Burning through Napster's collection, free, Part 3

Part 1 | Part 2

Whether or not AOL succeeds in blocking Winamp's "music-copying feature", a faster way to get the job done has surfaced.

A program called Virtuosa makes no distinction between DRMed files and non DRMed files when converting to other formats. It can convert an entire protected WMA to WAV in just a few seconds and encode to MP3 in just a few more, depending on the speed of your computer (Try the "re-recording the music as it plays" argument now!). The after your trial, the full version costs $40, so if you want the best free solution, Winamp + Output Stacker is still where it's at.

1. Download and install Virtuosa 5.0 Trial
15.0 MB / 15,361 KB / 15729497 bytes
MD5 Hash: 3EC9A443BA2EADDA370C0C7BA845A647

2. If you want to convert to MP3: Download the LAME 3.97a7 encoder and put the "lame_enc.dll" in your Virtuosa\Plugins\MpgL3 folder replacing the one that is already there. This new version of the LAME encoder greatly speeds up the MP3 encoding process.

3. Load downloaded Napster protected WMAs into Virtuosa

4. Select all of your files in the "Music and Movie Database" and go to File>Convert To

5. In the "File Format Conversion" window:
a. Choose an output format (MP3, WAV, WMA)
b. Choose an output directory
c. Click the check mark

6. Burn WAVs to CD with your favorite burning program or enjoy your MP3s

[Update: As of March 14, 2005, the method described here no longer works.
As of March 22, 2005, there is a new solution in Part 4]


18 Feb 05 | +Permalink+ | Comments (638) | TrackBack (3)