this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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As someone who used to be a member of what.cd, and still has a bunch of incredible sounding FLAC vinyl rips of albums, this definitely is not true.
I still reminisce about my Oink ratio. Seeded Rosetta Stone on a university connection. Access to the school's radio station's library.
Probably the closest I'll come to generational wealth, my grandchildren could have leeched music on my account and I'd still be positive.
What used to have staff picks where the download amount wouldn't count negatively towards your ratio, but the upload amount would. When the Beatles remasters came out in 2008 or 2009, they put the entire collection on there, including the FLAC version. It was like 9+ gb I think, all of which was free in terms download amount. All it took was uploading for a few hours and I got my ratio into double digits. Basically made it so I never had to worry about it ever again.
It's not true that I cannot copy my vinyls to my computer? Okay how do I do that then? It just has the red and white left and right cables going to an amp, and then my receiver. Kinda new to vinyls over here
Maybe try Google? As I said, I downloaded them I didn't rip them myself. There was this person with the username "PBTHAL" that always had to best lossless vinyl rips, if you do a search that includes that name, you might find alternate download sources for them. I think they ran their own site where they posted all of their rips outside of what, but don't know if it's still there. They were also very thorough while explaining the process, equipment, cables, etc. for each and every rip. This person was really a perfectionist, and boy did it show. There were albums that they ripped and then refused to upload because they didn't feel their rip was perfect enough.
Absolute fucking legend.
I even have FLACs of reel-to-reel versions of all Zeppelin albums, as well as, Bowie, Dylan, et. al. and they sound fantastic. Don't ask me how it's done. And given the pedigree of that website, these people took the ripping process incredibly seriously.
Haha nice, that's an area of music collection as a hobby that I've never explored., and I can really appreciate that level of dedicstion. Thanks for letting me know, I'll see if I can even find my type of metal on there
You might be able to find some dedicated metalheads ripping vinyl, but my experience was that it seemed to be done more with albums that were released prior to the rise of digital music. I feel like it makes more sense when the album was written and recorded with vinyl in mind, otherwise you're taking a digital recording and putting it on a record so I'm not sure you're going to get anything that sounds better by ripping the vinyl over just ripping the CD. If that makes sense.
I could be wrong though...
Yeah, and with the style of the few albums I do have on vinyl, the vinyl rexord sound kinda goes with the sound of their subgenre so I do enjoy the vinyl listening experience there, and they do sound different than on Spotify.
But when I own my own copy of an album, I want to remove it from Spotify and have my own copy of it on my own device. So if I'm just doing it to be able to listen to music that I paid for on vinyl on my phone when I'm not home in front of the turntable, then that's good enough.
I notice now, some new vinyls on Bandcamp come with digital download, which is cool, but not if I bought it at a show.
There are usb turntables that let you rip your vinyl, but theyre usually not the highest quality turn tables. I like vintage tables because it adds to the atmosphere and there were fewer corners cut. You could probably get some separate equipment that would let your turn table talk to your computer.
TIL, thanks for pointing out the thing about quality. The table I've currently got sounds pretty nice (for never really having used anything else), so maybe I'll check out ones with USB and at least keep it around for copying!
https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Basics-Adapter-Subwoofer-Gold-Plated/dp/B01D5H8JW0/ref=mp_s_a_1_1_ffob_sspa?crid=2HSIHFN4VC1TB&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.eVe91o4SjbqJOWJWNzj2sI1JvEVmrGD-8HQuGvUliKh7WkT7ktE76Qa4nOizEjKs4_TzIpL51iDrLnYSIVzuJJZfE2zC9tM5Kv2CergZNtvQ0ElZ40VLcpl2YZLBNilIEzpmXX7VD5-X9UsXPtP0BFjyePVMEMJmBQhw26jEMigj-QC_WdwITKHFGEED-hJEkKMx47IV1jAAwfJl_25oag.OGp_undiEYaYOnZ65PztJ1WUHvIbiHEt1l-VCrrQcyY&dib_tag=se&keywords=rca+to+stereo+adapter&qid=1711624657&sprefix=rca+to+ster%2Caps%2C73&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9zZWFyY2hfYXRm&psc=1
Man do I miss what cd. I love RED. But what will always have a special place. I still have tons of merch I bought from what. T-shirts, coffee mug, koozie and so many rippy stickers. I still wear the shirts in my regular rotation
I've got a what.cd hoodie lying around somewhere. Wore that thing out for years, so it's falling apart at this point.
Well, there's still RED and it has almost has vinyl rip for every famous album. I wasn't a what cd member but RED has a huge collection. If you aren't in music trackers anymore you should checkout RED
Yeah but it's members only right? Frankly, I'm just too old and lazy and don't care enough about that stuff anymore to go through a whole interview process and shit.
Do they have PBTHAL vinyl rips? Those were my favorite by far. That person really knew WTF they were doing.
Yes, there is a collage of 578 pbthal rips
🤤
Yeah but what cd was a private tracker too right?
Well, considering you were a what cd user, I think you can easily clear that, the wait for the interview is ridiculously annoying though. I had to wait for weeks for that.
I don't know, have to check. I am just tired of the grind these days and just visit it when my friend asks for an album's flac, or if I get freeleech tokens.
Yeah but I would need to "prove" I was a member, and it's not like I still have any kind of evidence. In fact, I got super lucky to get into what in the first place as I just happened to have a screenshot of my OiNK title bar/ratio because I was messing with different CSS themes months/years prior. So when OiNK died, I was able to get into what pretty easily by showing that screenshot.
I have no such thing for what.
Idt you need to prove that unless they ask you specifically or you say it by yourself.
They don't care what private trackers you are/were in as long as you pass the interview.
Right. I was able to skip the interview process for What because I was a member of OiNK and got lucky enough to find someone on reddit to send me an invite. The whole idea of interviewing to join a torrent site rubs me the wrong way and as I said above, I don't really care about that stuff enough anymore to go through the hassle.
Yeah, unless Spotify, Deezer and similar services die or become too greedy you really don't have a reason to come back to music trackers again.
Yeah. I've still got my massive music collection from those private trackers backed up on a couple external drives, so I already have most of what I want/need stored in a couple different locations. And you can find 320kbps rips of stuff on public trackers these days. Might not has the same pedigree as someone on a private tracker using EAC and making sure everything runs perfectly, but it's good enough for me.
Yeah, plus every indie band/artist these days have their own bandcamp page. There's always flac available on public trackers for mainstream artist/band. You might not be missing anything.
Such an amazing resource that was, not only did it have the albums available, but several different pressings, source media, and versions of each one. Something no commercial entity can come close to offering at any price.