myTunes brings a GUI to stripping iTMS DRM

I agree with TH... I tried all kinds of recommended methods of converting the protected files, but the fool proof method is just to bung your tracks on an audio cd and rip them again... when you can get 100 CDR for less than a tenner, why bother spending ages converting them with two bits of software and so on.

I'm not an expert on the process they're using, but I believe it involves pulling the raw decrypted AAC data out of RAM. So yes it is lossless, and it's real time because the data is only pushed into RAM as the song plays.

use iMovie.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060725200656470

Lossless? Yeah. They may claim that it is, but all signs point to "phony" on this one. From the realtime-only conversion to the dropping of all meta-data (why, if you are truly hacking the file?), this is nothing but a play and record process. There is no reason for it to take *exactly* this long otherwise.

As mingistech says above, it makes more sense to burn your downloads to an audio CD (CD-RW to avoid waste) and re-rip. It's faster and you keep the meta-data. In both cases, you are going to have a middle stage of uncompressed audio and return to compressed audio at the end. There is no avoiding it.

There's another program called myTunes Redux.

Not the same thing, but I wonder if it's the same creator as this?

myTunes Redux is awesome, and lets you wirelessly download files from other people's shared libraries without their knowledge. It works great. So I've heard.

#4. Since iTMS files are already lossy, I'm sure that most people would find the burn-rip method more than adequate. Most people that are worried about loss will rip from a CD anyway, as iTMS AAC files are mediocre to begin with.

Audio Hijack

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/

Not free, but still, it works.

This is a lossless method. Neither post 2 or 3 are lossless methods.

Hey, it's easier.
1. Burn a CD.
2. rip again.
3. There is no step 3

Sounds like they're exploiting the analog hole - this is definitely *nothing* special. The "file" you're left with without ID3 tags is most probably a standard .wav file, and the "second tool" is most probably an AAC encoder. This is the oldest trick in the book.

Nothing to see here, move along...