ul/dl ratio help - new user

[msuscon1]

If it's not immediately obvious, I'm still relatively new to bt trading and to this site. Thank you to those of you who post and provide torrents for sharing.

I am trying to be a conscientious user of this site, however, I'm running into a few problems: While I have an extensive collection of live music, it has been collected over the years via hand-offs and mail trade. I have come to understand that this means the majority of my collection is made up of cds which are not suitable for sharing / reproducing (since they're cd-player ready, I'm assuming they're mp3s and would be at risk of diluting the quality of the music in circulation). Further, I have no idea how to create a torrent from the legit (non-lossy) sources I do own (I'll figure this out). This means as of right now, I cannot / shouldn't upload material.

Second, I'm finding that, since I'm new to this, the torrents I often select have been in circulation for some time here, and even though I leave them open to seed, not many others are tapping into them (they sit inactive in my window for long periods with no one downloading).

This leaves me with what is beginning to be an embarassing dl/ul ratio. I need suggestions for ways to "pitch in" and do my part here in order to feel okay with continuing to use the site. Other than uploading a torrent, are there suggestions from regular users on how to do so?

Thanks!

[pattison2]

besides uploading your own torrent, the easiest way is to jump on a torrent right away and just stay there until your ratio for that torrent is at least 1 if not closer to 2. you can change your settings in your torrent tracker as well so you upload faster than you download, will take you longer to get the shows, but will be better for your ratio

[GRC]

Originally Posted by msuscon1

... cds which are not suitable for sharing / reproducing (since they're cd-player ready, I'm assuming they're mp3s and would be at risk of diluting the quality of the music in circulation)

CD player-ready doesn't necessarily imply mp3.

Put one of these CDs into your computer drive, and, if prompted by autoplay, select 'Open folder to view files'. If it shows you a list of *.cda files, you have what's termed a 'red book' CD, and, as long as you're certain there wasn't any lossy conversion ahead of the creation of this CD, you're in the clear to upload it here. If your disc is an mp3 disc, windoze explorer will give you either a tree of folders containing *.mp3 files, or a root directory with them.

Regards, Graham