IPOD (MP3 Player) Warning! What you need to know.... (page 2)

Iforget

I have tried to convert my Itunes to mp3's and it won't let me. Keeps telling me it's protected format and won't go from mp4 to mp3. Any suggestions?

Leolaia

Iforgot....Just burn it to a CD, and then rip from the CD. That gets rid of the DRM and you can then make it an mp3.

Another thing: You can get "Any Sound Recorder" or similar software and then record anything streaming at any bitrate. So if you use the Hype Machine, Pandora, or whatever, and record the streaming audio.

DanTheMan

The only time I can tell the diff between 128 kbps AAC and CD is when playing through my home stereo. It's the bass that seems to suffer the most from the compression.

One thing I always look for when I'm purchasing music from the 60's, 70's, 80's, is to look for an album with the most recent remastering. For instance, the Allman Brothers Band has a recently released hits collection titled "Stand Back", and the sound quality is light years beyond their more popular hits album "A Decade of Hits 1969-1979" which was digitally mastered back in the 1980's. A 128 version of a song from Stand Back blows the doors off the same song at CD bitrate from Decade.

Midget-Sasquatch

If you don't like having to make a CD first before deompressing to WAV then re-encoding, you could do a web search for some software from the same guy who gave us DeCSS. I love that guy for the simple fact that he made apps like dvddecrypter posible.

Anyway, he was able to reverse engineer even the latest encryption change in Apple's most recent Itunes 7.0.

daniel-p

I've used allofmp3.com for over 6 months and bought a couple hundred dollars worth of mp3s - no problems whatsoever. Also, the more money you spend with them they give you kickbacks, so your next dollar is always worth more. Best legal site out there.

observador

Another thing: You can get "Any Sound Recorder" or similar software and then record anything streaming at any bitrate. So if you use the Hype Machine, Pandora, or whatever, and record the streaming audio.

That's a wonderful suggestion. I have the Rhapsody service and pay only $9.99 a month. I will NEVER buy any of their songs, as I feel I'm paying enough. The software I use is one called "tunebite".

Leolaia never ceases to amaze me. She has just shown she understands as much of bitrate, DRM curcumvention techniques, and sound compression, as much as she does the pre-Eusthachian (or would that be pre-Enoquian? maybe pre-Cambrian?) history...

Leo, I'd pay anything to get a date with you.

Observador.

ackack

The Apple software is fatally flawed. First, it takes control over every song on the comp, redudes tham to 128 kbps (terrible quality) no matter where they came from and forces an automatic full synch every time you dock the IPOD. Any time the IPOD file, library, and IPOD itself are not "synched", all the music is erased from the IPOD. Connect your friend's by mistake to your comp? You're screwed.

You obviously have no idea how iTunes works. First, when iTunes loads your music, it either copies it to its own structure, or it leaves it alone. (This is a setting.) iTunes does not alter any MP3's or AAC files you choose to use, however, it does transcode WMV (windows media files) into an open format such as aac or mp3. (You can choose which, its in the settings.) Second, if you plugged in your ipod to another friends computer, and your ipod was set to auto-sync, it would give you a WARNING, asking you what you want to do. Wipe out your iPod or leave it as is. If you wanted to copy a little bit of music off their computer, you would have to put your iPod into manual sync mode, which lets you copy over whatever you need.

Sounds to me like you need two things. You need to read the WORDS ON THE COMPUTER SCREEN. Also, a book like the iTunes: Missing Manual would do you some good. iTunes is a pretty nice MP3 player and really a wonderful mp3 organizer. Even if I wasn't using an iPod I would definitely be using iTunes to simply organize all of my music & podcasts.

ackack

Leolaia

observador....Don't even get me started on my research on historical urban geography or language change. ;) (WARNING: nerd alert!!)

DanTheMan....The modern remasterings often sound better in part because of the use of audio compression, which makes volume levels more uniform. Also a digital master has a cleaner transfer if made from the original source tapes, rather than from later generation pressings, as CDs of older recordings were often done in the '80s. But the use of compression in the remasters can be detrimental to the overall sound if it is too much.

In the '80s, CDs sounded comparatively "quiet" because the higher volume levels were reserved for the louder sounds (CDs have better dynamic range than LPs, so that takes advantage of the range). When I rip music from my old CDs, I do my own faux compression by lowering the peak levels a little and then raising the whole amplitude higher...that makes the music sound more "punchy". But ever since 1999 or so, sound engineers have gone totally overboard with audio compression, making almost everything the same level throughout, and all at the highest volume level. Not only does this turn the music into a near constant noise, but worst of all it results in clipping of the peaks -- producing awful distortion, or at least a flat sound. The best example from the past year is "Snow -- Hey Oh" by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I love that song, but it is ruined by the compression into a mushy sound in which the guitar, drums, bass, vocals all merge into a single LOUD sound. Open up the song in Any Sound Recorder or another program and zoom down to the individual samples, and you can see clipping all over the place (if you zoom out, the music looks like a single block w/o variation in volume levels). And that clipping represents lost information that cannot be recovered. Fortunately, the RHCP has released Stadium Arcadium in relatively uncompressed form in vinyl, so reportedly there is much better sound in this version. I just think it is a shame that the record industry is pressuring artists to release their music in a form that takes no advantage at all of the range afforded by CDs. Think of the "punch" you get when listening to O Fortuna in the Carmina Burana....the main verses are sung very quietly and then suddenly you get the booming loud climax that can really startle you. But with audio compression that is no more, the quiet singing would be just as loud as the booming finale. And it would sound just more boring that way.

ackack

Leolaia, depressingly, I saw a chart in an audio magazine that showed how the average dynamic range of CD's was shrinking. Sadly, people don't want music with dynamic ranges, they just wanna toss it on their stereo and listen. There is a great tune by Belle & Sebastian called "If You Find Yourself Caught In Love" which has a nice piano intro before it breaks into the tune. Greatly startling if you haven't heard it before. We need more startling music. (James Chance and the Contortions anyone?)

ackack

Bstndance

Unfortunately, Allofmp3 is not a legal site. IIRC, they are a Russian based site that was selling music without paying rights to the record companies. So they were selling stolen music. It would be as if I took my music collection and charged people to download it.

A way around the iTunes DRM limits is to download the song, burn it to an audio CD an add it to your computer from the CD. Then you can do with it as you please.

IPOD (MP3 Player) Warning! What you need to know....

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