Miscellaneous > Intellectual Property & Law

Fuck DRM

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Xeen:
I have some .wma files that are DRMed. This means they play ONLY via Windows Media Player 9, and restrict what I can do with them. I want to covert the files to uncompressed .wav files to edit them how I want, and then convert to MP3 or AAC eventually. But no audio editor will open DRMed wma files. Anyone know how to remove the drm protection from wma files? I know you can do it by burning to a cd (virtual or otherwise) and then ripping from it. Any other way?

KernelPanic:
To try and avoid losses take a look at 'FreeMe' and 'Unfuck'.
Otherwise you will have to re-encode twice which will make quality crap.
I beleive with both of those applications you require a licence to play the files with originally.

In the future i'd suggest http://www.allofmp3.com for legal, cheap, and DRM-free digital media.



Also, I think it will be prudent for users not to post links to software of dubious legality. Xeen knows how to google.

KernelPanic:
Sorry, I misread your post.

To go straight to wav, you need to use the Winamp trick.
=> http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=73346

Then you can do whatever in audacity and export to OGG Vorbis ;)


Interesting link: http://www.drmblog.com/

Xeen:

--- Quote ---Otherwise you will have to re-encode twice which will make quality crap.
--- End quote ---


Not necessarily. I have a habit of double encoding stuff and it's just fine. It depends on the sources you use. I have a thing about all my mp3 files being uniform in some ways. I like them all to be the same bitrate (I use 192 kbps), and to have exactly 0.5 of silence in the start and end.

So when I download stuff, I only download mp3s that are already AT LEAST 192kbps. I edit it in Cool Edit Pro - fix the amount of silence in beginning and end, do some hiss reduction if necessary, cut out any parts I do not want if the audio is too long and boring, and normalize the audio to about -3 to -6 db because the record labels make CDs too fucking loud and distorted.

After that I encode using a good encoder to 192 kbps. All my stuff sounds good, unless the original sources were crap to begin with.

Orethrius:

--- Quote from: gaekwad2 ---Oh yes, of course a Microsoft employee's opinion [of the quality of WMA] is far less biased than the results of a blind listening test.
--- End quote ---

THAT is going in my sig.  :D
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