Thread: How to get a What.CD invite

So now that we are unable to give away invites to what.cd at T-I, the only way you can become a member is if you know someone who has an invite or go through the IRC interview process.

I know what your thinking - interviews are generally painful affairs and you think you may not know enough about music, but you can greatly increase your chances and knowledge by reading through this guide. If you don't like reading, then this is not the way for you to get a what.cd invite. Otherwise continue on as this guide could be helpful.

This information is not a transcription of an interview - this is general information that is fair game (and likely will be touched upon) for the interview. Much of this information is available at What.CD: A Beginner's Guide (and I suggest you look through that, too) but this acts as a quick and dirty guide to highlighting the audio questions that you are more likely unfamiliar with. Seeing as T-I is a community with a focus of torrents, you all should be fine with basic torrent, tracker, and proof questions.

Things you will need
- an IRC client to participate in the interview
- patience
- willingness to learn
- an hour or so (to read up and participate in the interview)

Lossy vs Lossless
What.cd has a collection of both Lossy and Lossless audio. Lossy audio has smaller filesizes, but there is information loss each time the file is transcoded (so each lossy encode/transcode loses quality). Lossless audio has a larger filesize, but it preserves all the auditory data. This is beneficial for when a new filetype comes along - the Lossless can be reencoded any number of times, and the data is preserved. (Transcodes will be covered more later)

Examples of Lossy Audio filetypes: mp3, aac, ogg
Examples of Lossless Audio filetypes: flac, alac, ape, wav (for the purposes of the interview)

Lossy Bitrates
So with Lossy formats, another factor comes into play - how lossy an encoding is. Let's talk about mp3s since those happen to be the most popular lossy format. The bitrate range for lossy formats is 16 to 320 kbps. The higher the bitrate, the better the quality, but the larger the file.

CBR
CBR stands for Constant Bit Rate. This is the one that you are most likely familiar with. every second of audio is encoded at the same rate, whether it is a complex or simple part of the song. On What, a CBR of 320 (the highest) is preferred.

VBR
VBR stands for Variable Bit Rate. This is nice because the parts of the song that hold more data are encoded at a higher bitrate parts of the song that are less important and hold less data (like silence) are recorded at a lower bitrate. This aims to achieve the best utilization of space. This can be shown as 256 VBR, but the what community generally refers to the VBR encoded MP3s by their LAME settings.

V0 -> 245 VBR (which hits a range from 260 to 220)
V1 -> 225 VBR (which hits a range from 250 to 190)
V2 -> 190 VBR (which hits a range from 210 to 170)
...... continues on to ....
V9 -> 65 VBR (which hits a range from 45 to 85)

Don't let V# scare you, it is just a nickname

ABR
Stands for Average Bit Rate. It sort of a mix of VBR and CBR (and thats all you really need to know about it).

So when comparing these files of a similar bitrate bracket, the format preference tends to be VBR>ABR>CBR.

Transcodes
I will try do do this section justice, but I suggest you look at the transcode section at What.CD: A Beginner's Guide since they have pictures (so that you aren't thrown off by images of spectral breakdown)!

So with music, the information is stored as a bunch of frequencies. In the case of CDs, it is stored from 0 to 22kHz. Lossless encodes save all the information up to 22kHz. The way Lossy encodes save space is by dropping the higher frequencies. Humans generally can hear up to 20kHz, so 320 kbps MP3 has a sharp cutoff there (meaning the data loss is generally imperceptible by most humans).

A 245 CBR will have a sharp cutoff around 19kHz or so. A V0 (245 VBR) will have have all the information below 19kHz, but it will have a little above since certain parts get recorded at a slightly higher bitrate. This gives less of a shelf and more of a jagged appearance in the spectral analysis. So depending on where the frequency is cut off, one can determine what type of bitrate, and the approximate bitrate of the file.

What.cd is very picky about its transcodes, The basic rule that they follow is that you can transcode From lossless to something else (lossy or lossless). If you transcode anything from a lossy format (to a lossy or lossless) it is considered an invalid transcode.

Time For The Interview
Those are the highlights of the audio information you need to know. Now you are ready to give the interview a try.

Now a few final tips before you go of and interview:
- Go to What.CD: A Beginner's Guide and do a quick scan of the info there
- Read and follow ALL directions
- Be patient and courteous
- Be honest - If you don't know the answer to a question, say so - if they suspect you of googling the answers, they will end the interview.
- Remember, if you do not pass the first time, read up a little more, and try again.

To join the What.CD server and #what.cd-invites:
* Connect to IRC Server: irc.what.cd Port: 6667 (6697 for SSL).
* Type '/join #what.cd-invites' in your client.
* Read the topic.

Good Luck!



-Airman

No offense, but what tells you what to study for the interview on their site. On top of that, just a few google clicks and read up on LAME for like 30 seconds and this interview isn't that hard. Honestly I think what is too easy a tracker to get on.

i failed interview, the guy asked me 20 questions for each section, wtf is that about going from flac to rip cd to rip cd to flac

and i had to get 100% right, c'mon man

this is a good tutorial though, it's what i used, just got a hard interviewer

Thanks for the tutorial.. It really helps.. However, after learning from your tutorial, I just realized that I could not join to their invite channel because my whole country is banned.. What a poor me.. Seems that joining What.cd is now only in my dreams.. (Unless I'm moving out of my country off course)

Passed the interview on my first try, it isn't difficult at all.

Make sure your prepared, make a notes sheet in notepad or whatever to quickly look at during the interview. You have gotta be confident in what transcodes are acceptable and what isn't. Lossless to lossless and lossless to lossy are the only acceptable ones, and you can only transcode to lossy once.

Also make sure you know what DHT and Port Forwarding is. Oh and .cue and .log files

I didn't know but my interviewer was pretty lenient on me.

It's good to know about EAC as well, if you've never used it before I recommend trying it out and encoding a CD of your own before the interview. for a little experience.

Goodluck to everyone who is going to give it a try.

So out of curiosity, has this guide been helpful? Has anyone gotten in due to its help? Is there anything that tripped you up that you would like clarified?

yea i have no interest in what.cd...not because its hard to seed because i own a seedbox...because i have no use for it...i don't hoard trackers..i only join trackers because i use them on a daily basis. waffles, tr, and elek are fine for me. all i need is TT and all my music needs are covered!

I really appreciate your time as well as this tutorial. There are a good few tutorials online although while browsing through such. . . this has definitely been the most helpful. Anyways I will be reading over the tutorial 10x fold and hopefully when I go for a shot at the interview all goes well. =]

Are there any other ways to join what.cd without going into interview? whole ip from my country are banned from what.cd irc channel. Poor me..