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Posted by Ablang on 12/11/05 01:29
Unlock Protected Music
02.16.05
By Bill Machrone
When you buy music from an online store, the copy-protection scheme
may not allow you to play it on your portable player or to manage your
music library with that player. The most commonly offered suggestion
for unlocking these music files is to burn a copy to an audio CD and
then reimport it. We challenged the conventional wisdom to see if
there was a better wayand there simply isn't. If your machine can
handle rewritable discs, the process isn't even wasteful. Just follow
the directions in your media player or online store software to burn
tracks to a CD. The process is digital throughout, so you don't have
to worry about recording levels or codecs. Once the file is in CD
format, you can then reimport it into any other format.
For example, if you buy music from Napster, it's delivered to you in
protected WMA format. If you want to play it on your iPod, you have no
choice but to burn it to CD and import it as an MP3 file that your
iPod can handle. Likewise, iTunes delivers its music in a locked MP4
format that's keyed to your software.
How to Unlock Protected Music The inherent problem is that you'll
never get a better-quality recording than the source, and the fidelity
of music from the online stores often leaves something to be desired.
The common 128-kilobit-per-second MP3 lacks dynamic range, and
128-Kbps WMA chops off the highest frequencies and sacrifices midrange
dynamics for bass dynamics. When you move songs in these formats to
CD, their sonic flaws move with them. When you reimport the song using
another compression scheme you can compound the problem, because the
other scheme might take away dynamic range, frequency response, or
both.
If this is music for on-the-go applications, such as jogging,
commuting, or even listening in the car, the loss of fidelity is
largely irrelevant. Background noise usually masks the sonic
differences.
* MP3 Players
If, however, you want to record at a high bit rate, perhaps to load a
music server for your home or for critical listening through your
portable player, there is no substitute for buying the CD. Until music
services offer premium-quality files with lossless compression, the CD
remains your best bet. (Look for a follow-up article that analyzes the
sound quality of the various services' file formats.)
Remember that there's nothing illegal about making a CD copy of the
music you buy from online sites. The software supports it, and even
makes it easy for you to create mix discs that combine purchased music
and the songs you've ripped from your own CDs. You might think you can
go through your portable player, but the songs you download from the
online music services maintain their protected formats when you
transfer them to the player. You can upload the files from the player
to another machine, but they won't play.
We also tried using analog recording software and a loopback cable:
plugging one end of a standard, male-to-male 1/8 inch stereo cable
(available at any electronics store) into the computer's headphone
jack, connecting the other end back into the microphone or line input
jack, and playing the protected music through it into an analog
recording program. Sound-card fidelity is sufficient to make a decent
copy this way, despite the digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital
conversions, but pitfalls are everywhere. If you run the output volume
too high or too low, you'll get distortion. If you run too high a
level into your input jack, you'll get distortion. If you run at too
low a level, you'll have a poor signal-to-noise ratio.
Free or low-cost analog recording software is available, and the best
can help you maximize your signal-to-noise ratio and minimize
distortion. But it's best to avoid this process unless the industry
switches to copy-protected CDs. They can make copying inconvenient,
but they can't stop the music from coming out of the speakers.
Bill Machrone is a contributing editor of PC Magazine.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1763607,00.asp
====
"I don't care (if I get booed). I don't know any of those people. As long as my kids tell me that they love me, I'm fine. My motto is, when people talk about me, I say, 'Who are they? They're not God.' If God was out there booing me, I'd be upset."
-- Bonzi Wells, Sacramento Kings
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