Hi All! =]

To introduce myself, I'm Vaughn (pronounced like "faun") and I was invited to this forum by Kitlope of Demonoid (thank you, by the way!). I'm always glad to join forums and explore the many great, sometimes hidden gems of this beautiful Interweb, lol. Anyway, I'm 18-years-old and have lived here in New York City for my whole life so far. I'm a pretty straightforward kinda guy; I'm an introverted, warmhearted, honest, and respectful lover of music, electronics/technology, women, the Internet, and all things Asian…Asian women, food, music…ya name it, lol. I listen to music 24/7; whenever I'm on my computer – which is usually for most of the day – music is playing, and I never leave home without my iPod (and my new incredibly sexy Sennheiser IE8 earphones ). I've loved music for as long as I can remember, and I'm pretty eclectic when it comes to it. My tastes include most styles of rock, alternative, metal, and electronic music, but I'd say that my favorite genres are post-hardcore, metal/deathcore, and mathcore, although I also adore Japanese pop and experimental music. The weirder and/or cuter, the better. =] By the way, click the image/link in my signature to check out my profile on Last.fm, a music-oriented social-networking site where I spend a lot of my time at. As for the torrenting…I've been a contributor to the music BT community, especially those who are into the styles of music that I'm into, for quite a bit of time now. According to Demonoid, I registered there four years ago. Demonoid is my home – it's where I got started with the real-deal, but I'd been a loyal LimeWire user for some time even before that. Luckily, I never did destroy my PC with viruses and whatever other junk comes out of that, and I didn't dare bother with KaZaA, lol but I did notice right away that bittorrent was the much better way to go, after being introduced to it by, I think, my dad…the person who got me as into computers and technology as I am today. It took me quite some time to learn, and of course I'm still learning, but now I'm a regular torrent user, mostly dealing with FLAC. I am a very thorough, organized person myself, so my uploads are just as thoroughly organized. I always make sure that everything is tagged correctly, and I even include album art – not embedded, but separate, since 1. I don't know how to embed album art (lol) and 2. I've seen it said that embedding album art increases file size; a FLAC upload is large enough as it is, so I don't bother – with most of my torrents. Ever since I got my sexy Bose Companion 5 speakers hooked up to my iMac, I realized the beauty of the lossless format and have been mostly using that, although these speakers do make anything sound great. I look forward to seeing this forum grow and become a helpful, reliable source for all kinds of information, and I'm glad to contribute however possible! =]

P.S. If you're a member of What.CD and are willing to help me with my crappy ratio and equally-as-crappy uploading abilities (well, at least according to What…my uploading abilities are just fine on the one other private tracker that I'm a member of) then I'd greatly appreciate it.

Nice to have you here, Vaughn.

Welcome to the forums Mr. Freaks and wonderful intro. Its great reading seeing how we have all come to the same place with this hobby. Errr....what is your Demonoid name though? I don't recall sending an invite to Mr. Freaks ...


You know, I sure wish I had what the youth of today have for acquiring new music. When I was your age in 1992, before this lovely thing called the internet went mainstream, in order for me to get the music I wanted without breaking the bank I either:

1. Dubbed cassettes from friends (Gah I hated 5th generation cassette rips)
2. Record off of FM radio


Either way the quality generally was horrible. CD was out and becoming more popular by the year and by the end of 1992 I had bought a player and started my collection. First 3 albums I asked for from my parents were

Yes - 90125
Van Halen - OU812
Nine Inch Nails - Pretty Hate Machine.

Nice headphones too btw. I'm on my second pair of Senns (HD 595's) and love them, although the older ones I had (HD 590) were a bit better but alas are discontinued. Are yours the in-ear style?

I agree with you on the album art aspect and don't include any in my torrents. I have thought about changing this but I also know that I spend a lot of time making a proper description, the rip itself & upping it to a half dozen sites. Adding art, as you said, just makes the file bigger and takes more time. And the truth is, in this digital age, the album art just doesn't have the same effect as holding a physical copy. Especially the vinyl. So yeah - I won't be including album art anytime soon.

As for your ipod, do you have it Rockboxed? Some models of certain generations can use this great 3rd party firmware and the best thing is it supports flac & gapless playback...I would look into it to see. Here's the website:

http://www.rockbox.org/


I used the native firmware for my old school iRiver iHP-120 for almost 4 years (6 years old and still works like a charm) but until I started using Rockbox then I was actually able to release the true capabilities of my player.

