Canberra and back--- and it appears to be stuck on 63%---it was a multiple download--Bruce Springsteen's Peter Seeger Sessions and The Rising. That is pretty dam slow. Why so, when I have high speed broadband? I've had another go. Same slow downloads---little progress has been made all day.
--
It could be that no one else online while you were, had more than 63% of the album. This often happens, stalling until someone comes online with the bits everyone is after.

Also as mentioned before it might be that the seeders you were leaching off shutdown overnight or for 14 hours of your 24.

Francis,
You are not talking down to me. in any way. You are guiding me into the digital music world. Hence all the questions. I hope that you don't mind being the educator.

The good news is that I'm able to play A Musical History of The Band. It's very interesting. So thanks for pointing me to Media Monkey.

How do you fire up one's torrent to allow uploads? Does it mean turning off the Microsoft firewall on my computer? I want to be a seeder as well as a leecher.

Remember where i said it was a human process and that I'd leave my pc on and seeding over weekend? Well I have had it off for the last 24 hours - forgot.

Now I'll leave it on.

So at least anyone of Bobs shows from No48 backward should be gettable - just d/l the torrent file then connect it in uTorrent.

To connect in uploads and d/l is simple from memery. If you d/l a torrent file,say,
ThemeTime 48 New York.torrent,

it will be a small torrent file that essentially has the info contained in it to enable uTorrent to seek out the rest of the files available on the net, check out how much of that file you have on your pc, if any, and create a folder and begin downloading from possibly 10 sources. At the same time it can begin loading UP from that file to others who don't have those bits.

Once UTorrent is launched you can start, stop or pause files either upping or d/l.

You can check speeds by going: (options) then (speedguide)

Then you can run thru a few speed checks.

Francis,
Thanks. I've downloaded utorrent. But I'm still caught up with the two Bruce Springsteen downloads on BitTorrent I mentioned above. They are very very slow---a couple of days and still only 64.5%. I would have thought that these are not obscure files.

Update
Two days later and the download has creeped up to 74%, and its moving very very slowly. Maybe Springsteen is out of fashion.

I've checked things at my end. Theyr'e okay. It must be the human factor you talk about ie., my download is being throttled. Presumably, I have to wait until I'm l uploading for the throttle to ease.