Okay, I am a mac user and I have been buying music off of Apple's iTunes music store (which, incidentally, rocks). I have been replacing songs I own on 45's and didn't feel like buying the entire CD just to get one song (was there really ANOTHER men without hats song that you ever wanted to own even when they were "popular"?). I am wondering if there is any way of or plan to enable the empeg to play AAC files or if I am goin gto have to burn CDs of all of my purchased songs and then burn CDs and then reimport them on a separate machine as MP3 files.

I doubt the empeg will ever natively support AAC, but you don't have to go so far as to burn CDs. You should be able to decode them to WAVs (or the Apple equivalent whose name I've forgotten) and use them to make MP3s.

In reply to:

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or the Apple equivalent whose name I've forgotten) and use them to make MP3s.

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AIFF

Stu

There you go.

Haven't tried it yet but I was thinking that it might not work because of the "protected" nature of the files. I'll let you know what (if anything) I figure out.

You can use Roxio's Toast or whatever their CD software is called to convert AAC, even Apple's, to AIFF. I've seen it done.

Stu

You guys are pointing out one of the problems with DRM.
People with legitimate, legal uses for their property which they have paid for are required to work around it if they ever want to use it in a way unforseen at the time the content was created.

Meanwhile, after inconveniencing legitimate users, it's unclear how much it impedes the professional pirates who drain away a substantial portion of music industry revenues (most CDs in China, etc. are illegal copies).
Actually, scratch that, it is clear. It impedes them not at all.

Basically, it's like locks on car doors. If a professional thief wants your stuff, he's gonna get it. The locks are there to keep the honest people honest. 8-)

A better thing would be DVD movies. Professional pirates can just copy the entire disc including the encryption keys as they actually stamp proper discs and they can do dual layer, double sided etc... CSS is basically to stop people from making or using "unofficial" players without paying the hefty licensing fee to the DVD forum.

How about this for a new DRM system. It just watermarks your audio with the credit card details that you paid with. No restrictions on copying however. Nobody in their right mind is going to upload an MP3 which has their credit card number and details in
Okay, the audio is degraded due to the watermarking and you'll end up with tools to strip it out but we've got that already with the existing DRM systems...

One time use credit card numbers

Sorry

Doh! How about a detailed image of your house keys and your address?

That works.

Basically, it's like locks on car doors. If a professional thief wants your stuff, he's gonna get it. The locks are there to keep the honest people honest.

A fair enough metaphor.
To extend it slightly: I have to circumvent my car locks about once every 5 or 10 years when I lock my keys in the car. With DRM, it's like having to circumvent the locks every time you want to park in a different garage....