Does anyone have good site recommendations for lossless files such as flac's specifically for music.
soulseek is still the best. Use the Nicotine+ and it's even better.
I've seen soulseek and nicotine+ recommended a lot, however is there how to use them tutorial? Or is it so simple that it doesn't need one ?(i opened nicotine+ and couldn't figure out what to do next)
Not sure if there is a guide out there but it's pretty easy and I can help you through it. First you'll need to make an account name and password. I remember it prompting for it the first startup but if not look through the options. Then you'll want to set the path to your music library in preferences -> shares. These are the files that you're making available to people searching and downloading. Then go to preferences -> downloads -> folders. I like to set my download folder as separate from my music library so that I can standardize it to my naming conventions, clean up metadata, and place it directly into my Artist - Album folder hierarchy, but you could probably get by with just setting this to your music library directly if you aren't in to that side of things. You can also set things like upload and queue limits and all that while in the preferences tab. Then just go to the "search files" tab and it's pretty easy to find what you want. I usually just go with "[album title] flac" and that's enough to get it 95% of the time even for obscure stuff. Pick an uploader based on speed / how nicely organized the files are, then just right click the folder name -> download folder and it will move over to the download tab.
Realized right after typing this out that there is a setup assistant at help -> setup assistant. Probably way more helpful than I am but feel free to ask anything else if you need to!
Awesome thanks a lot for explanation, i'll go over this when i'm at computer and let you know if any more doubts.
If i'm just starting with collecting music, how/what do I put for sharing (current collection is empty or at max 20 files). Can I go ahead with empty shared folder and start sharing as I download?
Some people will have share requirements but I don't think enough do to make getting started a problem. All of my stuff is totally unrestricted so if you like death metal / jazz I can help you out.
I think I figured it and setup correctly. I'll never say no to jazz or some death metal though. Thanks for walking me through.
FLAC (which stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a way to code audio files. It makes those audio files smaller, without affecting the sound quality.
it's not physically possible to downvote someone on hexbear
FLAC files use lossless compression, which means all the original data is preserved (which is why people like FLAC), which makes FLAC files smaller than an uncompressed .WAV audio file, but still larger than an MP3 file, which uses lossy compression. Lossy compression does involve the loss of some data. This is what allows MP3 files to be smaller than FLAC. With the existence of other more modern lossy audio file formats/codecs like .AAC, and .opus, MP3s should no longer be used unless it is required for compatibility reasons. The modern lossy formats offer higher quality audio files at lower file sizes than MP3.
Check out private torrent trackers. Look for Orpheous and Redacted, OPH/RED.
RED isn't worth it compared to the other one since everything will trickle down to OPH anyways, RED has a very mean test and will hate you for searching anything at all.
Plenty of albums get ripped lossless(typically FLAC) and uploaded to Usenet
While Soulseek is a great option, would recommend Deemix as the primary download method unless Deezer hosted album is some very bad remaster and you need to hunt down older release. You either need a premium account or find something called "ARL cookie" to download above 128 kbps MP3.
Worth noting that the absolute best quality Deezer has is 44,1kHz 16-bit lossless, and most songs there are MP3 anyway.
If this is good enough for you, absolutely go for it. If you're looking to download high-quality music from a streming service, you can use tidal-dl (or tidal-gui for more convenience) combined with Tidal - though it's worth noting Tidal has been subject to some controversies regarding some of the master quality albums, too.
Can't comment on FLAC quality / availability to be honest because I download only 320 kbps MP3. I just know there is a quality setting for it.
