Thread: What.cd (What) Review

Name: What.cd

URL: what.cd

Birthday: 10/07

Invite interview: What.CD: A Beginner's Guide

This is my favorite tracker so I thought I'd make a new review for 2011. As far as I'm concerned, every music lover should be a part of this community. It is very well organized.... Actually, let me rephrase. It is the most organized tracker that I have been on. Whatever band you're looking for, you'll be able to find it in seconds and in whatever format. That's why there are hardly any "dupes" because every band/album is categorized by format/year. Say you wanted to upload a V0 rip to an album that already had a FLAC and a 320, you would just hit "add format" so it would be grouped with the rest of the album. The other day I made the mistake of uploading a scene release of a new album in V0 when there was already a V0 CD uploaded. I thought a "scene" release was considered unique, but it's not. I missed that one in the rules;) Thank god another user busted me on it before a mod so I could delete it... Just shows how users look out for one another.

Many think that What is stricly music, but that is far from the truth. There is a huge collection of apps, e-books, e-learning videos, audiobooks, comedy, comics, etc... Personally, I've downloaded some great software and they usually don't kill your ratio;)

The IRC is very active. I go on from time to time and there's definitely a lot more folks on there than on other trackers. The server is invite only with the exception of the help channel. I went on the #help the other day for a little problem, and they fixed it for me in no time. THERE ARE ALWAYS PEOPLE ON THE IRC! I have mIRC set up to connect to all my trackers at the same time and What always has the most activity on it... TI might be #2... I'm not just sayin' that either;)

The only downfall that I have found is that it is definitely hard to seed unless you upload your own torrents. I've heard many people disagree with that, but I've hardly got any any upload besides the torrents I've uploaded myself. I did manage to get to PU in about a month though.

Unfortunately you cannot ask for invites on TI, but you can take an interview on the IRC. It's not too painful, but you just need to know a little bit about file formats, transcoding, and bittorrent. Give it a shot! It's well worth it!!!!!!

Oh, as P2P_seeder pointed out to me there are many, many different style sheets to choose from. I know a lot of people don't like the wood grain... I'm not even sure if I did at first, but it kinda grew on me;) My favorite is the first style sheet I'm gonna post, but for some reason it doesn't scroll very smoothly when going threw the browse page. Well any who... here's four of them.

Style Sheets:






Home Page:


Stats:


Browse:


Freeleech doesn't happen offen, but the "staff picks" are so its a good way to build your ratio.



Forum:


Rules:


Ratio Rules:
What's unique ratio sytem allows you to have a lower required ratio by seeding all the torrents you download. I love this system and think all trackers should use this system as it encourages people to keep seeding.



I love their user class system! Most sites just have the user/power user system. I'm not gonna name them all, because they'll all be posted here, but I'm trying like hell to get to "Elite." (For now... Torrent Master is a bit of a ways away;)











They have a great invite forum to get onto other great sites, but I can't speak for it personally because I've got all my invites but one off here;)







Donations:




All in all it's a great site and I would definitely recommend it to music fanatics. As I said earlier, the only downfall is seeding if you don't have your own torrents to upload, but many people say otherwise so it's not impossible.

Ratings:

Content: 10/10
Speed: 7/10
Community:10/10

Good review lastop41, though I don't particularly admire the wood panel theme, it's good to know there's a whole plethora of other themes available as well.

I'd just like to add that this is one of the most popular trackers out there and is running on the best tracker codebase, Gazelle. This is not the type of tracker you want to join and then screw up on because they're the most connected and respected tracker amongst all other trackers in this whole scene we call P2P. In my opinion, though minimal ratio standards are actually quite low, What.cd is like a private BitTorrent training ground to actually see if you're the type of user who really knows "how" and "what it really means to share." Even though it's not mentioned much, a very big plus for me is if you can advance to the next user class there's a hidden wealth in the Power User invite forum. And unlike other power user forums What.cd's invite forum is very well active.

I usually hate the Gazelle codebase, because I am mainly looking for new released torrents and it's just very annoying when you see all the seeders of all the torrents together, BUT when it comes to music it's perfect. What.cd is the most amazing tracker I have very joined, a big surprise to hear that from me. I usually don't listen to music much, because it's too much of a hassle to get new music I like in the right quality and I only wanted to join this tracker because of their invite forum, but now I'm hooked.

Waffles was my first tracker and I basically got it by accident, never liked it, probably because it's not well organised.
The only downside to What.cd is it's huge userbase, because I usually prefer tracker <30.000 members, less security threads. Concerning seeding I can say that it's extremely hard to get upload credit if you just download the stuff you like, even if you are into mainstream music.

