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AnalogWhole, an Alternative To FairUse4WM
Squidmarks writes, "AnalogWhole is a free application that allows any file that can be played in Windows Media Player to be transferred to iTunes as an MP3. It uses, you guessed it, the 'analog hole' to re-record any DRM'ed song as an MP3. Because the analog signal doesn't actually leave the computer, but is simply looped back in the sound card, sound quality of the re-recording is excellent. All meta data is transferred as well. The MP3 file is automagically added to iTunes. Just show it where you store your DRM music and walk away."
...as long as you don't actually try to play the file on anything more than the cheapest and flimsiest stereo and speakers.
It is still looped through the sound card, so while quality may still be "excellent", there is still loss. I would rather use a program such as QTFairUse which doesn't lose any sound quality.
Users have always been able to do this manually, if they had a decent recording program. Why the hoopla over a fancy software tool designed to do this one thing specifically? Does it save a few seconds? Further, this is really beside the point. DRM often still prevents users from making faithful digital copies of their own -- purchased, paid for, and legal -- media. This is a non-issue.
So, it's just like using Audacity to record whatever goes through the sound card?
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
I'll stick with FairUse4WM, since the file that goes in is the same as what comes out, minus DRM. I'd rather not mess with unnecessary conversions, if possible.
If it just uses the Windows mixer and the sound never actually leaves the soundcard, I suspect that it just stays digital the entire time, and is never actually converted to analog. I'm not sure how the Windows soundcard interface works, so I might be wrong. In any case, if you're using this program to play WMA files, you're still degrading their quality by transcoding them to MP3. That probably won't matter if you're just going to play them on your iPod though.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
Will it run on Vista?
FRA: STFU GTFO
I don't have any WMA files or any other DRM crippled music on my computer, do you?
Look at http://www.highcriteria.com/ Total recorder when I was more windows centric I used it and I was happy.
Tunebite has been around for a while now (probably only one among many, but the only one I've actually used). It provides its own driver allowing accelerated encoding of both Window Media and iTMS files (video too, which is what got me interested, but doesn't seem to work as well, at least not with my temperament).
Quack, quack.
If it just pipes sound output from the mixer to MP3, what are the chances that Vista could block off access to mixer output except for low-level (driver) access, which is then blocked by PatchGuard?
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
I dare you to find anything at all funny about the word "AnalogWhole".
They don't mention re-compression. If they're using the Apple lossless format, quality loss should be negligible unless you have a really awful soundcard.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Clearly, I'm an idiot and/or I can't read. Re-encoding as MP3 is a terrible idea.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Have you taken your head out of your analogwhole yet?
With all this focus on the amount of quality lost in the reconversion, people are overlooking the most important issue:
.wma have mediocre sound quality to begin with.
DRM'd music and
Being considered good quality on computer speakers or iPod ear buds is one thing; sounding good on $150 audiophile earphones or a dolby digital surround system is another thing entirely. I see this all the time with old Jazz records. You can re-encode with the best software modern science can provide, but it doesn't mean a damn thing if the initial conversion was a crappy one.
Very high. Windows Millennium Edition and Windows XP operating systems already support the Secure Audio Path, which places the (WHQL logo approved) decrypter, (WHQL logo approved) decoder, and (WHQL logo approved) audio output driver in kernel space. Part of the WHQL logo requirement is that no driver may mix Secure Audio Path audio into any cleartext digital output, and no driver without a logo is a valid Secure Audio Path playback device. However, few if any WMA files that require the Secure Audio Path are in the wild yet. However, record labels will begin to change their requirements as WMA stores' customers replace their computers that came with Windows 98 or Windows 2000 with newer computers that come with Windows Vista.
For WMA files that use Secure Audio Path, you'll need a $5 audio cable and Audacity.
that capture anything going to the speakers from the sound card and save it as mp3 have been available for years. Maybe they don't get the metadata, but that wouldn't be too tough to fix by other means.
:wq
DACs and ADCs and output stages on most soundcards are pretty awful. I would think that using a loopback of a digital audio out would be much better.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
I suspect the most important point of this project is not to make MP3 from WMA, but to show the utter futility of DRM mechanisms.
Shouldn't be a problem. Heck, you could even say that it plays for sure.
Good name for a pr0n flick about open source audio codecs, yes?
Yes, I know what you're saying.. there aren't any porn flicks about open source software.
I aim to change that.