Again, welcome to the forums!


Kit

Hi Mr. FREAKS!

Very nice intro!

If you're into Asian stuff, please feel free to start any thread you like on the topic (the music club would be a good place for that) and improve those we already have. I myself don't know anything about Asian music but always enjoy hearing Japanese language and Asian sounds. I wouldn't mind some good J-Pop or any kind of Japanese music recommendation. Also, Yuriko, another of our member is Japanese and posts (or makes me post) some funny/weird or just plain music Japanese or Asian youtube vids. Tons of fun

I hope you'll enjoy the forums and like to hang out here with us, share knowledge about music, audio, computers, ripping, internet, coffee, beer, anything! or just hang out and have fun.

About ART, I recently started scanning album art and including it in an "Artwork" sub-folder. I never include art into the FLACS. I think FLACs should only contain music and name tags. I think having an artwork folder makes a nice package and can give some interesting info about the edition of the album. But I'll agree it's not THAT important. It's the music that matters.

Regarding what, I'm a member there also (same nickname as any place I'm at: FlacMonkey). I'll gladly help you out leeching some stuff from you. Just tell me what to snatch I have a bit of excess buffer at the moment.

Feel completely at home here and enjoy your stay! Nice to have you with us!

FM

Thanks, Troma! =]

@ Kitlope

Thanks! My Demonoid name is vjg1692, haha. I just barely use that username anymore. "Mr.FREAKS" (yes, without the space after the period, and with "Freaks" in all caps) is one of my favorite songs by DEATHGAZE, a Japanese hard rock/metal band which is also one of my favorite bands, and I use that more often now. =] Also, if you see "RoaringintheDark" or "greedy dead soul"/"greedyDEADsoul" around the web, that's me, too. "roaring in the dark" and greedy dead souls are a song and album, respectively, by lynch., another hard rock/metal band from Japan, and another one of my favorite bands. Haha yeah, I've heard a lot about how it was back then…it's amazing how much things have improved. I'm definitely quite surprised when I hear about how things used to be, lol. Yes, my earphones are the in-ear style, and I use Comply T-400 tips on them, as recommended by someone who had these earphones before I did. They're foam, so they do a better job at isolation and are incredibly comfortable. These earphones deliver such great bass; the main reason why I got these and ditched my Bose in-ears is 'cause I heard of this pair's huge bass. I hear you; after all that work, I wouldn't be interested in embedding album art either. Also, it's true about the digital age…that's one reason why I still prefer owning physical CDs. I'm one of the few people who actually care about an album's packaging, so I always make sure to eventually buy a physical copy of the CD if it's one of my favorite bands or artists, or if I downloaded it and was more impressed than I'd predicted. I have quite a large CD collection; I've accumulated over 300 CDs over the last 10 or so years and I actually go through the booklet, read the liner notes, etc. I love it. I hate getting music from iTunes and other online stores, but I do like that iT now includes a PDF of the booklet with a lot of the albums. I still rarely buy stuff from there, though, 'cause it's lossy! AAC may sound great, but it's not lossless. It'd be so awesome if they started providing lossless music there; after all, Apple Lossless (ALAC) was developed by Apple, so why not provide music in their own audio codec? Another thing about CD packaging…the packaging of Japanese music is very, very impressive. They often use high quality material for the booklet and even the jewel case itself is thicker and more durable. This is especially true with their limited edition releases that often include a DVD as well. I love owning Japanese CDs just because of how pretty they are, haha. Ah, no, I don't have my iPod RockBoxed…FLAC and gapless playback on an iPod!? Actually, my iPod does play some of my music gaplessly (when it feels like it…lol) but I'd love to throw a FLAC album up there for kicks. Thanks for providing the link; I shall give it a shot if possible. =]

@ FM

Thanks, and I'd love to share some of the beautiful music of Asia! =] I did see Yuriko here; I saw those videos…gotta love it, haha. I've downloaded some torrents that have a sub-folder with the artwork in it, and I think that's pretty cool. I'd do the same if I were able to figure out why my scanner chooses not to work with me anymore… =/ It's nice to see another What user; thanks for offering to help! I'll get in touch with you there sometime.

Thanks again for the warm welcome, guys.