Mike951

I have a reciever that plays MP3's and .wma's but when I rip songs off of cd's into .wma form, my it won;t play them and it says PROTECTED. Does anyone know a way around this or is it something that prevents people from copying cd's? The radio is a Alpine 9811.

Red 944

there's a bunch of programs I'm sure .. I have one called all to mp3 converter, works well for wma

Mike951

so what would a program like that do for me? convert wma's to mp3's?

Red 944

Yeah, I wasn't understanding your wording fully - sorry if I missed the point. But - if you're having trouble putting wma's onto a cd because they're protected, convert them to mp3's with that and you won't have the problem

944ism

i'm guessing you're using windows media player... it wont copy protect if you go to Tools > Options... > select the 'Copy Music' tab and uncheck 'Copy protect music'

Mike951

I don;t have that on my Win Media Player, I only have a checked box under the CD Audio tab that says "Enable Personal Rights MAnagement" Is this the same thing? And on yours, this will allow me to bypass the protected music thing that microsoft uses?


Thanks

Sach951

If you rip first from a CD or other medium to WMA, and then transcode that into MP3 format you'll loose a lot of audio quality. What I would do is look for a program called Exact Audio Copy and use the LAME MP3 codec to rip the tracks. It's does full ID3 tagging as well if you configure it. Excellent program, and considerably higher quality than WMA.

Cheers,
Sach

Feel free to email me if you have any specific questions

Mike951

Ok, I think i'm gonna get a hold of a program that rips to mp3's. My friend has one that he'll give me a copy of. Thanks for the help.

Matt 944S

I have found that MusicMatch Jukebox works well to rip CDs to MP3s. I think you can get a free trial version.

Ag951

I would use Ogg Vorbis in favor of MP3. Much better format. MP3 is old, low quality, and the Fraunhofer Institute could require royalty payments at any time.
I'd avoid any ms format, since they're all proprietary, low quality crap, and that one has DRM technology built in to restrict your fair use rights (the riaa wants you to have to buy one copy of each song per player).
"Personal Rights Management" is marketspeak for DRM.

Sach951 is right, converting from a lossy format to a lossy one combines the lossyness. Rip them from scratch.