As soon as I get a video camera and work up the nerve to leave mom's basement. *peeks out window*
Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Anything that shows the futility of the whole idea of DRM is a good thing!
Anything that may still work the day everything else stops working is a good thing!
Anything that makes their job harder by forcing them to divert their efforts to yet another hole in the dike to plug is a good thing!
So quick being fsking pseudo-geek snobs and rejoice that yet another method has been found.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
What can be seen or heard can be copied, no matter how difficult you make it.
Isnt that soon to be disabled/removed due to DRM/attorneys ?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Contrary to the knockers and music perfectionists, this method works very well. I've been using a similar method for years and to be honest, the quality loss is that small that only the perfectionist in ideal conditions will pick it up. 99% of the people couldn't tell the difference in normal surrounds! Well Done!
...build your own USB "converter". Companies like Texas Instruments have lots of devices like PCM2704, that allow access to an unprotected sound bitstream. It's pretty simple to build a fake digital speaker that just redirects the data to a fake digital line in. Some microcontrolled usb sound devices contain both input and output devices on the same IC, so you can software redirect the output (coming from the computer) to the input (going back to it).
So you don't even need an "Analog hole". You can use a digital hole and don't lose any quality at all. And this kind of device is perfectly accepted by any "content protection" driver schemes.
It's impossible to protect sound files.
No, the real issue that everyone is ignoring has nothing to do with audio quality or loss of it. The problem with these "analog hole" solutions is TIME loss. Seriously, if it's reading from the sound card it has to play each and every file, and for any reasonably sized music collection that will take a lot of time. Even with the added step of going from unDRMed WMAs to MP3s, FairUse4WM is infinitely faster because you can do everything in batches. This is a nice proof of concept, but if you really have a WMA music collection FairUse4WM is the only practical solution.
If people continue to abuse this feature, I will have to remove it. - Slashdot Comment Box, 1998
You can buy a CD and never have to deal with DRM or sound quality loss.
I was just thinking that I've been doing something very similar with an old PIII with an SBLive card. My daughter brings all these files that have been ripped from who-knows-where and wants them on her player. It works just fine and the sound is great, especially when we're talking about the music she listens to. It would take a lot of digital crud to make this stuff any less listenable.
Seriously, I've seen old SBLive's with digital outs at the neighborhood used computer-gear store for 10 bucks. Good, stable drivers are readily available and some of them even have these nifty breakout boxes with optical in-outs.
Now, if I could just find a ready supply of PCI sound cards with old-fashioned game ports I can use for midi I/O. I've got a crraaazy project in mind, but it seems that all the new two-buck sound cards on the market don't do the game-port/midi thing any more. Just audio ins and outs. For what I want, a USB midi adapter won't do, I need the old fashioned sound card with game port, and about 6 of those in PCI.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Most people who say this are used to mp3s being low quality. I too can easily tell the difference when quality is that low.
But for "LAME --preset insane" quality files, which tend to be about 2x the filesize, I've done my own blind tests on high end equipment: i.e.:
Winamp
->Audiophile24/96 sound card
-> Benchmark DAC1
-> Decware Zen Triode Integrated Amplifier
-> Gallo Nucleus Reference II speakers
Or replace the DAC and amp with a Denon AVC-A1SE amplifier (that's a ref. quality $5000 a/v amp)
I've also listened with Sony MDR D77 headphones, and Shure E3 studio monitor earphones with both of these amps.
In my own conclusion I couldn't tell the difference.
I coded the files back to WAV, a mix of high quality recordings of classical, rock, techno and Clapton, and invited a self-professed bunch of audiophiles to volunteer their opinion on which were the true WAVs and which had gone through the mp3 coding process. Nobody volunteered an opinion.
Since then I always code my music to mp3 using that setting. I've DJd using that quality of file with Virtual DJ with no pitch correction (important, this affects quality a lot) and had other DJs tell me they couldn't believe I was not using Vinyl.
I wish I still had the files I prepared, I would post them here for your enjoyment, but I don't doubt some slashdot genius would come back with the correct answers by examining the files digitally.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
Yep. Every since I read the title of this article, this is image has been wallpapered to the back of my mind. Sigh.
