soulseek

logged on today and had the dreaded crash that makes you lose your queued files and chat history :(

honestly i can't imagine spending a lot of time on metadata for music you've downloaded. you don't know the provenance, don't know if it was ripped using EAC with error correction on or off a scratched disc with some windows spyware program.

music you've ripped yourself, however, i can see why you'd get obsessive, identifying the exact release on discogs... maybe you'd even go as far as scanning the album art yourself!

Hmm struggling to understand your hang up about the provenance. If the sound quality is good it's indistinguishable from any other digital album in my library whether I ripped it myself or not.

You mean distinguishing remaster from original - that kind of thing?

the basic fear is that the FLAC you downloaded is actually just transcoded from an mp3, or if it's mp3s you download, that it was ripped from a scratched up disc without error correction, which maybe led to it having artifacts etc. that you don't even know about until you compare it to a pristine, original copy. if you download a vinyl rip, are you really downloading the vinyl rip or is it a youtube-dl rip somebody did of somebody else's vinyl rip? itunes era gets even worse with itunes exclusive content - if you're downloading an album in FLAC that has the itunes exclusive content, it's probably been transcoded as for a certain time itunes songs were only available in 256kbps AAC. ever notice when soulseeking that every user's version of a track or album will be a different filesize? probably 95% of the time it's from different metadata, but maybe there is something different about how they sound?

sort of reminds me of how pirate groups used to include an actual photo of the CD they used for the release, maybe along with the encoder settings (LAME or die), to show it was a good rip.

even if you have a pristine source, there are certain albums that won't sound right when ripped unless the right settings are applied - see this discussion about CDs with pre-emphasis flags https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Pre-emphasis i believe there was discussion in the CDs thread about this too. or maybe it's a gapless CD but the gapless nature wasn't encoded right.

look, it all gets a bit neurotic and you sound like you're already pretty neurotic about the metadata, so sorry for introducing something else to get neurotic about, speaking as one neurotic to another. if it helps you can try to become a member of a group like redacted or something, where somebody else has done all the obsessing about the quality of the files before they make their way onto the platform.

(and yes, that's not even getting into the original vs. remaster, and whether the person who ripped it bothered to even doublecheck the musicbrainz or w/e ID3 tags their software automatically appended to the rip. but maybe if you're only into obscure indie releases for which there was only ever One Good Version then that doesn't matter as much.)

i search for flacs with logs/cues (although i rarely keep them in that format because lame v0 sounds perfectly fine to me and i'm running out of space). check the flacs with audiochecker; if for some reason it hates the flacs i'll check the log settings. but honestly if someone knows how to create and save an eac or xld log, they probably know what they're doing in general

also i grew up taping shit off the radio. i mean i'll try to get the best quality but i'm not too bothered if the stuff i'm stealing wasn't ripped with the correct drive offset

yeah i always download from users with logs/cues too

I can’t be bothered at all wrt providence, quality assurance, unless it turns out to be something that I get obsessed with and seriously can’t find any way else

ok actually I am more scrutinizing when it comes to finding rips of ultra specific cd pressings of albums I definitely definitely already own

“unless it turns out to be something that I get obsessed with and seriously can’t find any way else”

by “seriously can’t find any way else” I mean in a physical not-terribly-mastered/pressed format

yeah, see, I just can’t understand this way of thinking or caring about digital music files. seems like a massive time investment for what, to me, is pretty minimal scale of difference.

you should bump all the other threads involving things you don’t care about too, just so we know

Guess you wouldn’t stand for my rare Audiogalaxy 64kb transcoded rips then.

you should bump all the other threads involving things you don’t care about too, just so we know

you should bump all the other threads involving things you don’t care about too, just so we know

loool downloaded something that had an *enormous* selection of proust in the lyrics tag <3

got the dreaded socket error, anyone have experience with this? all their websites also seem to be down?

i think slsk as a whole is down

yep

keep on chugging little guy

kinda scary tbh

https://groups.google.com/g/soulseek-discussion/c/ZGepId6Sdqk/m/IR6qJuVvAQAJ

seems to be back up for me again

jesus christ you guys

oh ok i was trying to use it for the first time yesterday in forever and to download the most 2007 music imaginable but when it didn't work i assumed it was my ancient laptop

Is it back? I can't tell...seemed to be for a few seconds, then not.

it is

Thanks. I sometimes have to wait 30 minutes to reconnect--something to do with my settings. So I wasn't sure.

