Posted by David C. on 12/11/05 23:44

CES <none@none.com> writes:
>
> I'm in the process of re-ripping all of my CD's and I have a few
> Questions before I start... I have always stayed away from AAC and WMA
> because of copy protection and their for I have encoded at 328kb in an
> MP3 format...

First off, your fears are unfounded.

AAC is not copy-protected by nature. If you rip into AAC format with
iTunes, the resulting files are _NOT_ protected by any form of DRM. You
can play them on any media player (that supports AAC, of course) on any
computer.

(Apple's ".m4a" format is AAC in an MPEG wrapper, so it's not exactly
AAC, but it's still not copy protected.)

FWIW, WMA files don't have to be protected either. If you uncheck a box
in the Windows Media Player program (which is checked by default), it
will not apply DRM to any files you rip. Of course, WMA is not
compatible with iTunes or iPods (iTunes converts them to another format
when importing them.)

> If you encode using AAC is the file tied to the computer (ie: is copy
> protection added)? If so is their a way of getting around that??

AAC files you rip from your own CDs are not copy protected. They are
not tied to anything.

AAC files you purchased from the iTunes Music Store (which have an
".m4p" file extension) are tied to the account they were purchased
with. They can be played on an unlimited number of computers, but only
five at a time. You can authorize and de-authorize a computer for an
account using the iTunes program.

> If you use one of the programs available to remove AAC copy protection
> do you lose sound quality?

Can't help here. I've never done it. Never needed to.

Obviously, if you burn a CD and re-rip in another format, you'll
experience loss due to the re-encoding. Ditto if you use a program like
WireTap to capture the audio into another file.

> If I encode using the AAC Lossless Encoder is their a way of
> reconstituting the file back into the wav format without losing sound
> quality?

Apple Lossless is not AAC. It's a proprietary format. As the name
implies, it is lossless, so you can convert it back to WAV (or AIFF)
without any losses.

> Does anyone know of an application that will allow you to put in a CD
> and then with one push of the button rip the CD in multiple formats
> (MP3, AAC, WMA) at the same time? By that I mean most video editing
> programs will allow you to take one source and then export it to
> multiple formats.

Not at once.

It's not hard to do what you want with iTunes, but not all at once.
You'd have to rip with one format (preferably a lossless one, like AIFF,
WAV or Apple Lossless) and then convert the files to other formats,
which can be done in bulk.

-- David

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