I went and spent a bunch of money on a zune HD and some of my music from itunes wont capy to zune.... I have the BEST media encoder in the world so please dont recomend one of those. I want to know the BEST virtual cd/dvd drive. Clone cd/dvd is good for mounting but i am looking to burn to a virtual drive without loosing my artist and tittle information. I have over 13000 songs so if you are recomending freeware make sure its not some BS thing a college kid made two minutes thats gonna crap out on me.
First of all I think you give yourself way too much credit. There is no such thing as the BEST encoder. There is a short list of great encoders depending on what you want to do. Much of why you would select one great format over another is what will you play it on. For instance the Zune will not play AAC formats. AAC is NOT on that list. Apple has admitted that it has a long list of artifacts AAC produces. The encoders on the short list produce few if any artifacts. The few that are produced must be too high pitched to hear. If you were sooooo F*ing smart you wouldn't be asking the questions you are asking. So what you are saying is you want to import music into the Zune that you can't by the normal import. You do not want to burn an audio CD so that you will lose your tag info. Even if your virtual drive had BIONIC powers that would not help you. The virtual drive has to work exactly as a real drive. There is no magic. If you make a virtual audio disk all your info will be lost. If you make a virtual "mp3" disk ( not changing the unreadable format) the Zune will not read the virtual disk any better that the individual files or if you burned the audio files to a real disk. The Zune does not play AAC. The Zune like the ipod only plays a very short list of file formats. The Zune plays microsoft files and mp3 files and the ipod plays apple formats and mp3 files. If I guessed your quandry, you only have 2 choices to play your music neither are all that good. You will need to scrap either the Zune or the your beloved encoder. Buy a Sansa that will play any format. I suggest you convert your format to a mp3 ABR format using the DNA or LAME encoder. That is what the Average Bit Rate format is used for, converting a fixed BR audio that uses psychoacoustic modeling compression. The other good format option is to convert WMA. It is almost identical to the AAC. The actual mp3 inside is the same are the mp3 inside the AAC. I believe both are made by Fraunhofer. Unfortunatly it still needs to be converted to loseless during the transcoding so you lose quality. I would pick the mp3 since you will never need to convert it again. In case I am wrong daemen tools or magic disk are two good virtual disks. They will not behave any differently than if you just burn a disk.
Can you please post "the BEST media encoder in the world".. I need a good laugh today!! Noticed that it(Zune HD) supports flac, so rip CDs to flac..Try EAC or dBpowerAmp, both work great..
Indeed.. I would love to see this so called "best" as well.. seeing as I'm the person who uploads those 88.2KHz/24 bit raw/flac things you see on t'internet from time to time.
If I guessed the problem, he has m4a files that he want to play on his new Zune. He does not have the originals to rip. They are probably DRMed as well. He paid good money for them and does not want to throw away his investment. mooson, you need to buy a DRM remover ASAP if you have not done so already. They are now illegal but the action has probably not been carried out yet. The law passed last month. It will take a while to get them off the market. He did his homework but was not thorough. The Zune disks last much longer than the new ipod disks. Too bad he did not read the fine print. Oh BTW, 13K of tunes is a drop in the bucket in the BIG pond. I know persons that swap TB of tunes (20K of lossy tunes) at a time (sometimes 2TB) though the mail. The mail has a great deal of bandwidth.
I figured out how to few only the files that are prtoteted and looks like only a few(like 500) What is the best DRM remover or whatever? I used one but it made me loose my album info and that pisses me off more than just redownloading them. Also the "best" media in coder from my limited experecience is the adobe media encoder. Supports every file type i have thrown at it. Goes from video to music and back.... I would love a media encoder DRM remover and a tag finder(to link find the album info on my songs but i have not found an easy one to do all three
I don't do much DRM removal but when I do I use Tunebyte. I can't complain. I think it is one of the best. I haven't used it in a long time so I ran transcoded a tune to a different format. It is smart enough to re-tag the new file with the old info. I am sure I would have gotten rid of it if it didn't repopulate the tag info. I am not tollerent of junk software. It it one of the more expensive ones but I suspect you are don't mind paying for a competent utility. It isn't all that expensive, 30-40 USDs. Correction, what you call an encoder is not an encoder. It is a utility that runs encoders. I don't use it but I hear the Adobie is a good one. I don't do audio editing so what I use is super easy to use and does a flawless job. I would put the Adobie utility on a short list. LAME, FLAC, APE and DNA are on my short list for encoders. Most lossless encoders are perfect but then that is not hard to do. Lossy and especially lossy that uses psychoacoustic modeling seperates the men from the boys. I would transcode your M4As to WMA keeping the same bit rate when you remove the DRMs. Tunebyte does not do ABR. No regular on this forum would try to steer you away from a high end tool unless you were having problems with it.
