Hello there,

I am wondering why there seems to be no community of people sharing Lossless file formats such as FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, APE etc. The internet has come a long way since dial-up and most people have access to fast internet so why not upgrade the quality of shared files? If not, at least begin sharing 320kbps mp3 files.

Sharing these files is a simple matter of putting the files in your share folder, and adding the extension to Limewire's list of files to share (eg ";flac;ogg;ape")

Please give your opinion!

In my opinion high bitrate (256Kbps and above) .mp3 is good enough, but there is nothing wrong with sharing FLAC. A lot of people do not hear the difference between the two, so they of course prefer the smaller size. Also it does take a while to download.

Don't know about wma. It seems like the spammers just love that format, so it's really hard to find any legit wma files. I have it added to the keyword filter.

A lot of BitTorrent communities demand high bitrate, so maybe that's where you should look for them. The new Limewire Beta is able to download torrents.

http://www.limewire.com/english/content/beta.shtml

One thing I wish is that people start using real encoders (eg. LAME) to encode their mp3 files and dump the inferior WMP

Any .m4a file you see which has a higher bit rate than 320 kbps is Apple Lossless which is equivalent to FLAC, Shorten, etc.

In today's world with much larger hard disk drives, faster connections, there's really no reason why people don't share more lossless files other than through lack of education/ignorance & marketing. There's still the stupid ones who went with the early propaganda of mp3 & think mp3 128kbps is equivalent to CD quality. lol And then there's those who don't care, etc. as suggested by Sleepless.

Guys, guys, be ease with the guys that have dial-up, they can't download that much amount of data, then sharing mp3 files, wich are so compressed and with high quality, should be the best option for sharing, and if you still want to share a lossless audio file, please have a copy of them in low bitrate, compressed formats....
Ciao... and thanks

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I didn't clarify. They care and prefer what sounds like it came from the radio. And I don't mean just 128Kbps, but even 96 or even lower. Don't ask me why, because I think it's just stupid. But at the same time these are not some newbies that don't know better ?????

I only share a high as possible. Not much FLAC though because of limited bandwidth, but lots of 320 or 256.

On another note, keep to FLAC for lossless. I know that Apple has another good format, but lets standardize, and FLAC is the standard.

When you look for FLAC you get lossless, apple does not have that.

I know that some encode lower than L8, but they are just stupid

most mp3 sounds super at around ~220kbps (w/LAME). Sharing files any higher seems like a waste of memory. As long as it's vbr and above 192, why share anything bigger?

Your ears don't notice but mine do. Really.. Try to compare

Yeah exactly ... perhaps it depends on the music (does actually to notice it more) but higher bit rates really do make the difference (particularly for some music it's very easy to pick the difference.) Why what are you worried about with an extra 1-2 MB per song to have them as 320 kbps. Is it really going to devastate your space on your HDD?

Anyway what this thread is really about is sharing "more" lossless files. Not anything to do with replacing mp3's with lossless.

It's easy to say share a particular lossless, but not all apps handle particular lossless formats. lol You should have abilities with as many of them as possible. Converting to another lossless format is not an issue since they are lossless.

Especially vocals and quiet music, like piano and acoustic. You really see the difference there. Not only there, but for anyone trying to compare try quiet music.

Techno and hard rock.. not easy to hear a difference

Also Classical (Still quiet) is also good

Yes definitely acoustic pieces. But also electronic that ranges the far top & bottom frequency ranges & has both dramatic & slow changes in shade, volume & tempo. Lower bit rates can appear a bit inconsistent/patchy or thin or even distorted in rare cases. As well as losing brightness & depth.