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update, OK I've been clued in on "flac" files. IMO they are not worth the incredibly huge size diff from mp3s but if that's all I can get I guess I'll take it. But I can't find a flac player anywhere (surprise, windows' media player can't handle it). Anyone? Thx
Location: West Los Angeles and Rancho Palos Verdes
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You need seeders and peers to get a fast download rate -- the more the faster you'll go to a point. Also, most torrents are slow to start, but as you get more pieces to trade with other peers, you'll pick up speed. I've downloaded as fast as 90 kb/s, which is the maximum my DSL allows. If one torrent is too slow, try others until you find a fast one. Also, don't be a leecher -- seed when you're done so other can enjoy what you've downloaded as well.
You can play FLAC with WinAmp. If you are getting slow speeds you probably need to open a port on your router. When you open BitTorrent there be a symbol near the bottom that is either a exclamation point, triangle or check mark. If it is one of the first two, click on it and you can find instructions on how to open the port.
I use utorrent - I think it's a little faster for some reason. I can get up to 200 k per second if there are enough seeders. And utorrent also lets you pick and choose individual files within the torrent, so I don't need to download a huge torrent if I only want one file.
The key is finding torrents with lots of seeds. Torrent search engines will show a lot of torrents that hardly anyone is seeding, which makes your download speed really slow.
utorrent is great! I use it and love the options it has set. If you're downloading is slow, make sure your ports are forwarded correctly also. It is a program that rewards sharing, the more you share, the faster you download.
Also, FLAC files are infinitely better than lossy, crappy mp3 files. Anybody with a working pair or ears can hear the difference in the two formats. Winamp, foobar200 and even WMP with a codec pack can play them. I try to only get lossless formats, since external hard drives are so cheap now. I just purchased another 1TB HD to keep going. I am ripping all of my CDs as backups and want perfect copies, thus lossless FLAC is perfect in case the originals are damaged.
Right now I'm somewhere around 9k FLACs and trying to replace most mp3s I have.
Oh yeah avoid The Pirate Bay, since they sold out and will very soon be a shell of what it used to be.
Whenever you are looking for a specific file, use the sort button and sort by "seeders descending". It'll list the seeders from high to low. You typically select the torrent with high seeding. When torrenting, you usually want to keep a decent ratio of 1.000++ (1:1) (upload:download). Many people hate torrenters who "hit and run", but most do it anyways. Hit and run refers to people who quickly download the file, closes the connection, and not upload it. I use the website, Demonoid.
Oh yeah avoid The Pirate Bay, since they sold out and will very soon be a shell of what it used to be.
What will be the next best thing to TPB?
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Thx
