Hello! Thanks for your interest in joining What.cd's private bittorrent community. I am going to ask you questions regarding your willingness to join What.cd, your internet connection, your previous experience with BitTorrent, and your knowledge of audio encoding.

Please answer the questions in order with the matching number of the question. Otherwise I will not count your answer. IRC has a line length limit; keep your answers within 3-4 sentences, or use multiple lines with the ENTER or RETURN key. Do not use any outside sources for your answer. Use *YOUR* words from what you know.

Section 1: This is a set of preliminary questions to check if you have enough general knowledge to continue with the test. If you fail any question in this section, then you need to retake the test. You have 3 chances to be interviewed for an invite.
1. What internet connection do you have? Post the link to your Speedtest results. If you haven't done so, please shut down all downloads/uploads and take a moment to take the test at http://www.speedtest.net/ I will wait for your results before continuing.
2. Which conversions are acceptable without having *obvious* quality loss? No more than one (1) lossless to lossy transcode is allowed to take place. Answer Y (YES) or N (NO) to the following:
a. 192 MP3 -> 320 MP3
b. CDDA (CD) -> FLAC
c. 320 MP3 -> 192 MP3 -> q6 Vorbis (Ogg)
d. FLAC -> CDDA (CD) -> 320 MP3
e. APE -> FLAC -> q7 Vorbis (Ogg)
f. WAV (PCM) -> 256 MP3 -> APE -> FLAC
g. V0 MP3 -> CDDA (CD) -> 320 AAC (MPA/MP4) -> WAV (PCM)
h. ALAC (MPA/MP4) -> CDDA (CD) -> APE -> V2 MP3 -> FLAC

Section 2: Congrats! You've passed the first part. I am going to ask you few questions about who you are and why you want to join What.cd.
1. Why are you interested in becoming a What member? Where did you hear of this site?
2. How often do you plan on using the site?
3. If you fail this test, are you willing to try again?
4. How big is your music collection? Which formats do you like to keep your music in? (Example: CD, vinyl, tape, MP3 files, etc.)

Section 3: Grrrrreat! I want to know about your prior computer and BitTorrent experience.
1. What operating system(s) do you use?
2. Which BitTorrent client(s) do you use?
3. Do you have experience creating and uploading torrents? Briefly explain to me how you make a torrent if you do.
4. Are you a member of any other private trackers? If you are, copy/paste the link to your profile. If I am not a member of those sites, please take a screenshot of your profile and post the link.
5. If you rip CDs, which program do you use? Do you normally select for any options such as "jitter correction," "secure mode," or "full, paranoia mode" when ripping?

Section 4: All right. This is the final and perhaps most difficult section of this interview. I will ask you technical questions about audio files. Almost there...
1. What is a lossy codec? Name some formats.
2. What is a lossless codec? Name some formats.
3. What is the main difference between a CBR and VBR MP3?
4. Why are there no 320 VBR MP3 files?
5. Give me the name of an MP3 encoder.
6. Which transcodes (conversions) are acceptable? Give an example.
7. Which transcodes (conversions) are unacceptable? Give an example.
8. Suppose you downloaded some songs that you thought were transcodes. How would you detect them? Be as detailed as possible.
9. Which of the following pictures is a lossy -> lossy transcode? a) http://i35.tinypic.com/r1ixrl.jpg or b) http://i36.tinypic.com/qx6x5w.png ? Why do you think it's the one you chose? (Hint: Compare the shape of the spectrograms.)