Crosstown Torrents FAQ

1. Create a text file. This text file must include all of the required information for your seed as specified in the seeding policy. This includes band name, venue/city, bootleg title, appropriate dates, lineage, and a complete numbered track list at a minimum. Band members, reviews, or additional notes are a nice touch, so if you have that information, please include it. Note that it is not necessary to include any ffp or md5 checksums in the text file as you will create that in step 4 and past it into a special window when creating your new thread.

2. Create an appropriate checksum. For FLAC seeds, a FLAC fingerprint at mimimum is required. For SHN and APE seeds, an st5 checksum (also called shntool md5) is required. If your seed includes a traditional wholefile md5 file, it's OK to include it, but you'll need to also post st5 checksums or FLAC Fingerprints in the checksum box when you create your seed.

3. Include any artwork scans, pdf files, ticket stub images, other extras. This is not required, but is always a nice touch for your seeds to include any extra goodies that would be appropriate with your seed.

4. Double check that everything is done correctly and that all text files have been saved and closed before proceeding. Before you create your .torrent file, you must make sure that everything has been done correctly including checksum files, images, file names, and a correct text file. If you change anything after this step, it will cause the .torrent file to be inaccurate and peers will be unable to complete the download. The most common error is altering the text file after the creation of the .torrent file, which will cause all peers to hang at 99.9% complete. Once you've double checked everything, be sure to save and close all the files associated with your seed .

5. Create a .torrent file. The announce URL for your .torrent will be: http://crosstowntorrents.org:5555/announce Most Clients have the ability to create torrents. I recommend utorrent.

6. Create a new announce thread and upload the torrent.

7. Begin seeding.

Download the .torrent file from the thread - it gets personalized upon download. Then open the .torrent file with your BitTorrent client of choice. After it checks the files, your client will register itself as a seed with the tracker. If you client supports "super-seed" mode, you may want to enable that. Though it's not required, this mode will help you distribute the torrent faster by lowering the amount of redundant uploads. If you don't use it, plan on the upload taking about 25% longer.

What's all this stuff about ratio?

This is a music sharing site. One simple way to display how much you're sharing is with the share ratio. Before doing that, let's talk about two terms: Uploading is when you send data to others, downloading is when you receive data. Your share ratio is the amount you've uploaded divided by amount downloaded (Ratio = UL / DL). A good ratio is 1.0 or higher, which means that you've shared back as much or more than you received. If you don't keep an acceptable ratio it could result in you losing your account. We require a minimum of 0.50 ratio. That simply means, If you download 1gb, you must give back at least half of it to stay above the minimum requirements.To try to attain and keep a good enough ratio you can:

* Make sure you seed (don't close the torrent after it has finished downloading). * Stop downloading for a while. * If possible leave your computer on and torrents open continuously. This way you can improve your ratio even while not using your computer. * Upload your own torrent.

So, what's my ratio? Your total ratio is displayed in every thread you post in, the member list and your public profile.

It's important to distinguish between your overall ratio and the individual ratio on each torrent you may be seeding or leeching. The overall ratio takes into account the total uploaded and downloaded from your account since you joined the site. The individual ratio takes into account those values for each torrent.

You may see two symbols instead of a number: "Inf.", which is just an abbreviation for Infinity, and means that you have downloaded 0 bytes while uploading a non-zero amount (ul/dl becomes infinity); "---", which should be read as "non-available", and shows up when you have both downloaded and uploaded 0 bytes (ul/dl = 0/0 which is an indeterminate amount).

Most common reason for stats not updating: * The user is cheating. (a.k.a. "Summary Ban") * The server is overloaded and unresponsive. Just try to keep the session open until the server responds again. (Flooding the server with consecutive manual updates is not recommended.) * You are using a faulty client. If you want to use an experimental or CVS version you do it at your own risk.

Best practices: * If a torrent you are currently leeching/seeding is not listed on your profile, just wait or force a manual update. * Make sure you exit your client properly, so that the tracker receives "event=completed". * If the tracker is down, do not stop seeding. As long as the tracker is back up before you exit the client the stats should update properly. * It is a great idea to start out with a positive ratio immediately. The best way to do this is to make sure the first torrent you pick is a popular one with many leechers. Once your download is complete, leave it open so many people will leech from you. This will give you a positive ratio right from the start. After that, just be sure to give back at least as much as you take and you will never have a ratio problem.