Dont know much about copyright law, if i'm wrong please correct me. Here is a some action, could be music/movie/whatever. There whole action is being captured, processed and finally into a digital media. The media, which is different from the action, could be reproduced identically in digital form, meaning that it is unauthorizely manufactured. Same could apply onto books distrubuted in plain letter size paper form being photocopied, in college it's serious. What is permitted in school is that you learn from that book and write your own version, plagiarism lies beeneth whatever you are just simply memorizing it and then rewrite in your paper or you abosrb the knowledge and have altered (e.g. add/subtract) the main concept and wirte somthing different(proof is alter also since its more proofable). When paper has become punch card and to hard disc now, brain proccess become recode, then loop back and record sounds way dark then in the grey area.
The too-lazy-to-put-a-loopback-cable-on-their-soundcar d teenagers with too much time on their hands.
DAC and ADC circuits are really good these days. By really good I mean that a $100 sound card is better than a high-end tape deck from the 1980s, or even than most audiophile turntables playing brand-new vinyl. The built-in soundcard on your motherboard probably "sucks", which means it's only as good as that really nice component tape deck your older brother bought in the 1990s and you drooled over until you discovered mp3s. The suckiness is probably digital noise from the motherboard, leaking it at the -50 or -60 db level (about the same as the noise floor for a cassette tape w/o Dolby or DBX). Harmonic distortion is probably buried in the digital leakage, even on cost-engineered, sucky on-board sound.
A few years ago I did audio comparisons between a cheap-ass I-Opener computer playing mp3s ripped from a record and a midrange Technics tape deck playing the same tracks recorded from the same record, and the I-Opener did better.
So if you've paid any attention at all to your sound card, you probably won't hear any distortion from passing the sound through it. You're much more likely to notice the fuzz and tinkle-bells from the initial low-quality Rhapsody encoding.
And to think all this madness started with the ancient Chinese Taoist Goa Tse.
And hopefully the humorless bastards at Wikipedia haven't deleted this yet.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Old hat:
http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.html
of course, on Linux there has always been sox, which is even older hat:
http://sox.sourceforge.net/
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Shouldn't this be called aWhole for short?
with the internal audio header cable from the CDROM drive to the motherboard.
play music record to datafile from audio in.
no microphone involved.
comment directly in my journal
I tend to get in a lot of arguments over DRM. Simply because I am against DRM, yet I subscribe to Urge. However, my concept is pretty simple; If I buy music, I do not want to be restricted in how I can use it. If I subscribe to a service, I expect that there will be restrictions in use. In growing up I have come to see that downloading music is indeed stealing, regardless of how corrupt the music industry is. By subscribing to a service like Urge, I have been able to weed out more crap music and more effectively spend my music dollars. My whole argument boils down to purchase vs. service. All that being said, I first got really excited when I read this article. I thought of listening to all of those new albums that I've been listening to on my Creative player on my much preferred iPod. I even went as far as downloading the program. But after it sat with me for a few moments, I thought that this was no better downloading tracks off of a torrent. Simply because I did not pay for the tracks, but for the service. Had i purchased those tracks, I would have full control of them. I will only purchase music in a physical form. Atleast those are my thoughts on the subject. ~InsaneShow
Open the song in a wav/mp3 tracker, export or play and capture the input from the line out. Easy except now you have a nice raw file of a mp3, then recompress it to mp3 you'll get 128kbps or whatever you use of a already compressed file.
Suppose you run Windows in VMWare or some other virtual machine or emulator. Use Linux as a host, and intercept the sound there. Signed device drivers, secure path, etc. don't matter any more, do they?
If you can hear the sound, you can save it. Microsoft cannot do anything to stop you.
(Of course, they can try to detect VMWare and refuse to play any sound. But: 1) that will break lots of legitimate uses of Windows, and 2) you can always make an emulator that looks just like real hardware.)
+5 - Insightful.
No, seriously. Will we be able to do this kind of thing on the 'next genration/s of Windows (tm) Software'?
If **AA get their way then, possibly.. no.
Word of the day: Mileage. How appropriate. My current hardware will hopefully last me a while. Maybe.
When did iTunes ever give you "unplayable worthless crap"? It's the iTunes Store that sells you that. iTunes the application merely provides a way to play it back. Nothing you rip yourself in iTunes has any DRM on it whatsoever.
Just to set the record straight...
You mean other than the fact that it contains the words "anal" "log" and "hole"? Nope, nothing at all questionable about it. [whistles]
The DMCA does have that nasty 1201 section which makes tools of circumvention illegal.
No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that - (A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
But that's just for the US. Everyone else, enjoy.