md5 files

[ballmeblazer]

what is the deal with them. what do i use to convert them to .shn/wav files? i hope someone has a clue what to do with these.

[Kahn]

I wasn't aware that md5's were audio files. I thought it was just a signature of the conversion or something. I could be wrong though.

[ballmeblazer]

I wasn't aware that md5's were audio files. I thought it was just a signature of the conversion or something. I could be wrong though.

they're the kind of files that you get from etree.org. i may be wrong with the type of file they are. i'm just confused as to how to get them to play on my computer.

[taylordb]

md5 files are the "electronic signature" of the group of files (usually shn files) that you download for a show.

For example, lets say you want to download night 3 of the recent DMB Gorge show (I picked that one because I was there and it kicked ass). And lets say that the show contained 15 songs. What you will see when you go to etree or dreamingtree and download the show is 15 files that end in ".shn" and usually one file that ends in "txt" and usually one md5 file. The shn files are the audio files...the txt file is usually a text file that contains all the important info about the show....who taped it, the track numbers and song titles, etc. The last file is the md5 file. It is used to check the integrety of the shn files that you down loaded.
You need a program like mkwact to use the md5 files, but what you do is double click on the md5 file and it starts up the mkwact program and starts to check each downloaded shn file against the md5 "fingerprint"....if the two are not exactly the same it will tell you so...which means you got a corrupted shn file...so you delete that file and download it again.
Hope that was not too long winded.

[ballmeblazer]

md5 files are the "electronic signature" of the group of files (usually shn files) that you download for a show.

For example, lets say you want to download night 3 of the recent DMB Gorge show (I picked that one because I was there and it kicked ass). And lets say that the show contained 15 songs. What you will see when you go to etree or dreamingtree and download the show is 15 files that end in ".shn" and usually one file that ends in "txt" and usually one md5 file. The shn files are the audio files...the txt file is usually a text file that contains all the important info about the show....who taped it, the track numbers and song titles, etc. The last file is the md5 file. It is used to check the integrety of the shn files that you down loaded.
You need a program like mkwact to use the md5 files, but what you do is double click on the md5 file and it starts up the mkwact program and starts to check each downloaded shn file against the md5 "fingerprint"....if the two are not exactly the same it will tell you so...which means you got a corrupted shn file...so you delete that file and download it again.
Hope that was not too long winded.

...ok. so i need to get a progam like mkwact to listen to files from etree?? and md5 is just part of the files identity. i think that's it. you've been very helpful.

[taylordb]

No you don't use mkwact to listen to the files, you use mkwact in conjunction with the md5 files to check the integrity of the audio files you downloaded. Now, mkwact is also used to convert shn files into wav files that you can then burn to a cd to listen in your car or home stereo (for flac files you would use the program "flac frontend").


To listen to shn or flac files (usually those are the only audio type files you will find...other than mp3) directly from your computer, you can use winamp....they have a plugin to play shn and flac files.