do you download music from the net?

danger boy

just throwing this out.. most everyone does some downloading from the net... with software like Kazaa, and Morphieus, WinMX, etc. i'm just curious, is this a big thing? How many people actually download music/video/files from the net. I don't.. only because I have a deathly slow dial up connection.. that kicks me off at least twice and hour. when I did download a song.. it would take on average, about 25 mins person. not worth my time.

How about the quality of MP3 files. are they good enough for you?or do you desire better sound?

I like better sound myself.. that's another reason I don't download music. I have a friend who has downloaded over 500 CD's worth of music. I'm a little jealous of his collection.. but then again... he has no social life away from his computer.

geekmedic

Of course not! Download music from the net? I do believe that's illegal!

RuSsMaN

60+ gig of mp3z here.....

Magic 8-ball says 'Signs point to YES'

Cheers,
Rooster

Frank Z

I used to download a song or two from Napster, but now that it's a pay site I don't. Too bad there aren't any sites like that anymore, at least as far as I know.

MxStYlEpOlKmAn

Frank Kazaa makes Napster look like a speck of dirt.

avelanchefan

I have to disagree. Napster was by far the best seach engine for songs. Kazaa is good, and WinMX is o.k., but there was never a time when I could not find a song on Napster, and I am talking obscure Jazz and Blues songs. On Kazaa and WinMX I have a harder time finding the more obscure music.

And the downloads from Kazaa and WinMX can be screwed up. Some songs I get have a ton of "skips/burps" to them. Never had that problem on Napster.

Steve@3dai

I just got tired of the crappy rips that people make of the songs, so I quit downloading.

They should read my guide to mp3 ripping

MxStYlEpOlKmAn

For all you that dont know.....

Napster: They supplied you with the mp3s. They them selves put them on their search engine for us the people to download. Thats why they got killed - shut down.
Kazaa: The users self distribute the music, and the company sharmon networks just supplys the program for the files and mp3s, videos, programs, images, documents - to flow straight through this system around the world for others to download.

Napster: You could download one thing - MUSIC, you also could only download from one person.
Kazaa: You can download Music, Movies, Images, Documents, Software. You can also download from multiple users - so it makes even thos people with dial up semi-fast.

Morpheus: Their new search method sucks, and its hard to get a download through

Bear Share: Its ok, but slow and very annoying

Imesh: is also slow, but u can find some files on there that u cant kazaa

Win *MX* (sound familair? - everyone using my name...): I've seen it, I've heard about it - It looks like someone cutting corners designed it. It seems like it has 10000000000000 bugs. I've had friends that had roadrunner take a hour to download one song. Maybe it is better than Kazaa - but in my experience on the above listed, and alot more on the web - kazaa kicked their tail.

burdette

When Napster's legal troubles started making the news.. what? two years ago now? I got on and downloaded something like 650 songs, sometimes had 4-6 coming in at a time. As for what effect my actions had on the music industry? Zip, zero, nada. These were certainly songs I wanted, but not songs I'd ever buy a CD to get. Many I had on cassette already, but wanted to be able to burn a copy on a CD.

When Napster folded, I had pretty much everything I wanted so it was no big deal to me. I agree that on Napster I could find ANYTHING I wanted.. may have to search over the course of a couple of days, but I found it.. ****, I even found the old 15-minute long "farting contest" .. the Crepidation Competition or something like that.

I tried Gnucleus a couple of months ago.. didn't like it. Hooked up with Kazaa a few weeks ago and it hasn't been too bad. Did it to get Faith Hill's "Cry".. and got it.. but again, never would have and won't buy the entire CD so Faith baby didn't lose a dime from me. Oh.. got Air Force Ones also... wouldn't buy that entire disk either.

avelanchefan

But the whole point MX is music. Napster by far was the best.

