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HOWTO: Back up Your DRM'ed Audio Files
Posted on Tuesday, April 05 @ 01:35:21 PDT by lincomatic
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There's been a lot of talk on the Internet lately about recording DRM'ed files due to the loophole that was found w/ Napster. Much of the discussion has been at Marv Kordix's blog, but the loopholes have been closed one by one. So how is one to remove DRM so that the files can be played freely?
First, there was the Winamp Output Stacker technique, which let you record whatever you were playing in Winamp back to MP3, but AOL quickly closed the door by revoking the old version of Winamp's WMA DRM license, and then creating a new patched version of Winamp. Next, there was Virtuosa, which was great because it allowed you to batch encode the files, but that technique was also shut out by revoking Virtuosa's DRM license. So, is there still a functioning way to get rid of DRM?
The only currently workable technique is loopback recording, where you play the file using a working player such as Windows media player, and another program taps into the decoded audio that's output to your sound card. The downsides of this technique are 1) the quality is only as good as your sound card and its drivers, 2) you have to tweak the volume settings quite a bit to get good output, and 3) since this technique records ALL the audio going through your sound card, you have to make sure that all other programs which generate sounds are disabled while doing the encoding. There are lots of programs out there which can do this, but many of them can't transfer the track info to the output files, so you have to manually enter the ID3 tags. Also, many of them can't automatically start/stop and output the played back stream into separate files.
One program which works fairly well is Tunebite. What's nice about Tunebite is that it automatically copies the track info from the files you're converting into ID3 tags in the outputted MP3's. It can also output OGG files if you prefer. Unfortunately, its MP3 encoding options are quite limited, and you can only use VBR and LAME. Tunebite works in two modes, automatic and manual. In automatic mode, it records anything that you play in Windows media player (WMP), and in manual mode, you load a playlist into it, and it sends the files one by one to WMP. I've found that manual mode is more reliable. For best quality, you can avoid the noise and distortion caused by digital->analog->digital conversion by outputting the audio to SPDIF and then recording via SPDIF, since SPDIF is all digital, if your sound card supports that.
Another program which has been suggested is ReplayRadio, but my own personal testing has shown it to be unreliable, especially in outputting the ID3 tags.
Today, I've discovered a freeware program called MuvAudio which does the same thing as Tunebite. It might be a good place to start if you don't want to shell out the $16 for Tunebite.
If you want to learn more, there is a wealth of information in the many comments left in the blog entries on Marv Kordix's site.
No matter what technique you use to convert the files, it is simply a waste of disk space to select a bitrate that is much higher than what you started with. If you are trying to convert a 128Kbps file, for instance, it's silly to write it out as a 256Kbps file. You can't make information out of thin air; the extra bits are not going to improve the sound quality. On the other hand, differences in codecs may make different bitrates sound different. For instance, WMA generally sounds a little bit better @ 128Kbps, so you can try writing out 160Kbps or 192Kbps MP3's and seeing if you can hear a difference.
Update 2005-04-11: Acoustica MP3 to WAV Converter still works (!) ... it batch converts using LAME, so the quality is excellent, because the data conversion doesn't have to go through your soundcard. Its conversion speed is limited only by the speed of your computer. Don't change the version of lame_enc.dll that comes with it. I tried substituting the faster lame397a DLL that Marv Kordix recommends, and the Joint Stereo mode came out horribly garbled. After experimenting for hours, I have the options set to: Joint Stereo, min bitrate: 128, max bitrate 256, quality 0... to my ears this sounds closest to the original when converting 128Kbps WMA files without wasting too many bits on over-encoding.
If your ears can't tell the difference, you can check the "Never create files that are higher in quality or size than is necessary" box, which will generally make it output 128Kbps Joint Stereo.
Update 2005-04-21: Acoustica's DRM license has been revoked, and it no longer works.
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