I recently had the good fortune to find a MP3 player lying on the ground while I was walking home. At first I thought that it probably wouldn't work, but to my great surprise it worked perfectly fine. And to my even greater pleasure it contained nothing but music that I liked (rock mostly with some electronic, hip-hop, etc.). Of course I was very happy and one of the first things I did was to transfer the music onto my computer. That's when I hit a sour note with my new find. I played a few of the cds on WMP and everything was fine until I tried playing some WMA DRM protected files. I got the license downloaded with no problem so when I played yet another protected cd I thought that it wasn't going to be a problem. Problem was that the cd had reached its license download limit. Finding this out has been somewhat of a good thing though since after I founds the player I decided to join a music download website but still hadn't decided on one yet because most sites don't offer a very wide variety of downloads for the different electronic genres. Now I know that when I do join one it is going to be one that has the least number of limitations on what the user can do with a bought file. So my questions are: 1) How do I go about making a cd by playing the files on my player into the computer? (I have a cable that connects to the player and split’s the sound into L/R jacks) 2) Who knows of a good website with a wide variety of electronic music downloads in the different genres, such as jungle, d&b, techno, house, ambient, tribal, happy hardcore, hardcore, trance, etc.? I would truly appreciate any help with this especially if the site has some of the more obscure/unknown genres. 3) Is there a FreeMe-like program that strips WMA DRM Version 1 protection? 4) And finally does anyone know a site where technical information (i.e. cracking) can be discussed? (This was the reason I joined the site as I had an idea about using the DRM file playing rights given to my player to create a program for stripping or bypassing WMA DRM)
wow, xango, sounds like you got real lucky, then real unlucky oh, well, that's karma for ya (lol). probably, the person who "lost" it got fed up with trying to do what you're trying to do, and just threw it on the ground. anyways to answer (some of) your questions: 1) the cable you have won't work, you need one that's got the same type of connector you plug in to the mp3 player, only on both ends. the other end goes into your AUXiliary INput on your sound card. then you use an audio capture prog (like ) to record the incoming sound to a new file. what really sux is that you'll need to sit and record each one as they play, and if you're not paying attention, you might have to open the file in an audio editor to remove the dead air (been there ;P ). i use Sony Sound Forge, but that's "abit" pricey, so would work, too. you should record a test file to check levels first (about 30 seconds should do), and while you're waiting you can play videogames, or watch a movie (as long as you pay attention for the end of the songs!). 2) it's kinda tough to find techno music on download services (most don't even have it listed as a genre and classify it as "Rock"), but your best bet i'm afraid, is iTunes. they have so many obscure artists, and you can browse and sample the tunes before you buy. just an fyi, if you DO try iTunes, find yourself a copy of version 5, and DON'T install the new version 6, because iTunes uses m4p files (iTunes' equivalent of wma's DRM), and using version 5 you can run jHymn and convert the files to mp3 simply this is what i do, on the rare occasion that i DO download using iTunes. if you can't find v.5, i have it, so just ask also note that iTunes lists Techno-like music under "Electronic", but they DO have quite the selection, and even have an "indie" section in there as well (for rarer cuts). for more about comparing music dL services: http://www.mp3.com/stories/3261.html 3) the only way, (as i mentioned in my next-to-last post) to get past the DRM, is if you HAVE the rights [so to speak ]. you can then play the files and capture them using a program like Audacity, or my personal favorite: Tunebite! which, while NOT free > has the feature to automatically detect when a DRM song is playing, and record it, copying also the ID3 Tags 4) dunno on that one. most sites are kinda skiddish about free talk of "cracking" and such (unless their servers are overseas). i recommend googling awhile using the keywords "reverse engineer" "wma" and "DRM", or something. oh, another thing. what were you talking about DRM protected CD's??? ("Problem was that the cd had reached its license download limit.") CD's don't need licence downloads. or were you talking about WMA's? anywayz, if you have any more questions/problems, feel free to ask. if it CAN be done (other than cracking/programming), i can do it
I guess by now many people have learned that the current version of Nero (Nero 7 Ultra) will not permit write protected (i.e., writing to CD not allowed) WMA files to be "burned" to an image drive. It would appear that the loophole in the version of Nero that Hulkmania was using has now been closed. You now get an insufficient license error message when you try to do that. Is this what others have found with the current Nero version? Does anyone know what version of Nero Hulkmania was using, when he wrote his post to this thread nearly a year ago? He only says "the newest version" in the post.
