thelizman wrote:
note: sci.electronics.repair removed from ng xpost list

Z Gluhak wrote:

Hey thelizman do you know how quality of a codec Napster or Itunes
uses when
you pay the buck for a song from them? It definitely sounds better
than FM
to me.


I'm not quite sure on Napster, but iTunes uses AAC which is a very good
codec, probably the best lossy compression codec commercially available.
It's basically MP4 of sorts, the MPEG Layer 4 Advanced Audio Codec.

AAC includes Digital Rights Management, however. My view on DRM is that
anything which restricts your ability to portablize your music and adds
size to the file is detrimental. It just so happens that the same kid
who cracked the CSS DVD Encryption scheme (making it possible to backup
your DVD's, or rip them to your hard drive like I do) recently cracked
Apple's DRM on AAC.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...id=141&tid=188

AFAIK, only the songs purchased from the iTunes store have the FairPlay
DRM built in. If you set iTunes to rip your own music to AAC files, it
applies no copy protection. Apparently the new version rips to AAC by
default; I disabled it because my car player only plays MP3s...and I'm
pretty sure iTunes won't convert an AAC file to MP3 on-the-fly when
burning an MP3 disk (not that I'd want to).

The extension on a ripped file is .m4a
The extension on a bought file is .m4p

Adam