Bit Torrents (Continued)

My journey to understand Bit Torrents has taken me through the world of open source, alternative audio codecs, and live music file sharing. It's been a very interesting and enlightening journey and I am quite a bit (no pun intended) smarter about some important technology trends as a result.

I started with the simple desire to download and play the Wilco tour opening concert that Motts sent me to about two weeks ago. I am glad to report that I am listening it now.

The first thing I did was click on the attachment link on that page. Nothing happened. So I figured that I needed some software. I went to Google, typed in Torrent, and off I went. I read all about Bit Torrents and really couldn't figure out what to do. That was the genesis of my first Bit Torrents post.

Most of the comments suggested the originial open source client so that's what I tried first. I couldn't make it work for me. I tried a few other clients again without a lot of luck. Finally, I hit gold with Azureus. This client worked like a charm for me.

It took me about 20 hours to download the Wilco Tour Opener files but what I really liked about the way Bit Torrents works is that when one seeder went down, another one popped up. When i shut down, and then opened up, it started up again. Very slick. It's a file distribution system built like the Internet for the Internet.

Then i looked at what i'd downloaded. They were all of these files with the .flac extension. I tried to play them but iTunes, Real, and Windows Media Player had no idea what they were. Hmm. Back to Google. I typed in FLAC and got an education in free open source audio codecs. Flac stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Very interesting stuff. I guess there are a lot of people out there who want something different than what Real, Apple, and Microsoft have to offer. There are other free audio codecs out there like Ogg and Monkey's Audio that appear to be quite popular as well.

So, i then went through the exercise of figuring out what audio player i should download that plays FLAC files. I downloaded something called DBpowerAMP that seemed like it would do the trick. But it was eye-opening to me how many free open source audio players there are out there.

In the process of installing DBpowerAMP, i realized that the same developer made something called DBpowerAMP Music Converter that converts one audio file format to almost any other. Ironically, even after this incredibly educational journey through the world of open source free audio technology, I prefer to use iTunes to play my music. So I downloaded the Music Converter and converted the .flac files to .wav files and am now playing them on iTunes.

I will figure out how to play these FLAC files in native format because I suspect that the sound quality will be a lot better. But that's tomorrow's project.

So now I am hooked up with Bit Torrents. If you know any good live Ben Kweller, Death Cab, Modest Mouse stuff that's available in Bit Torrents, let me know. And I'll be spending a lot of time at Sharing The Groove and Supernova for the next couple weeks.

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Tracked on Jun 7, 2004 2:24:59 PM

Posted June 6, 2004 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

Fred,

If it took you 20 hrs to download the Wilco files you probably should visit the P2P Weblog to learn a tip on how to configure your router and allow faster downloads. http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/entry/0401842428674831/

PS: I know it's a WIN blog and the design is bland, but the content is good. ;-)

Posted by: Alberto | Jun 6, 2004 10:06:41 AM

You could try a directshow filter, these are the wrappers for codecs that allow Windows Media Player, and other supporting programs to use those codecs. (I assume you're using windows because of your DBPowerAmp use)

There's a few hits for flac and directshow on google

http://bittorrent.radlight.com/torrents/RadLightOFR_1.0.0.1.exe.torrent seems to be one, a torrent seems suitable

Posted by: Barry Dorrans | Jun 6, 2004 3:32:11 PM

On the flac vs. other format issue:

1) Someone is/was supposedly working on a quicktime plugin so that it (and therefore iTunes as well) would be able to play flac files directly:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?showtopic=17290&

2) flac vs. wav - the only difference is the file size. wav is uncompressed, so the files are bigger, but the sound quality will be identical.

3) If you are going to use iTunes and/or an iPod, and you want lossless compression, you should check out the new Apple lossless format, which I believe is supported in the new version of iTunes, so you should be able to convert the wav files to this new format within iTunes, which will then work on the iPod as well.

4) Lastly, unless you are listening on very high-end audio equipment, you will be extremely hard-pressed to tell the difference between flac/wav and a high-bit-rate lossy compression such as 256 or 192VBR mp3 or aac. So you might want to try converting to one or more of these formats and see how it sounds to you. This is particularly important for portability, even if you keep the bigger files for playing on the home system.

Posted by: Stephen Bronstein | Jun 6, 2004 7:26:27 PM

For FLAC playback on Windows, I recommend the FLAC WinAmp Plugin. You will also encounter SHN (Shorten files). For those I recommend SHNamp for Windows playback.

I agree with an earlier poster that outside of very high-end audio equipment, uncompressing and downsampling from FLAC > WAV > high-bit-rate MP3 is the way to go (I use 320k) for iPod playback.

Now that all the tech has been worked out, back to the music. Download some My Morning Jacket shows -- I think you will like and I am offering a money-back guarantee.