You ever look at what the users are mostly distributiong on Kazaa? Its **** and Hijaked movies like Jackass that people are to cheap to pay to go see. Not slamming Kazaa, I use it all the time, I am just saying when it came to music Napster was the best. Napster did screw themselves, but it was fun as hell when you found someone with the same musical interests as you. You could download his entire library. I found a few users with 3,000 plus music files. (One guy had it all at 256 or 320)

Ceruleance

Napster didnt have everyone's files on their computer, they had everyones file lists, which made it easier to search. You were still downloading direct from individual users, so it's ridiculous to say that the quality of napster songs is better than any of the gnutella based file sharers. If anything, gnutella users are slightly more computer literate, and better at ripping. If the song sucks, delete it and download another one, sure it takes time but its free ! How else could a student have a 300 album collection?

By the way, please don't flame me for ripping artists off. I buy the CD's of the artists I really like and want to support (if only just for better sound quality) and I sure as ____ wouldnt have bought the 150 cds or so that I have downloaded if I couldnt get them of the net, especially not for 10-15 a pop. Over 2 grand? Give me a break!

Shizelbs

My ISP blocks all use of P2P programs. It makes me really cranky. Napster was by far the best out there. It had such a great user interface. Blubster is now the best rival to Napster. I hate Kazaa. The program is so damned lousy. I have gotten so many viruses from it. I had this one that really freaked me out. It would start typing in text fields if I left my keyboard or mouse idle for a couple seconds. I thought the Devil was trying to tell me something. So, I wiped my hard drive and I will never use that program again. I know there is Kazaa Lite, but its still crappy despiet not having any spyware on it.

rs159

I download b/c sometimes it's the only way to find obscure songs and video clips (like when Pres. Bush said "Fool me once, shame on... shame on... you? The fool me can't get fooled again." Try getting that on DVD. But as my musical tastes have matured it got harder and harder to find what I want. It seems like the Kazaa network is mostly college and high school kids who don't care about much beyond rap and modern pop. Pisses me off sometimes, b/c I like to know what music sounds like before I buy it.

Most of the time standard 128kbs files sound "OK". My main complaint would be that extreme high sounds like cymbals don't sound extactly like they should. Sometimes, with very loud genres like rock, the dynamic range of an mp3 isn't enough and it get compressed and just collapses into noise. I can't really put my finger on why, but when classical music is mp3 compressed it gets stale and brittle. There are a lot of things that sound darn good compressed, but the standard 128kbps isn't enough for some genres.

Shizelbs

RS159,

You are somewhat eluding to my one dislike for Polk. BP (before Polk), I was a big MP3 fan. Oh, I would spend hours downloading songs daily. But then I got good speakers, and I said, hey, these compressed files sound like crap. Maybe thats cause they are compressed. So, now I find myself buying CD's instead of listening to MP3's for free. Thanks a lot Polk!

But there are a number of websites that will let you sample 30 seconds of a song or so, so you can at least get a low-quality feel for the music. Just a thought.

jcaut

I've got tons of downloaded mp3's and about 3/4 sound like crap. I got most of them from Napster and Audiogalaxy.

Not all mp3 sounds bad, though. I've ripped a lot of my own discs using EAC and the LAME encoder (thanks to Steve@3dai) and they sound quite good. I wouldn't consider them material for critical listening, but they certainly sound good enough that they don't annoy me.

--Jason

dthomps

Originally posted by Shizelbs
It would start typing in text fields if I left my keyboard or mouse idle for a couple seconds. I thought the Devil was trying to tell me something.

Holy crap man, thanks for the laugh funny stuff.
I really liked Napster as well. I use Kazaa now, and agree with what you guys are talking about with not finding some of the more obscure artists and recordings. I tend to download NOTHING below 160kbps quality mp3's, and usually much higher. I dont hear the effects of the compression as much when I am on my computer, and when the files are decompressed on cd's they dont really bother me that much. I dont care enough to use anything besides Kazaa now- I got tired of downloading new Morpheus this and updated that, so I got Kazaa lite which I like because it is sans spyware. You might have to look a bit more, but its usually there.
Mike