Message from the developer:

It looks like our main server ports are currently not responding, which is preventing most users from being able to connect. We are diagnosing the issue with our server host, but in the meantime, you should be able to connect by going to Server->Options, selecting a port other than 2416 or 2242, exiting the client completely and restarting it. If the port you selected doesn't work, keep trying different ones until it does. We're sorry for the inconvenience, and hope to resolve this as quickly as possible. Please go to our forum if you want to talk to us or to other users.

time to learn how to torrent, guys

Switching ports worked for me

xp Thing is, I guess because of the user base, there's a lot of music on soulseek that you just can't find on torrent sites, especially electronic music from the 90s

Like I'll hear a track that makes me remember some compilation album I used to have that's long out of print and hey presto! there it is on soulseek

it rules

torrenting as an experience is abysmal

slsk is one of very few amazing internet things that still exist

Yeah was just thinking that the other day like all similar apps went defunct over a decade ago right?? And yet this one still remains. I dunno what I’d do without it!

i stopped using it for several years and when i finally returned it felt like seeing an old friend who i hadn’t seen in years and picking up right where we left off

time to learn how to torrent, guys

― bored by endless ecstasy (anagram)

slsk has outlasted torrenting for me

i regularly find stuff there that doesn't pop up on torrent unless you're on one of them fancy private trackers

rutracker fucking rules, it's the best for lossless music

if i had to choose 1 i'd choose slsk, but they're a tag team. better together

what I love is finding movies and tv series on slsk that are on a faster connection that any torrent or nzb/usenet combo

i regularly find stuff there that doesn't pop up on torrent unless you're on one of them fancy private trackers

Yes, I am on one of those. The main one for music is not that hard to get into, actually.

what I love is finding movies and tv series on slsk that are on a faster connection that any torrent or nzb/usenet combo

― Elvis Telecom

elvis on the real shit

the thing about the private trackers is that ratio stuff. i don't know how anybody maintains a good ratio without a seedbox. sometimes a slsk user will ban me because my shares are disorganized crap - fair enough - but nobody's gonna kick me off soulseek

I've managed to maintain a healthy ratio on private trackers for years without a seedbox. You just need to upload stuff, fill requests for bounty, seed 24/7 and be selective in what you download. It's not that hard, really.

or you can just not do any of that and use soulseek

Just be a nerd like me and keep a small NAS running at home 24/7 for torrents, it’s handy for a load of other thing too. I also run Soulseek on it in a Docker container which also runs 24/7.

o ya? i will have to look into that for my NAS

thank you for your service. there wouldn't be much to soulseek if everyone just used it a few minutes at a time.

Colonel Pop otm even if I had the time and energy to do all that shit in 2024

Just be a nerd like me and keep a small NAS running at home 24/7 for torrents, it’s handy for a load of other thing too. I also run Soulseek on it in a Docker container which also runs 24/7.

― Chewshabadoo

at some point i stopped being able to figure out technology

i _have_ a nas running at home but i can't figure out how to use it to sync my important personal documents to the cloud

last time i tried onedrive decided that the best way to do that was to put copies of _all my important personal documents in the root directory of the virtual drive_

no microsoft. that was not what i was going for.

also, my nas files are horribly disorganized and i regularly move them around to try and make them easier to locate. it's just....

i mean look i'm old. if i was young i wouldn't download this shit at all, i'd just find some site to stream it on

people running little data centers in their house itt

I was one what.cd for a time and found it amazing but 1) downloaded WAY more stuff than I could ever hope to listen to and b) found it a total pain in the arse to manage the ratio stuff. Don't dare turn off your computer, let alone go away on holiday.

Short answer: slsk rules.

I was on what too for awhile and level of obsession with say, different pressings of Beach Boys stuff, was staggering, like a hundred varaitions of Pet Sounds from different countries, formats, etc...