m4p/aac to mp3?

Originally posted by FL0OD
seems as though the song i bought from itunes cannot be converted to mp3 format through itunes. anyone know of any software that will convert these to mp3 format. everyone has been talking about ripping aac files to mp3 format but i havent seen any ripping software that even reads m4p/aac files. any ideas would be appreciated. thanks. That's the digital rights management (DRM), so you can't do it directly through iTunes, though there's a workaround. You can burn a CD of your AAC songs and then rerip it into MP3, but you'll lose a bit of quality doing so. BTW, you are talking about converting, not "ripping". Ripping is encoding a song from the source CD.

Originally posted by HiRez
That's the digital rights management (DRM), so you can't do it directly through iTunes, though there's a workaround. You can burn a CD of your AAC songs and then rerip it into MP3, but you'll lose a bit of quality doing so. BTW, you are talking about converting, not "ripping". Ripping is encoding a song from the source CD.

MrRez, i have tried burning them to a cd, no prob. its finding something that can get them from the aac/m4p format then encode it to mp3 format. everyone was talking about doing it before itunes even came out but i havent seen any software out that "reads" that m4ps format, other than apple products, not only that then actually lets you reincode it to mp3. thats what i am looking for. for the other post about easy cd creator/nero. i have new versions of both products and neither of them will re-encode from m4p to mp3. the little lose of quality is not an issue. my issue is that i spent money on the albums and i should be able to at least re-encode them and i am not finding anything that can do that software wise, free or not. once again the old arguement over the right of the artist and the right of the consumer after the product is purchased. A whole other topic.

I used Easy CD-DA Extractor before I had iTunes. It's an excellent product.

When you purchase a DRM protected tune, you'll play it at least one time on your puter, right? There are lotsa apps out there (like "Audio Hijack" for the Mac) which can record all audio (real-time) playing on your machine in the background, writing it to AIFF at the full quality of your sound card and/or encode it to standard MP3 or other desired formats. This way you are recording PLAIN AUDIO, nothing else which might be nested in the original file.

I heard that if you burn protected AAC to an audio disk then you can rip the audio disk to mp3. Is this true?

Can anybody recommend a way to convert non protected AAC directly to MP3?

Originally posted by HiRez
Yes, it's true but you'll lose a bit of quality.

As for direct conversions of non-protected AAC files, you can do it right in iTunes. Just set your Importing prefs to the MP3 type you want, select your files, then choose "Convert to MP3" from the Advanced menu (of course you'd be better off reripping the songs directly from CD though).

Thanks for the response. Let me be more specific. I want to keep my existing iTunes folder the way it is -- primarily non protected AAC files. I have an mp3 disc play in one of my vehicles. I can live with some loss. I'm looking for a way to convert AAC to mp3 without ripping 100's of cds.

Originally posted by HiRez
Well like I said you can do that in iTunes (converting), but if you just want to use MP3 CDs, I don't think you don't have to do any converting at all. If you select the MP3 CD type in your Burning prefs, iTunes should convert whatever formats on-the-fly to MP3 as it burns the disc. Except, I would assume, protected AACs. So you could just make converted MP3s of only your protected AAC songs for use in burning MP3-type CDs.

One would assume that, however that is not the case. It trys to burn existing mp3s and does not convert aac.

My copy of iTunes will ONLY convert mp3 to aac existing on the hard drive. It will NOT rip or burn CD's AT ALL not even audio CD's. Right now I'm looking for somthing OTHER than iTunes for ripping/converting/burning until they get the bugs out.

Is there any good format information out there for AAC?

Sometimes when I download tracks from Live albums I want to remove the audience noise so they will fit well with an otherwise studio-recorded playlist. Other times, I might even want to mix two files together into one or something of that nature. Behaviors such as these are most definitely protected under the fair use clause of copyright law. There ought to be a way for legitimate users such as me to convert our purchased music to WAV or MP3 so we can manipulate it without having to go through the rigamarole of burning a CD and then ripping from it. Thus, good formatting info is needed to formulate a method.

-Paul