SCott308 said:
			
		
	
	
		
		
			Justin, when you get shows from there, what format do you do? I have been there a few times and registered, but have not gone any farther. I don't know much about the different formats and it seems kind of complex.
 
Scott
		
		
	 
here's a rundown of the 3 most popular formats used for online trading.  all 3 are "lossless", meaning when the files are created from the original source they are compressed with absolutely no signal or quality loss.  so when you download a show in any of these formats and back up the files or record it to audio cd your copy is an exact clone of the original files.
 
1) shorten, or shn files, are most popular because the format has been around the longest.  generally these files are about 30-50% smaller than the original source files.  when you create these you'll also get a what's called a checksum file which has the extension *.md5.  these files are used to check the integrity of the downloaded files to make sure there were no lost bits of data during transfer so you'll be sure to have a 100% complete copy.  the best resource for info on shn files is 
www.etree.org.  here you can also find tons of info and trading lists for "taper friendly" bands.  most are jam bands, but if you're into that then you'll be very happy you found this site.
 
2) flac, which stands for free lossless audio codec, always have the extension *.flac.  this is the second most popular format.  the good thing about flac is that it's usually compressed a little more than shn.  the only negative is that whn encoding flac it does not automatically generate a checksum file like shn.  the way to solve this is to download a program called md5summer here 
http://www.md5summer.org/.  this can be used for any type of files to create a checksum.  the official site for flac is 
http://flac.sourceforge.net/.
 
3) monkey's audio, or *.ape files.  compression wise these fall in somewhere between shn and flac.  the format is just as good as the other two.  it's just not used as much.  the official home page is 
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/.
 
i've used all 3 formats and find flac to be my favorite.  it's quick and doesn't take up much cpu power and with the flac plugin for nero you can burn audio discs straight from the compressed files.  i started backing up all my audio stuff to dvd in flac or shn and can easily fit a bunch of shows on a single disc.  if you're still using cd-r you can often put a disc show on one cd-r.
 
www.sharingthegroove.org is the site you guys are talking about to download live shows in these formats.  the site is free, but you'll need to register to get full access to all the forums.  this site and others utilize a file sharing program called bit torrent.  you can find the official homepage here 
http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/.  it's a very small program that uses the idea of peer 2 peer software and just alters it a little.  it's become very popular and i've gotten tons of stuff with this method.
 
hope this all helps.