Hi-- I've been using Limewire for about 2 years with no complaints.

Recently, using LW 4.9.30, on playback, some of the sound quality seems deteriorated, and not just for very old performances (60+ years ago) or certain genres. All my hardware is the same and in good working order. I use WinAmp 2.95 and/or Real Player for playback.

I assume that when a clip is 128 or above, it will be listenable even if I have to adjust the volume, but there are often skips, scratchy sounds, and distortions.

Any ideas? Would LW Pro help? I use a 56 K modem to connect and usually have connection speeds of 50-53K.

Thanks for any help.

PS Other than supporting open networks and fostering research, what practical benefits does LW Pro offer? I can't tell from its website.

LW's media player is reknown for having low priority in LW's functions. ie: Searching & downlding get high priority so, sometimes LW is too busy & the player suffers as a result. Or do you mean the files you're downlding are not as good quality as earlier days? There's many more people on the network nowadays which includes users from extinct p2p sharing networks. With them they bring files from those networks. And for the many newbies to p2p sharing, many might not how to rip music very well re: sound quality

The differences between LW Basic & Pro are not dramatic so don't expect any great changes. The improvements are subtle. eg: Pro connects to 5 peers instead of 3. I think Pro allows a file to downld from 10 sources instead of 8 (I might be wrong about that.) I think there's also some very minor improvements 'under the hood' in Pro, but it's not something you can see. The program itself looks & behaves the same except you'll be turbo charged more consistently which helps with searching.

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