Here's my scenario...

I purchased some music from the Nuclear Blast website and it's encoded in DRM-protected WMA (sic) files. Ultimately, I want to get them onto my iPod, but to the best of my knowledge, iPods don't play WMA files. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I tried to play these files in iTunes and the program wanted to convert them to AAC audio first before playing them. I of course didn't do it because I know that it is never a good idea to go from one lossy to another lossy format.

So, I was thinking about uncompressing the WMA files to WAV files and then recompressing them to Mp3 files that would then play on my iPod. The question is... is this a good idea or is my end result gonna be pretty poor, audio-quality wise? If this is not such a good idea, does someone else have a better suggestion as to what I can do to get these files to play on my iPod?

Thanks.

iTunes can convert DRM protected WMA files?

Anyway, back to your question, going from WMA to WAV to MP3 is no better than going directly from WMA to AAC, in terms of quality. Converting a file to WAV is basically just decompressing it, which would happen with either method. The undesired quality loss wouldn't occur until you recompressed to another lossless format.

That said, you have three two options. You could install Rockbox on your iPod so that it can play the WMA files directly, though I don't believe Rockbox can play DRM'd files. You could also just convert it to MP3 or AAC and accept the quality loss (which hopefully wouldn't be very noticeable). If both of those methods are that is unsuitable, you could always convert them to Apple Lossless, which would result in files that would sound identical to, but would be much larger than, the files you downloaded.

Edit: Evidently the Rockbox suggestion was useless.

Well, whatever you do, you must loose some quality. What you are suggesting is in fact the trasncoding process. The software decompresses one file, and on the fly compresses it to another format, just without writing the wav you mentioned.
Transcode it to aac. That's my opinion, maybe someone has something else to suggest.

Edit: Muncher posted while I was writing, his post is much more elaborate!

Cheers!

That's what it asked me if I wanted to do when I tried to add them to my playlist in iTunes, so I am guessing that it can convert them.



Thanks for the suggestions... I really don't feel like installing Rockbox on my iPod, so I guess if I really want to listen to the album on it I will have to transcode and hope that it doesn't sound too bad. The songs were encoded at 192 kbps WMA files, so the overall quality is a bit better than standard 128 kbps encoded songs. This was my first purchase from the Nuclear Blast webshop and I think it will be my last. If I had read the "fine print" a little better before purchasing the album in digital format, I would have just purchased the physical Cd instead. Man, I really hate the DRM stuff...




Yeah, I will probably just let iTunes trancode it to AAC audio files. That seems like the best option for me...


EDIT:

I just tried to convert them and when it went to do it, iTunes gave me an error message stating that it can only convert unprotected files.

SIGH

Well, so much for that idea.

I've not tried this yet cause I don't have any protected wma's. But I think there is a way to "capture" that file using kX drivers for Audigy2. You can rewire the dsp in order to redirect wave out to asio and record decoded samples in any asio host application. Then you can encode the resulting file to aac.
The only downfall is that file is going to be resampled to 48kHz and you must have an Audigy(2) card.

Try this out.

Installing Rockbox wouldn't help, as it currently doesn't support WMA. (And if it does in the future, it won't support DRM).

Yup, you'll have to use something like FairUse4WM to get around the DRM and convert that WMA to something else.

Quality-wise, there's no difference between WMA->WAV->AAC and WMA->AAC.

Since you have an iPod, it's really best to avoid WMA+DRM altogether. When you want to shop for music, shop through iTunes.

Could someone please tell me whether the following is correct (I've heard that it's true but never tried it as I've never use protected wma's).

I've been told that Windows Media Player has no qualms about allowing you to burn an Audio CD (cda) from protected wma's (that assuming you have the licence to play them on that same computer). Once you have the music on CDA you can of course re-rip it to any format. You could even use CD-RW media if you only want the CDA copy as an intermediate.

Can anyone confirm the above? I've heard several times that it's true, though to me it sounds crazy as it makes it so trivial to circumvent the copy protection.

It would be much easier to capture the decompressed audio using a driver that pretends to be a sound card (such as Total Recorder), than using a physical CD, which BTW might develop errors due to debris attached to its surface.

You bought DRM'ed music in a closed format. You got shafted. Learn from your mistake, and buy CD's next time.

It's a legit way to workaround the copy protection issue, yes. "Legit" because burning a few CDs from the copy-protected material is allowed by most (if not all) online music shops' DRM mechanisms. And even the strict EU law doesn't prohibit you to rip audio CDs which don't feature any annoying copy protections.

Edit: Bleh... stupid grammar!

Is this topic violating Hydrogenaudio TOS9?

btw DON'T BUY MUSIC WITH DRM

Let's say, it would be wise if NeoRenegade edited his post a bit. The way of getting rid of DRM mentioned by him is a questionable one.

Burning + encoding as a possibility to get rid of DRM, on the other hand, is even described by the reputable media, like in this case on heise.de:

Translation: Although burning the songs as an audio CD and the follow-up re-encoding to e.g. MP3 without DRM is possible, it is associated with a loss of quality.

It's flloyd's suggestion, actually.

My method isn't questionable; I'm Canadian. There is no law against breaking DRM or discussing breaking DRM.

Yup but Hydrogenaudio is hosted on an American server, isn't it?
(I'm very sorry to be pedant, I would have a clear answer because I want join the discussion freely without infringing the forum rules...)

Last time I checked I could remove the protection from some WMAs simply recording them with the windows xp sound recorder. I don't know if new WMA have stronger restrictions.

again, I hate music with drm. WTF, I paid for it, let me enjoy it!

edit: I'm sorry for my English, please be tolerant.

I dont think the quality loss would be any different from conversion to wav then re-encoding (or "direct" transcoding which is really the same thing).

Yes, but you can't transcode a DRM protected track without processing it using certain "special" tools. We're not talking about the general case of lossy to lossy transcoding here, which of course would be a waste of time and resources if made via the detour of burning the lossy source files onto a CD first.