Where are my I-Tunes Tunes?

[rms7129]

So I just purchased a SONOS system over the weekend. The install was easy and I was up and running in a hour. Most of my music is in I-Tunes. What I can't figure out is all the music I have "uploaded" from CD's shows on my SONOS system but songs I have purchased on-line via I-Tunes does not register. Is there some trick to make them play?

Any help would be great.

RMS.

[SynapseAttack]

Music purchased online through the iTunes Music Store can not currently be played on Sonos. These files are protected by technology called DRM (Digital Rights Management) and Apple's special version of this is known as FairPlay.

Currently Apple does not license this technology out to be used by anything other than Apple iTunes enabled devices. Until this technology is licensed out Sonos will not be able to decode these files for play across the ZonePlayers.

Sorry for the bad news.

~Ron

[Richie1957]

Originally Posted by rms7129

So I just purchased a SONOS system over the weekend. The install was easy and I was up and running in a hour. Most of my music is in I-Tunes. What I can't figure out is all the music I have "uploaded" from CD's shows on my SONOS system but songs I have purchased on-line via I-Tunes does not register. Is there some trick to make them play?

Any help would be great.

RMS.

Hello,
Just as SynapseAttack said there are some strings attached to the music we buy from the iTunes store.
I have heard though, that if we could only make a CD out of these music files and then rip that CD into iTunes, if that will work? (wink-wink)

[GuyC]

I had the same problem, there are and i wouldn't obviously recommend it some software programs that will turn the itunes downloads back to normal MP3's. I stopped buying off ituens for this reasona nd now buy from www.allofmp3.com which is much cheaper and none of the silly business

[garty]

Originally Posted by Richie1957

Hello,
Just as SynapseAttack said there are some strings attached to the music we buy from the iTunes store.
I have heard though, that if we could only make a CD out of these music files and then rip that CD into iTunes, if that will work? (wink-wink)

You can do that and Apple make no secret of the fact that this is possible. Make sure you burn the cd as an audio cd not an mp3 cd - option available on the preferences Burning tab. There will be some degradation in audio quality (which is probably why they let us do this)

I also gave up on buying music from the iTunes store for the same reason I now buy all my music on cd once again , though only cds that are not drm protected (aka crippled) .

[Majik]

Originally Posted by garty

There will be some degradation in audio quality (which is probably why they let us do this)

It depends. Putting aside the fact that the iTunes files are already degraded in quality anyway, one presumes the audio transfer is a direct bit-transfer of the original decoded song (effectively the same as decoding the file to WAV and then burning it.

If you re-rip to WAV with a decent CD ripper (thus getting minimal errors) then the resulting file shouldn't be significantly degraded from the WAV that was used to burn the CD.

As I understand it transcoding this back using the original codec (AAC 128k??) shouldn't introduce any significant artifacts.

If you use a different codec then it will degrade.

In reality the only thing lost is the time taken to do this, and a blank CD.

The other approach to this which I have heard is playing the file and re-ripping it by rerouting the sound-card's digital output to be recorded. (This is the extent of what I know about this, so don't ask me)

Personally I think this exposes the total hypocrisy and ultimate futility behind current DRM schemes: both of these techniques (which, I believe, also apply to Windows DRM10 songs) allow a full-quality digital image transfer into a non-DRM version. This is not illegal, whilst stripping the DRM from the file directly is.

It's clear to me this is not about preventing piracy but inconveniencing the user, and locking them into a particular licencing or technology platform.

Someone told me the other day that Microsoft makes more on average per downloaded song in DRM licence fees than the artists who wrote or performed it.

I don't know if this is true, but it wouldn't surprise me. If it is, how is this in any way acceptable?

Cheers,

Keith

[Richie1957]

Originally Posted by garty

You can do that and Apple make no secret of the fact that this is possible......

Like I said wink-wink

[garty]

Originally Posted by Majik

It depends. Putting aside the fact that the iTunes files are already degraded in quality anyway, one presumes the audio transfer is a direct bit-transfer of the original decoded song (effectively the same as decoding the file to WAV and then burning it.

No, you decompress the file to wav format then recompress when you import as aac, you could just re-import the wav files but then you would get huge files with only 128kbps aac quality. This is - deliberately - not a transcoding solution. You can't transcode protected aac files to unprotected as you can mp3 to aac within iTunes itself.

[ranaes]

I don't know, maybe I'm not as big of an audiophile as some of you, but I've done the suggested work-around without any degredation in quality.

I've burned a music CD of all my ITunes music, then turned this back in to mp3s (cd to mp3 program.) Next, I loaded this into my Sonos music file. If any of these were a repeat, from music I imported into ITunes, I told it not to replace it.
The big problem comes into play if you have your Sonos pointed to the ITunes folder, and a folder just for Sonos. You'll get duplicates of your songs this way. I finally decided to just load all of my music into one folder for Sonos, and one folder for ITunes (on two separate computers).

Could Sonos figure out if songs are duplicated and just ignore one of them? (update potential???)

[Majik]

Originally Posted by garty

No, you decompress the file to wav format then recompress when you import as aac, you could just re-import the wav files but then you would get huge files with only 128kbps aac quality. This is - deliberately - not a transcoding solution. You can't transcode protected aac files to unprotected as you can mp3 to aac within iTunes itself.

What I was suggesting is that re-encoding back to the original file format should not result in serious degredation.

Lossy encoders work by dropping information that is less important aurally to humans, and the degradation in quality is relatively subtle. Different codec degrade the audio in different ways.

If you decode AAC to WAV and recode back to MP3 you suffer the cumulative degradation of both codecs, as they throw different information away. By subjecting the original file to both codecs you are throwing more information away, and degrading the track significantly.

If you decode an AAC to wav, and then recode back to AAC, the incremental degradation should be minimal, as you are using the same codec. In this case the information has already been discarded and cannot be discarded again.

Obviously this is a highly simplistic analysis. In practice some additional degradation is likely, but should be far less than if you re-compressed using a different codec.

Cheers,

Keith