old guy

Thanks for the info it worked great. I am old guy that downloaded some songs from Walmart and MSN for my son to find out about this DRM crap. I used some old 2X cd-rw I had and Roxio Easy CD creator 5 to burn them to cd. Downloaded Music match like you suggested -just the free version- and ripped them to mp3. Now they play anywhere on anything that plays mp3. thanks for the info.

uznik

----------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't backup & transfer licenses from napster
when I reinstalled os; I put my music on external drive- than removed drive
The music I ripped from cds I bought , is ok
The music I bought form napster dosen't work now! ($50.00)
-------------------------------------------------------------
How do I backup licenses so this dosen't happen again?

justcallmebob

Just started using tunebite . . . so far so good.

Thanks!

justcallmebob

Used tunebite to burn 7 protected wma's as mp3's and played them in my Pioneer DVD player without any problems.

Quick and dirty . . . thanks again.


Now for the rest of those pesky WMA's.

homer6969

i hear ya... damn 300-400 songs are gonna take a while to convert

Slik726

So, I hope I am understanding this right... I recently got my hands on a 7 day free trial to the full working napster and have been downloading all the *free* wmas *without purchasing* the music. They work great on my comp but will not burn obviously. As far as we all know, there is absolutely no way to burn these files to a cd?? I don't really care if they stay wmas or become mp3s or whatev as long as they sound like a *decent* quality file. I have a few g's invested in my car audio system and I dont care to listen to crap. (I hope noone tells me take that money and buy the files... lol..) Newayz, I have a soundblaster audigy 2 and was able to record the files as they played through a mic into 320 kbps MP3's but they were seriously horrid. If I am mistaken... I'm new to this stuff.

homer6969

we've been talking about a couple options in this thread... my opinion was to use a program called "tunebite" and another user suggested an alternative and his method is stated in this thread, take a look around and try both methods...

Dakotad555

I appreciate your passion for owning a "real" copy of the music. However, you're not totally correct in saying that digital copies will decay in only five years. It all depends on the quality of your hard drive, or if you are burning to disk, your medium. High quality CDs will last every bit as long as a store bought CD, assuming you burn at 4x or lower, and that you bought high quality disks. Personally, I like to use Kodak disks that were discontinued. (You have to buy them on Ebay now). They will last virtually 100 years if you don't scratch them. (According to Kodak).

I own many CDs, and find that buying the album used over Ebay is usually superior to downloading a song because you can make a lossless WMA copy. But to me, the real issue is about ownership. If you download a song, then you ought to have the same rights to it as someone purchasing a CD. You ought to be able to burn it to whatever you want, whenever you want. Basically you get screwed for not buying a hard copy. When you download a song, you don’t get the full rights to the music, which isn’t fair.

The same applies to Audible.com (I download a lot of books). I convert those using Goldwave, but the principle is still the same. If you pay for it, you should get full usage.
It’s a shame that honest people like myself, who never pirate anything have to resort to these tactics to make our copy fully usable.

warlock1711

Solution for Napster:

(I stumbled across this while doing something completely different)

Requirements:

Winamp 5.xx http://www.winamp.com
Output stacker http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=86033

Go into your winamp options, go into the output section, and select the output stacker. Click configure.
Add the output_ds plugin
Add the output_disk plugin (the output_ds HAS to be the first plugin...)
Configure the output_disk plugin to do what you want (I have it set to force output to .wav, and putting it in a c:\test directory...)
(The output_ds plugin HAS to be at the top of the list, or no go)
Click OK all the way out.

Load up some Napster WMA files (I used files I had purchased, works fine) and hit play.

Yes, it plays the file.
Yes, it also saves it as .wav
Yes, it is real-time encoding. It's slow, but higher quality than burn->cd, rip-> wav.
No, it doesn't use a sound loopback to do it. The quality is exactly as you would expect for wma->wav direct conversion. It is a digital convert in all respects.

(EDIT: I accidentally loaded a track I had not purchased, and it works too. Oops!)

nhp01

Thank you for introducing Tunebite , but please can I have the serial number .I do appreciate for your help .

daxon

looks like the protection has hit the UK sites....

Warlock,

could you help with this bit ???.....

Do you have links for these add-ins ? I have searched on winamp but no joy with output_ds

TIA

warlock1711

output_ds is part of winamp....it comes with winamp and is not an add-on plugin.

warlock1711

On a side note, instead of the output_disk plugin, you can also use the output_lame plugin: http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details.php?id=143606

Use that plugin second, where you would have had the output_disk plugin loaded.

That way you go straight to MP3 without having to go to wav first.

joetribo

Hi,

I have found a new tool, which could be interesting to you.
It can convert any audiofile (incl. wma) to wav or mp3.

