Hi, I'm a new user with only os8.6. I'm unable to make alist of selections and run it I guess because I have such an old Mac , but am wondering if I upgrade to limewire pro if that option might become available to me ? Also frequently the songs will cut out repeatedly for a second or two. Is this also a result of the age of my computer?

Thanks catspicks

I run 8.6 as well.

I don't know about the list thing, but I can speak to the cut out part. It has been my experience that about 1 in 3 files (or more sometimes) have problems. Whoever encoded set the bitrate wrong, clipped off the peaks, cut the end of the song off, put a bloop in the middle, or whatever.

I am on dial up so I find it very frustrating to download a 9 meg tune at 192 bit rate looking for some level of quality and find out some idiot chopped off the last 10 seconds of the song when they made the file.

Nothing you can do about it. Just trash the ones that don't work and keep looking.

The other thing is what are you playing the tunes on? Quicktime will absolutely cut out when resources get taxed and it is very annoying. Other players will not cut out. SoundJam MP won't for example. I don't know about iTunes- I don't run it.

Uh, no. 1 in 3 files shouldn't be corrupt. Chances are that Limewire is not getting enough RAM.

Also, it may be that your machine with that OS just isn't able to run the player aspect of Limewire properly.

Well, I hate to hijack the original poster's problem by talking about my machine, but running that risk...

I run LimeWire with about twice the RAM it asks for if I remember correctly, and as I said, I generally play things on SoundJam. I don't have a problem with cutouts but I do get bad files with cut off ends, blurps in the middle, level changes, parts of other songs, etc. in them all the time.

I don't think it is Limewire or my machine, I think it is poor encoding at the source.

I mean, what you're saying is possible, but I find it hard to believe that when using a large sample of dled songs, 1 in 3 has a bad encoding job.

Well, tell you what, we'll do an experiment. I 'll download 6 files and we'll see if I get 2 bad ones. I bet I will.

This will take me a couple of days to get 6 files to actually download so I probably won't post back results till Sat or Sun.

Stay tuned sports fans.

I'll be waiting

Attention! The results of my unscientific survey of mp3 quality are in!

First the download recap:

Songs that wouldn't even start to download- too many to count
Songs that started but then went to "awaiting sources" very quickly (like at 1% or 2%) never to return- 5
Songs were over 50% downloaded when they died and CPR had no effect- 4
Successfully downloaded- 6

The downloaded tunes:

Yellowcard- Avondale
Chevelle- Send the Pain Below
Staind- It's Been Awhile
Atari's- Boys of Summer
Tool- Schism
Cake- Hem of Your Garment

The results:

The Staind tune was bad- two blurps in the file. Happily, all the others were fine.

Results recap:

I hypothesized 2 files in 6 were bad. Survey said 1 in 6 was bad. 33% theoretical rate vs. 17% actual rate.

Bottom line: Better than I expected.

Side note: I had an Ultrapeer connection that stayed stable for more than 48 minutes. I was beside myself.

Follow-up:

I think I am going to have to get a Tool CD or two. Cake is really quirky- I may have to investigate them further.