NotWhat.CD News

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NWCD: THE GOLDEN AGE

For the past 9 years What.cd has set the precedent for quality and the standard for ‘perfect’ rips. Today Notwhat.cd is taking on the role to continue the preservation of music and reinvent the notion of a perfect FLAC. Hereby Notwhat.CD would love to introduce to you: Silver and Gold as rip grading standards for CD uploads.

A Gold FLAC is a release that has been ripped, curated and verified by the original uploader, adheres to all of the NWCD uploading rules, passes the NWCD Logchecker as ‘perfect’ and fulfils a number of other criteria. Each Gold FLAC will be submitted with proof of ripping and complete and accurate edition information in the form of a verification image taken by the uploader. Once assessed and approved by the moderation team, the upload will receive Gold as a grade.

A Silver FLAC is a release that has passed the Logchecker as ‘perfect’, typically considered a ‘perfect rip’ elsewhere. Rips with perfect log files will automatically be graded Silver upon upload to NWCD.

You can find an in-depth wiki article on our rip grading standards here.

A Gold FLAC will be our benchmark for a perfect CD rip and will therefore be able to trump any Silver FLAC or ungraded FLAC torrent of the same edition. Before we allow any trumping to commence, we are giving users a grace period of two months in which they can submit their already existing personally ripped CD FLAC uploads for Gold status when accompanied by the required verification. Once this grace period has ended users will be able to freely trump lower graded torrents with their own Gold FLACs.

Rip grades for vinyl is on hold until a few features are developed that accommodates multiple rips.
Rip grades for web are still in discussion and we encourage users to stop by #discuss to brainstorm.

NWCD Logchecker:

The NWCD Logchecker has been updated, thoroughly modified and tested to meet our needs. The logchecker no longer provides a numerical percentage score based on a point deduction system, it will simply pass or fail your log on the strictest settings possible. Scoring has been removed entirely from the logviewer and logchecker.php. A passing log file will display as being 'Perfect' and encourage the uploader to go the extra step and submit their upload for Gold. A log file which fails the logchecker will continue to have its log validation report shown on the torrent page outlining the specific reasons the log file failed and will also trigger a message to prompt the uploader to correct their EAC or XLD setup to ensure future rips meet our standards.

Our logchecker now supports multi-lingual log submissions automatically. This means any log file requiring translation will be translated and then scored in real time upon uploading to NWCD. If you notice any errors with automatic log translation please report the log for a rescore.

Whipper Log Support

We are proud to announce that our logchecker supports the open source ripper Whipper when using our notwhat-logger package. We will be releasing the notwhat-logger shortly as well as all the guides and tools necessary for a proper Whipper setup. Whipper version 0.4.2+ is supported and checksums are absolutely required to pass the logchecker. Whipper rips that follow our configuration and use the notwhat-logger can be submitted for Gold. The notwhat-logger will be actively maintained by our development group - we are focused on adding valuable rip information as well as looking into other methods of log verification that are difficult to defeat.

NWCD JSON Export/Import: (Cross-Tracker Uploading)

A Gazelle JSON file contains all the metadata associated with any given torrent. This includes all edition information, image urls, torrent description and album descriptions. We have created a JSON export/import tool to assist those users who wish to quickly and easily import their personal uploads and snatches from other trackers to NWCD. The tool can be used to export metadata from almost any other gazelle music tracker and import the data to our upload page fast and error free. Users can also use the tool to import snatches from other trackersthat they wish to seed on NWCD without duplicating data by creating symlinks or using our symlink tool to assist (see the wiki article below).

Export:
NWCD has added JSON export buttons next to all our torrents to enhance the redistribution of proper metadata. We have also created a userscript that appends these buttons to most other gazelle trackers directly on the torrent page. Complete meta data can be exported in one simple click.

Import:
NWCD has implemented a JSON import button baked into our gazelle fork on the upload page. Using this function allows the JSON file from any other tracker to populate upload.php with all the stored metadata, including image album art, completey removing the once tedious hassle of manually retyping each and every field when cross-seeding a snatch or personal upload to multiple trackers.

Use Cases:
The JSON tool is great to cross-seed all your uploads from any gazelle music tracker to NWCD as well as your FLAC snatches that are not yet uploaded here. JSON files are now allowed in the torrent file list accommodating automatic download tools that snatch the. json automatically.

Please see this wiki article for full details on who can use the tool, what can be uploaded, how to obtain the userscript and further support.

Classical Music Tagging and Uploading Rules:

NWCD has a finalised set of classical music tagging and uploading rules which can be viewed in full here. We wish to extend a big thank you to Kenny for offering NWCD his work for adaptation to our needs.

NWCD Gazelle Fork Updates and Enhancements:

Original Release Removed:
We have removed the original release option from the upload page and all existing data has been migrated to the edition specific fields. This means you should include proper edition information with each of your uploads including label, catalogue number and any other edition specific metadata.

NWCD Additional Metadata:
NWCD has implemented additional data fields such as matrix, sample rate, and dynamic range score. This dataset has been implemented into the API. See below for how the new data will be displayed on the torrent page.

Torrent Display:
FLAC / Lossless / Log (100%) Verified / Cue
is now
FLAC / 16bit 44.1kHz / DR9 / Log Verified / Cue / Silver

Image Uploading Enhancements:

NWCD now supports an array of image uploading options. Relevant to upload.php, requests.php, artist.php and torrents.php
Raw image data can be pasted anywhere on to the page and will be uploaded
Any image url can be pasted anywhere on to the page and will automatically be transloaded to our host
Image files can be dragged and dropped anywhere on to the page and will be uploaded
Browsing to a locally stored image (the traditional method)

Upload.php Enhancements:

Drag and drop is now supported across all of upload.php
.torrent and .log files can be dropped directly onto the relevant browse buttons
.json files can be dropped anywhere on the page
.txt files can be dropped directly on to torrent description and lineage fields

Various other site changes:

The advanced search function has been updated to sort for rip grade and other essential updates
Better.php has been updated to search for missing sample rate, dynamic range, and missing lineage
Silver and Gold has been added to the community stats section of each user profile as well as the overall stats page
External stylesheets have been removed. Stylesheets can be submitted to us for local hosting.
Increased paranoia options to hide username from the uploader field on torrent pages

Private Message upon Report:

Users will now automatically receive a private message when one of their uploaded torrents has been reported.

Looking forward and More:

We will be moving off cloudflare to our own private ddos-protected infrastructure. A notification will alert everyone in advance about our move and a temporary domain will be supplied to access the site and tracker while the DNS propagates.

Our next development milestone will be focused on writing the well overdue artist disambiguation feature as well as support for the open source cd ripper - Whipper. These are just a few of the many ideas we are happy to present to you in our pursuit of perflaction and ultimately shaping a better experience for better not just our community but the music tracker community as a whole.

All of this was made possible by our development team in conjunction with staff and input from the community.

A big thanks goes to our administration, moderation and FLS teams. They have worked tirelessly rewriting all of the rules, crafting all the wiki articles among countless hours of brainstorming and even more countless hours bug testing.

Thank you to everyone involved in Notwhat.CD - Staff and Community for spending your precious time here with everyone united under one goal: Share the sounds we all love so much.