I'm a member of this tracker since only 4 days, but I was lucky enough to join right before the staff picks, the reason why I already have a nice buffer of 75GB (about 220 FLACS!). Without the staff picks and uploading good rips yourself it's near to impossible to move up in userclasses. I will probably meet the requirements for Elite in less than one week (excluding the 4 week period, obviously).

I wanted to take the interview, prepared for two hours, only to find out that it was invite only at that time, which is pretty strange. I got an invite from a friend, but I wanted to try the interview process first because I don't like asking people for invites.

Amazing tracker, but you should not miss the staff picks.

Originally Posted by Magister

I usually hate the Gazelle codebase, because I am mainly looking for new released torrents and it's just very annoying when you see all the seeders of all the torrents together, BUT when it comes to music it's perfect. What.cd is the most amazing tracker I have very joined, a big surprise to hear that from me. I usually don't listen to music much, because it's too much of a hassle to get new music I like in the right quality and I only wanted to join this tracker because of their invite forum, but now I'm hooked.

Waffles was my first tracker and I basically got it by accident, never liked it, probably because it's not well organised.
The only downside to What.cd is it's huge userbase, because I usually prefer tracker <30.000 members, less security threads. Concerning seeding I can say that it's extremely hard to get upload credit if you just download the stuff you like, even if you are into mainstream music.

I'm a member of this tracker since only 4 days, but I was lucky enough to join right before the staff picks, the reason why I already have a nice buffer of 75GB (about 220 FLACS!). Without the staff picks and uploading good rips yourself it's near to impossible to move up in userclasses. I will probably meet the requirements for Elite in less than one week (excluding the 4 week period, obviously).

I wanted to take the interview, prepared for two hours, only to find out that it was invite only at that time, which is pretty strange. I got an invite from a friend, but I wanted to try the interview process first because I don't like asking people for invites.

Amazing tracker, but you should not miss the staff picks.

That 75GB upload is impressive!!! I've been a member for about 2 months and I'm only up to 40GB uploaded and that's only because I've uploaded about 40 torrents. I wish I had jumped on those staff picks right away. I guess I didn't mainly because I didn't like any of the choices, but but I should have done it anyways just for the upload credit and deleted them after. Oh well, maybe next time.

---------- Post added at 07:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:37 PM ----------

Oh, I was wondering how I could add this review to the review index or is that something a mod has to do?

Originally Posted by lastop41

That 75GB upload is impressive!!! I've been a member for about 2 months and I'm only up to 40GB uploaded and that's only because I've uploaded about 40 torrents. I wish I had jumped on those staff picks right away. I guess I didn't mainly because I didn't like any of the choices, but but I should have done it anyways just for the upload credit and deleted them after. Oh well, maybe next time.

---------- Post added at 07:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:37 PM ----------

Oh, I was wondering how I could add this review to the review index or is that something a mod has to do?

I didn't listen to any of the staff picks, but as soon as I saw the news on here I tried grab everything that had freeleech on it as soon as possible. I was one hour too late though, next I'll score 100GB :) I was more than lucky!

I wish they'd have a full free leech on there sometime. Waffles has one right now and I'm getting some good upload from my torrents.

I recently found what (excuse the pun) you might call a recruitment thread started by a what.cd staff member and once I have been on this tracker for 6 months and been a active uploader and downloader I can ask to be invited.

I am looking forward to it I am on several major hard to seed trackers and I have not failed to build ratio on any of them the ke IMO is to figure out a strategy and once you have that strategy and it works don't change it stick to it like a fly to fly paper.

Originally Posted by UKTorrent

I recently found what (excuse the pun) you might call a recruitment thread started by a what.cd staff member and once I have been on this tracker for 6 months and been a active uploader and downloader I can ask to be invited.

I am looking forward to it I am on several major hard to seed trackers and I have not failed to build ratio on any of them the ke IMO is to figure out a strategy and once you have that strategy and it works don't change it stick to it like a fly to fly paper.

I might have misinterpreted what you were saying, but it sounded as though you haven't yet got on What.cd. If you haven't, take this interview. If what you said was true you'll have no problem passing it:) It's too bad you can't give out invites on TI, because it's the greatest tracker of all time!!!! What.CD: A Beginner's Guide Good luck mate:)

Since people may ask about various differences between What and Waffles....I posted this tidbit in the Waffles thread earlier:

A lot of people are asking about the differences between What and Waffles...

One big difference that no one has mentioned yet is the required ratio at these sites. What has a formula for required ratio that rewards you for keeping more of your torrents seeding as long as possible. For example, even if you download up to 40GB, but continue to keep all of those torrents seeding, your required ratio there is .10. If you decide to stop seeding all torrents youve ever downloaded at 40 GB, your required ratio jumps to .40

At Waffles, they don't use a formula....if you download up to 40GB there, your required ratio is .25.

Whether this is good or bad for each site is up to you to decide, but it's important info.