While there are quite a few posts concerning this on the forums, they are all from prior to 2008. With advances in software and hardware since then, they aren't helping my issue. Here goes. Way back when, I used to use Windows media to rip my CD's, not even thinking about possible copy protection issues. Recently I found some of my 'back-up' data disks with some of my old home-made audio recordings of me playing music on them that I'd long thought lost. So now all my archives are stuck in WMA format and have some kind of copy protection on them. I'd love to have them back, but my google searches, while finding quite a few different software recommendations, have not reached fruition. I have been getting these errors: 1. Quite a few of them will attempt to download a license. My first problem with this was they would use my default browser (Chrome) and tell me that it wasn't supported, and that I needed to download Windows Explorer 7 or higher. So I set Internet Explorer as default since my computer (Windows 8.1) had it pre-installed, I just choose not to use it. Whatever the license site is, it doesn't recognize higher versions of WE, because it STILL told me that my browser was unsupported. So any that do that are not an option. 2. Windows Media Player will not recognize them as playable, even though they're WMA's. 3. I've tried burning them, to the same issues of the licensing. I need some kind of software (hopefully free or low cost) that'll allow me to break the protection I inadvertently put on these files. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!
clonecd is the only one that comes to mind its free trial dbpoweramp If you made them what was it that put the protection on them also what was the recorder used as that may have placed it there,can you provide a download link to one of the wma or an iso there is a free package that has numerous versions of IE this may be it http://www.computingunleashed.com/download-get-all-internet-explorer.html
Sorry for the late reply. No such luck you would have done much better in 2000 before the laws were finalized. This type of audio hasn't change much in 25 years. WMP defaults to copy protesting what it rips. Shame on you for being so lazy you didn't install WMP intelligently. Shame on you for using WMP to rip CDs in the first place. I recommend both dbPowerAmp and EAC and nothing else. With either you rip to a VBR extreme (insane) format. They are compact but indistinguishable from loss-less in sound. LAM is the only format that has been debugged by thousands of audiophiles for over a few years. There is no format that is in the same league other than loss-less. Any moron can make loss-less since you are not changing the audio at all. The time to remove the protection is the day you buy an audio. Then it is a peace of cake, after the site closes down or in your place, when you reinstall windows or get a new computer, it is impossible. At one time there were utilities that did what you need but the makers were sued out of existence and any web site allowing you to down load a version would get the same treatment. There are few persons that even know such a utility ever existed. Now that I have beat you up sufficiently, if you have a full backup of your old computer the DRMs will be on it. It would be in a user profile in a folder named DRM. Go through ALL the profiles. In XP and later I think they are in all users or public users. Take the files from the DRM folder that has files and restore them in that same folder on your new computer and you will have lucked out more than you should. Use something like audacity to record the music and remove the DRMs while you can. If you have installed dbPowerAmp you can hover the mouse arrow over an audio file (the old ones) and read the bit rate of your WMAs. They ought to be the same. I would record the music as lossless then convert to lame ABR (Average Bit Rate) using the same bit rate of the originals. This format was created to store WMA and AAC conversions because the compression rules are the same. VBR rules are all about preserving fidelity. ABR is all about maintaining a bit rate. Each second of the audio will have a constant average bit rate If the rules between the source and the copy are different you will lose fidelity and often the loss is very noticeable. See the top sticky for more information about formats. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER use that POS to rip another CD, OK!
