Does anyone have good site recommendations for lossless files such as flac’s specifically for music.
SoulSeekQT is a free p2p file sharing service specifically for music and you can specify file types or bitrate in filters.
Nicotine also can do similar stuff if you just add *.flac to the search field.
Wow, didn’t know this was still a thing. Used to love Soulseek back in 2004.
Soulseek is my past, present and future.
💯
Not a site, but Nicotine+ is where you can drop anchor.
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.
I’ve been trying to use a VPN while using this. Without the VPN, the port test comes up open. However, when using a VPN they’re closed. Didn’t seem to affect the downloads. Should I have these ports open? I tried to share some stuff, and it seems like it is. I’ve even configured the port forward thing to what my VPN says is open when I connect and didn’t seem to work. You got any ideas?
You have to port forward at the VPN level, this is why everyone was pissed at Mullvad for ending it earlier this year. Currently the only VPNs supporting it afaik are ProtonVPN and AirVPN. You can still dl/ul without PF, but you can only connect to people who do have it enabled if you do not (for instance, mullvad stops me from PF now, so we could not connect if you had the VPN, but we could without VPN if it says “open.”)
Okay.
Yes I’m using proton. And when I enable it it gives me a different port every time. So, then I’m supposed to put that number into the settings part? Like where exactly? Maybe you can shoot me a DM if you want to. There’s like a place to specify port numbers.
Yeah, use that number in the settings part, where it says port. Iirc since it has a range you do the port on one and then one number higher on the other, i.e “port 666 - port 667.”
Ah okay!! I’ll give that a shot! Thank you!
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.
Soulseek is where its at
Soulseek
Mostly for me, Qobuz rips (through SlavArt) are the best. But if for some reason you can’t get what you want on Qobuz, I typically look it up on Soulseek and 99% of the time I found what I’m looking for
I used to like slavart. I found out about them while they still allowed album downloads on their website. Later I moved to their divolt website (like a selfhosted discord) where they allowed downloads via bots.
At some point they decided not to bother with divolt and told everyone to start using their discord bot. Anyone who had concerns about privacy or about using their main discord account for piracy was pretty much told that they were an idiot and should go fuck themselves.
At that point I transitioned to ripping directly from quobus as explained in this guide. If I can’t find what I want on quobuz I go to deezer.
is there discord bot public or private to their discord server?
I guess it’s private? I’m not really familiar with discord bots
Sign up for a free trial of Tidal. Use tidal-dl from GitHub
This is really good. If you VPN to Nigeria it only costs $2.70 a month.
Seconding this, as it’s my go-to for anything that’s not for sale on Bandcamp and has treated me well.
SLSK
For flac albums, try galxytorrent2 or RUtracker.
I second RuTracker, you can find some pretty rare out of print stuff.
Usenet is actually a way better source for FLAC.
My indexer is garbage for FLAC. Got any suggestions?
I’ll have to get back to you once I fix Synology webstation yet again.
No worries. Synology are so fickle, good luck.
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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.
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Best way I’ve seen it explained.
FLAC = PNG
MP3 = JPEG
Well I learned something today - I always thought PNG was lossey.
Png is compressed, but lossless. Jpg is both compressed and lossy.
No, and when used for simple images like text, it can often take up less storage space than JPEG despite being lossless.
Continuing the analogy WAV = BMP
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FLAC files are typically larger than MP3, because with MP3 roughly 90% of the original file is discarded on encoding, hence lossy compression. At decoding the codec tries to restore this 90% out of the original remaining 10%. This sounds worse than it actually is, but you understand why MP3 is considered inferior by audio purists.
On the other hand FLAC uses a different compression technique that reduces the original file by 30-50% but without any data deletion, hence lossless. So, original file let’s say 100MB as .wav, compresses to 30-50 MB IN FLAC and 6-10 MB in MP3.
I gladly sacrifice the additional storage to get noticeably better quality audio.
I get all my music in FLAC, spend extra when I need to buy them.
But ‘noticeably better audio quality’ needs its own explanation.
If you have under $200 headphones, 320b MP3 will most likely suffice. There are many aspects like type of music, volume, sound chip, amplifiers, and of course actual quality of the MP3 (some recode 256 or 128 into 320 to make it look better).
But unless you have quality headphones and enjoy your music without distractions, MP3s will serve just as well.
Of course, once you get to listen to music in uncompressed quality alone with good hardware - you can’t go back. And it’s an expensive hobby.
Jazz music only sounds good with FLAC, IMO. With MP3, even high bitrate 320kbps, the hihats and other dynamics have a washed out sound. You don’t even need good speakers to notice it
I don’t entirely agree with you. Comparing the same song in MP3 or FLAC on the factory-fitted audio system in my car (2023 Skoda Octavia Combi) already makes a huge difference. Of course the difference is smaller when using 256 or 320 kbps MP3, but even then FLAC just adds that extra bit of depth and “openness” to the music
In term of data retention, FLAC is like compressing a RAW image file by using a zip/rar, the data integrity is the same when you open the zip/rar and check the image. MP3 is like reducing the size of a RAW image by converting it to JPEG, data integrity is affected and the image won’t look as good anymore. The most common uncompressed audio format that people know is WAV files (but you can also find compressed WAV files).
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.
Yes. Mp3 is not lossless, so it can be even smaller
I didn’t downvote you, but I think know why you’re getting downvoted. Your comment tipifies laziness and your reaction to the downvotes smacks of entitlement. I’m sorry if that feels rude or offends you. I’m really trying to not be mean about it.
You’re not actually trying to gain knowledge; you’re just begging for a knowledge handout for something that would be obvious even from just a cursory web search and a quick review of the relevant Wikipedia article (which is probably the top non-sponsored result). That shit gets old real fast. Sometimes you really do just have to RTFM.
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You know, instead of going on a massive fucking rant, you could’ve just cleared up the confusion in the first place lol. It’s not even a hard one to answer.
MP3s are quite compressed, meaning a lot of data is thrown away in an effort to have smaller files. The quality of audio is sacrificed quite a bit though.
Lossless formats retain as much data as possible as to not impact the sound quality, but at the expense of larger files. The OP says “smaller” because that’s in comparison to the raw uncompressed sound data stream. But they are larger than MP3s because MP3 is a lossy format.
File size used to matter a lot in the past when digital music players first came out. My first player had 128 MB storage, for example. At 3-5 MB per song that would fill up quickly. Nowadays larger storage of portable devices is more ubiquitous, with even the cheapest phones sportiing 32-64 GB, and more. So people prefer audio quality and don’t care as much if each song takes up more space.
it’s not physically possible to downvote someone on hexbear
It’s not possible for Hexbear users, it is for users of other instances.
The first rule of soulseek is…
You have to share if you want to browse my files
We don’t talk about Soulseek.
File sharing is rule three.
That’s a pretty shitty rule, lol.
We should be educating people on how to get stuff for free whenever possible.