I usually drop the tags as a list then use that to re-tag them after conversion.. and anyway.. the tags things come with usually don't match my preferred format.. so I often end up editing them or adding them from scratch.. it's no chore at all really.. I find it a nice nobrainer type thing to do while waiting for another capture or bit of processing to finish.
dbPowerAmp tags everything fine except for waves. It is uncommonly smart. That is why I use it. I am very lazy. Well not really I spend a good deal of time on my library weekly. I am not going to do tag data when something will do it for me. I converted 500-600 albums this 3-day weekend. I would go nuts putting in the titles. What do you mean as a list?
I think he means as in like notepad. and i would do it that way with like 10 songs but im talking thouasands of songs. mez is that program free or i need to tpb it? Also look at the tittle. still in need of good drm remover or virtual cd drive(to remove DRM)
dbPowerAmp is not free, it has a yearly subscription. Because it is a subscription I suspect the cracked version will die on the original experation date. However, it has a 30 day free trial. In that 30 days you can load any encoder you want. I suggest ALL. After it expires you can still use the utilities that are accessed though file explorer. You can convert that way. In fact, if you are transcoding, you can do that through M$ search. You can do a complete HD in one shot. It has a batch converter that will not work after the 30 days that is even more clever but it is also more slower. I never used it when I had the subscription of 3-4 years. I think it is the finest ripper as well. It is the fastest and easiest while still producing a perfect rip or a warning that it failed to get a perfect read. The tag library they use is pretty complete. If it is a CD and it was copyrighted, it is there. That also goes away after the 30 days. I think I did answer all your questions. Tunebyte is a highend DRM remover. It will do what you need it to do. AAC lossless are not DRMed (I think). I steer clear of Apple formats if I can. I would transcode those to flac using dbPA. I would be careful when you transcode lossy so you minimize quality loss. You want to do like formats with like bit rates. Feel free to ask for advice how to transcode a format other than m4a (I have given you that info). This is actually trick stuff. You REALLY need to know how the encoder works to pick a reasonable end format and bit rate. I do not see how a virtual drive could help you. If the Zune will not read a format it does not matter if it is on your HD, CD, DVD or VD. The media is not the problem, it is the format. You need to change the formats of what it can't read to formats it can read. If you are getting dbPA try using that first for transcoding. I believe it is the best transcoder out there and is for sure one of the best. Make sure you specify that you use the same folder. I gave you 2 of the top VDs anyway.
No! Mez recommended Tunebyte for DRM removal..Not DBPA... In your OP, you stated that you could not copy "some of my music from itunes wont copy to zune" And if you're sure they are DRM'd then use TuneByte..Don't ask me how(I don't use or need it.. iTunes AAC files are no longer DRM'd, so it's very easy to copy and transfer them..
Yes, k00ka is right. We are both a bit out of our element but I deal more with lossy. I did not know AAC is now not DRPed. I thought you had to pay more money for the non DRMed music and no one is buying those. I have never purchased a tune on line. I am not as picky as k00ka or scum but I am picky. I usually listen to lossy but I don't want to be able to hear the difference. That often means making the mp3s yourself. I only purchase CDs. Try dbPA to convert. If it can't and you can play the tune on your computer then use tunebyte to remove the DRM. Tunebyte will only remove DRMs if they are playable. That assumes you hold the license. That was the old law. The new law says you should not remove DRMs.