But keep in mind, that it is not allowed to copy copyright-protected files!

Here is the link to the audiorecorder:
http://rapidshare.de/files-en/435727...order.zip.html

Greetings,

joetribo

homer6969

Virtuosa 5.0 seems to be able to convert the protected songs from napster straight to mp3...

opfreak

dude u are a geunius, don't know about the overall quality of these, but, worked amazingly quick. that virutosa program,

now combained with my free trail month. hehe. time to stock up.

dirtydawg

Two fast, simple options:

1. Download GoldWave, follow instructions on how to install Lame MP3 encoder (you might have to look this up in the 'help' files), use 'Batch Processing' (under file menu) to convert entire folders of wma files to MP3. Since this is a 'Wave Editor' program enryption has no effect on the process. (I've used this method on encrypted files and it works.)

2. Download Xilisoft WMAMP3 converter and pay the $20 for an activation code, network two computers and use the computer the wma files are NOT on to convert them to MP3. (I don't know why it will work this way, but it will - a co-worker is doing it right now over a network at work. When we try using the program on the computer the wma files on it, we get the error message, but when accessing them over a network no error, just MP3's.)

Xilisoft WMAMP3 Converter will also convert M4a files to MP3, which is handy for anyone using iTunes who neglected to select MP3 as your managing preference. (Or if you switch between Mac and PC as much as I do!)

Now, if anyone can tell me how to convert M4p's to MP3's I'd REALLY appreciate it! (If I'm not mistaken, M4p's are the encrypted version of M4a's...)

Cheers

MEGAMANFRE

I just tried this on my lunch hour, and got an error when I tried installing Virtuosa. I sent them an email letting them know what the message was that I got. I just wanted to see if anything new came up from this, or if there were any new ways to get the downloaded Napster songs into MP3 or WAV format.

I was using the subscription version of Napster and didnt pay the .99 per song, but did the unlimited DL and Play, but cant put them into my MP3 player to listen to, and Im running XP.

I was hoping that someone may have tried something using ME or 95/98? Maybe if you have access to one of the older OS's that arent connected to the internet or have all the updates, you could crack the DRM and at least convert it to a different format so you can convert it to MP3? I havent had the chance to really try, but wanna give it a go when I get home from work.

This whole thing with copywrite is BS. If youre paying a subscription for a service to DL music, you should be able to DL it in whatever format you want, without being restricted.

MEGAMANFRE

Virtuosa isnt working for me. It lets me install it on my ME computer, but Napster doesnt work on ME, only 2000 or XP. Rat bastards.

opfreak

don't know what to tell you, i sreached for vitrusoa, download it install on xp, and it works'

i have to add the tracks to my list, hit control+a to select them all, then right click and convert. found out the 128kps works alright, varaible seems to crash.
also u can't move the download files at all before converting

MEGAMANFRE

Ive actually been using the Winamp way mentioned above. I couldnt figure out tunebite. I havent listened to what Ive converted yet, but I have a feeling it may be a bit choppy. The bad thing is that it takes forever cause it converts it in real-time, but at least it gets the job done. Ive been converting them to .wav only because I wanted to see how bad the tracks were, and the audio cleaner I have cleans .wav better than it does an mp3, I just never realized how fricking large a .wav file is compared to an mp3. Its sick.

Ill post how good the quality of using winamp to convert the music is. I hope its not so bad that it hurts to listen to it, cause that would blow.

electricman

I have been burning my tracks from napster with the record what u hear option on my sound blaster card , it sounds fine, but I record the whole album and when I save it using acid pro 4.0 it saves as a 1 large mp3 . what can I do for it to record seperate tracks, I remember someone using adobe audition, is this the only way

Orange Girl

I've been attempting to use tunebite (the 30 second trial version) to convert wma files to mp3. Whenever I play a song to be recorded, there's no sound for the first 30 seconds (the period when it's supposed to be written to an ogg or mp3 file), and then the sound comes on. Unfortunately, the resulting mp3 file is completely silent. As far as I can tell, I have everything configured properly (I see sine waves when I click on "Test Done" and "Auto Detetc").

Anyway, I just wanted to see if anyone else has had similar issues or figured out how to get it to work. Thanks!

homer6969

my freinds had a similar problem... he changed the settings around, even on auto detect it might get it wrong... so try playing around with your output settings...

homer6969

i dunno if this is true or not... but i think virtuosa u5.0 pdated their demo installer. when my freind downloaed virtuosa 5.0 demo and used a crack to make it into gold or whatever, it worked perfectly... however a week later when i downloaded it, the cracks online wouldn;t work (file size differs error) and i think they changed the licensing stuff on their update...