CDR rips of material available on Silver CD and rips of CDRs burned from previously downloaded lossless files are not permitted.

We at Crosstown Torrents are trying to promote purity in the trading pool. When dealing with a set that has been released on silver pressed CD, we require that the lossless files have been cleanly ripped from an original silver CD. To help ensure that everyone has equal access to pure versions, Silver CD > CDR > Lossless is not a legal lineage. On the same token, once a show has been ripped to lossless media format, burning to a CD and then re-extracting is an extraneous step that often-times results in errors. FLAC, APE, or SHN sets that circulate may not be burned to audio CD and then re-traded or re-seeded. In otherwords, nothing like flac > CDR > (extraction method > wav >) flac. Please archive and trade only the original lossless files or acoustically identical alternate formats (verify this with st5s - see the Checksum Types FAQ).

CDR generations are bad for the trading pool, and unless all versions of the bootleg circulate only on CDR, it will not be permitted here.

Act maturely. Don't rise to inflammatory posts. Remember that your opinion is only your opinion, and other people have a right to disagree with it, just as you have a right to have it. Don't turn a difference of opinion into an insult fest.

Flaming and name calling will not be permitted.

Treat each other with respect or how you would like be treated: 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'

Do not disrespect the moderators. They are volunteers and do the best that they can, If you can do a better job, go start your own site and moderate how you want there.

Failure to follow these rules may get you banned from the discussion forums for varying lengths of time. Depending on how many times you've already been warned (banned from these forums), you may be banned anywhere from a day, a week, a month, or permanently (or anywhere in between). This is up to moderator discretion. You may PM that moderator to discuss and resolve the issue.

The Mods reserve the right to remove any posts that they feel are offensive.

All seeds must be CD quality, lossless audio in FLAC, APE, or SHN format. No seed that has been compressed to a lossy format at some point in the past will be accepted here. This includes mp3, ogg, aac, or any other lossy format. Also note that lossless filetypes other than FLAC, APE, and SHN are not permitted; this includes WAV, AIFF, ALC, MKW, Windows Lossless, Real Lossless, and any other lossless format. Unless that is the only known format of that particular seed.

All seeds must include a complete and accurate lineage, indicating what formats and media the audio has previously used.

This is extremely important. Any seed without complete lineage included will be deleted from our tracker. Any seed with inaccurate lineage will be deleted from our tracker.

We prefer to have seeds that are only from Silver-pressed bootleg CDs or from original master recordings over ones that have been through multiple CDR generations. There are some items where this stipulation is impossible, and special exceptions can be made for CDR sourced material provided that it verifies as lossless, gapless, and digitally clean. You must include every bit of information you know in the lineage or your seed will be deleted. If your show is from a CDR, you MUST include the number of generations or write CDRx if unknown.

Here are some examples of legal lineages:

AUD > ? > Silver bootleg CD > EAC > WAV > Flac Frontend > FLAC (lvl 7, SBE aligned) SBD > Sony DAT > PC Digital Coax Input > WAV > CDWav > APE FM > ? > CDRx (verified digitally clean) > iTunes (with error correction) > AIFF > xACT > FLAC Here are some examples of illegal lineages that will result in your seed being deleted: Audience (this is a completely useless, infoless lineage) AUD > Silver CD > CDR > EAC > WAV > FLAC (no Silver CD > CDR transitions allowed!) SBD > Sony DAT > PC Digital Coax Input > WAV > CDWav > APE > WAV > CDR(1) > EAC > WAV > FLAC (no lossless file > CDR > lossless file) SBD > ? > CDR > EAC > WAV > FLAC (please include the CDR gen!) Silver CD > WAV > FLAC (extraction software MUST be specified) AUD > DAT > MD > Digital Optical Soundcard Input > WAV > FLAC (no DAT > MD, see rule 11) AUD > MD(M) > MD(1) > WAV > FLAC (only MD sources/masters are allowed)