-Motts

Posted by: Motts McGregor | Jun 7, 2004 10:45:05 AM

Fred,

As you continue your research, you'll find that these lossless formats received primary impetus from the jamband community, which originally traded music via tapes, but quickly progressed through the available technologies of CD's, FTP, P2P and finally BitTorrent. The first hit lossless format was SHN, with FLAC coming onto the scene in the last couple of years. The primary site for jamband lossless music is www.etree.org (software, how-to, database for who has what shows and much more). Since you just started this little adventure, the best advice I can give you now is: buy several of the biggest hard drives you can find!!! I have over 500GB of music, and I'm sure many in the jamband fan community exceed one TB in HD usage. FWIW, as Matt above suggested, Winamp seems to be the preferred music player among this crowd. I have been using it since late 90's and far prefer it to WMP, QT or RP. Add DMX plug-in (greatly enhances the sound) and you'll probably agree. Enjoy the journey!

Posted by: Jim | Jun 7, 2004 12:11:27 PM

I had a similar experience but even more difficult because I use a Mac. After downloading a couple programs I was able to play FLAC files but unable to play SHN or APE files. I couldn't get a couple of the alleged file converters I found to work. Until I can get them in a format that iTunes will recognize I'm left wanting.

Posted by: 27 | Jun 7, 2004 5:24:21 PM

I've used xACT, an Applescript GUI front end fot a bunch of command line tools. It supports FLAC, but I think it will also help with SHN and APE.

Very easy to use, will even install the command line tools for you.

Posted by: Matt | Jun 7, 2004 8:08:00 PM

all the cool kids these days are using foobar2000 for playing audio ;)

- by default it's not pretty, but then again, since when did the l33t crowd care about that? hehe..

- then again you can winamp-ify with other software out there...

iTunes looked ok when I had a look at it. Maybe if I could actually buy music from Apple (I couldn't last time I checked 'cos I'm in that backwater of the world called Australia)... then I might use it more..

Azureus is pretty damn good - at the moment I'm trying out ABC (Another Bittorent Client) which isn't bad either...

ok er.. hmm.. bye.. and have a nice day

Posted by: G | Jun 8, 2004 1:12:21 AM

Updated info: As I previously mentioned, the etree.org website offers lots of excellent recommendations, based on my experience, regarding software for encoding, decoding, downloading and playing lossless formatted music files on Win, Mac and Linux platforms. You will have to go to the wiki version of the site - (www.wiki.etree.org), however, to obtain the most recent info. This link will take you to the general software info page; this one will take you to the BitTorrent specific page. Hope these are helpful.

Posted by: Jim | Jun 9, 2004 5:38:47 PM

Ditto on a lot of earlier comments.

Most people without serious audio equipment can't tell much difference between wav & high rate VBR mp3s.

Having the codecs is pretty important though, since the live show communities and serious audiophiles are into it.

Anyway, going back a long way to a post you made on sharing music on your blog, I noticed a blogger with a more permanent spot for their latest music interest.

http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/

Oh; I started typing this to suggest finding early Modest Mouse if you can. I'm willing to bet you've heard them before, but didn't know it.

Posted by: compelled | Jun 10, 2004 2:43:11 PM

I'm going through the same thing you are with a Mars Volta file, and someone pointed me to your post. Thanks for posting all your info!

Posted by: Karen | Jun 12, 2005 3:39:04 PM

Sir will u please tell me how to play the movies that is in the .torrent extention...& specify the player that supports that format,the address from which i can download the player.
i have downloaded lot of movies in .torrent extention but i cannot able to see it in my media player...

Posted by: Sam | Aug 10, 2005 9:10:44 AM

I am a layman in the technical field of file extensions. But I know one thing. The purpose of all new inventions should be to ease the problems of humman kind. I have tried every thing to open torrent files but all in vain. I dont know who created this type of file extension but he undoubtedly forgot to tell us how to easily open torrent files. It should have been like winzip in which files are unzipped in seconds. Can anybody tell me any software which can be easily downloaded and can easily convert torrent into playable media files.

Posted by: Shahzad | Dec 8, 2005 8:58:16 AM

Lots of great sites exist for getting lossless concert bootlegs, usually audience recordings.

http://www.thetradersden.org
http://www.dimeadozen.org
http://www.u2torrents.com

These are just the three that I know of off the top of my head, and there are dozens more, often dedicated to a particular artist.

Posted by: Jason | Feb 7, 2006 7:25:11 PM

Hi, I saw where you were looking for Modest Mouse torrents. Well I've just recently become interested in bit torrents myself after I found an amazing Modest Mouse site.

http://www.arctic.dd.am

Posted by: Dustin | Jul 18, 2006 11:54:37 AM

Hi, I have been experimenting with torrents for the last 48 hours with no sleep. I can now down load but now what. to play movies ,i found there are five programs to decode. Help me

Posted by: jerrimacgwyer | Jan 2, 2007 7:09:50 PM

Jason makes a good point with http://www.arctic.dd.am lots of Modest Mouse raraties. all MM.

dimeadozen.org is my 2nd fav.

i wish i had an ivite to indieTorrent.

Posted by: Pi | Apr 12, 2007 6:17:55 PM

A VC

Musings of a VC in NYC