What's the best online file sharing site to exchange our CWB files with?

The free Dropbox account is pretty cool, as is the free YouSendIt account.
 
Where the Dropbox account is so neat is that you can set up a folder on your PC and just drag files in and out - the files you drag in will be uploaded to your account without having to sign in every time. You can also 'share' any of the contents or folders of your Dropbox account with others - when you add or delete files from a shared folder, the changes you make automatically take place for everyone else who's sharing that folder with you.
 
The YouSendIt account doesn't allow file-sharing (I don't think) but is really easy to upload and send reasonably sized files. The free account is limited so you can only send one file at a time, which can be a bit of a pain.
 
For really large files, I don't think you can beat the free ADrive account. This account allows free online storage of 50GB. The free account can only be accessed by one user, unlike the paid-for ADrive accounts to which anyone who knows the Username and Password can sign into (we use a paid for ADrive account to host all our CHB files - anyone can sign in and upload/download/delete files and edit the account details).
 
However, the big plus with the free ADrive account is that you can 'Share' a file with anyone providing you know their e-mail address. They receive a (time limited) link to download the file direct from your account. As far as I can tell, you can share any file up to the 50GB limit on your account, although I've never tried sharing anything that big by a long shot!
 
 
 
 

 
Forgot the links:

• Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/
• YouSendIt: http://www.yousendit.com/compare-plans
• ADrive: http://www.adrive.com/

BTW, if you go with dropbox remember to install the desktop client. That way you mostly never have to sign in via the web unless you ar either accepting or creating a shared folder. With the desktop client your account folder tree looks like a folder tree in My Documents (if you take the default install location). Makes the use very transparent.

I'd forgotten how mean the file size with the free YouSendIt account was - 50MB is OK for sending a 4 or 5 minute 16/44.1 wav file but nowhere near enough for a Cakewalk bundle file.

However, if you are working on a project with others, you only really need to send massive .cwb files if all the participants are going to be mixing the final song, and remember you all have to have the same plug-ins and softsynths as each other for this to work properly.

Using The CHB as an example, here's how we might proceed through a project.

First off, once the final structure for a song has been decided on, one of us (usually the person who wrote the music or the person who is going to mix the final project) creates an 'empty' Cakewalk bundle 'shell'. This has no audio or MIDI, just the markers and tempo/s set up to act as a guide for everyone else to record their parts into.

As we fiddle around with the arrangement and test mixes, we generally just share mp3 files with each other. It's only when our final parts have been recorded that we each upload our finished 24/48 stem/s* to the ADrive account. Whoever is having a crack at mixing can then download them into their project.
 
* We use the term 'stem' to mean an exported wav file that starts at the agreed start of the project - as they are imported into someone's mixing project they will all align perfectly in time.
 
 

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