i use nero 7 ultra, and as long as i get a license to play the song. (ie double click it and wondows media player should pop an IE that says downloading drm license, and then i can burn it with burning rom
Nero 7 will burn protected wma's as long as you have "burn rights" for the file, not necessarily just "playing rights".
I am talking about a music file downloaded from someplace like Rhapsody, which only comes with a license to listen to it or sync it to an MP3 player. You do not have permission to burn it to a CD. When I tried burning such a file to an image drive in Nero 7 Ultra I got the standard "no license" error message. The reason for this restriction is that the file loses it license protection once it is burned as a standard music file (a .cda file) onto a CD. Therefore, if you already have rights to burn a music file to a CD, you are home free. Nero 7 Ultra must consider "burning" to an image file to be the same as burning to a CD. Am I missing something here?
you are correct that Nero considers burning an image the same as burning a CD. they are essentially the same thing (and close to the same size, if you'll notice); image files are merely "physical" manifestations of their Audio CD counterparts. the part about being burnt as .cda files is wrong, however. cda files are merely links to the hardcoded data on the disc. check it out: they're only 44 bytes each! you can copy them to the hard drive, but you won't have the song data, just the link
Thanks for the information about .cda files. I always wondered about the connection between .cds files and WAVE files. Now I know. I assume, based on the post from Hulkmania at the start of this thread that some older version of Nero (older that 7 Ultra) did NOT check protection licenses, when it wrote (burned) to an image drive. Does anyone know what version Hulkmania was referring to in that original post?
Hulkmania, Can you please tell me what verion of Nero you were using, when you posted about using Nero to write protected .wma files to a Nero Image Drive? Thanks
okay, not to rain on everyone's parade, but keep in mind that even when you figure out which version of Nero it was, it still most likely won't work with the LATEST wma codec, as i'm certain Micro$oft's goons have already seen this site. just a head's up.
the concept here is to not have to pay to convert music you've ALREADY paid for. however, SoundTaxi should do as good a job as Tunebite. also, you might try fairuse4wm. it seems to work for most of MY wma/wmv filez. plus it's free!
i cant seem to get it to work. i've tried creating images of the audio files i want to convert but they dont seem to read under the RIP menu of the media player. the music plays, but it doesn't show under the rip section. i think the problem is that i need to create an audio image using the audio compilation option, but everytime i try to do that it wants to burn to a cd instead of creating something on a virtual drive. help please!
c00ns, need abit more info in order to help you... how did you try to make "images" of the files? are you talking about ISO images, or something else? how is it you started the music playing without being in the Rip menu? if you're using Windows Media Player, keep in mind that it doesn't burn images, only CD's.
darkflux: i made the images using nero 6.6... first i made one as a cd-rom (iso) compilation and i also tried udf/iso. i then mounted them using the nero image drive. i opened wmp10 and it recognized the image as a cd drive, but when i went to the rip tab, it didn't recognize anything.
that'd be your problem; you're burning them as data discs. WMP10 won't recognize it unless you burn them as an Audio CD. in order to actually DO that though, you need to have burn rights, and if they're NEWER wma's, you may need the newer version of Nero... anywayz, that's the gist of it. sorry, dude.
I wasn't having any luck with my Napster WMAs, but I donated 5 bucks to these guys and they provide a little ap that automatically removes all the copy protection. I converted all my WMAs to mp3s - way happier now. Good luck!
hey, try this one out: FairUse4WM http://www.f-forge.com/?d=zZvpPERaUnIOFjwX7AW4 and the best part about it... IT's FREE! presently it doesn’t work for 11.0.6000.6324 or later WM filez. for those you may need to just stick with Tunebite (for now...).
