I'm new--one question

[sc1986]

I just found out about torrent--screw limewire now. I wanted to know how you can tell the quality of a song or album? My buddy said something about wanting it no lower that "128 somethings", but I don't see anything like that. So what's a really good quality? Explain it to me like I'm a caveman, because I may as well be. hah

[jewelisheaven]

Information relevant to torrent releases should be in the description or title.

[Bobbias]

128 kbps. That means kilobits per second. It describes how much information the computer uses to describe each second of music. The higher the number, the bigger the file, and the bigger the file, the more information it can use to describe the sound.

Think about it this way: There are lots of ways of writing and describing things. You could describe a sunset by saying "The sky turned red, and the sun set." Or, you could describe it with a longer sentence, such as "The sky became a mellow red, the clouds reflected and enhanced this wonderful color, and the sun finally set."

Each describes the same thing, but the longer one is more detailed. The same sort of idea applies to mp3s.

Most torrents contain music that is at least 128 kbps. Some of them even use 320 kbps. But not many people tag their torrents telling you what bit rate they are. You're just going to have to trust that the place you're getting them from is using 128 kbps or better. (there are ways to check, but I'm not going to go into that, because you see to be completely new to this, and I'm lazy.)