Tunebite

[Kent Pribbernow]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.tunebite.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.tunebite.com/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Tunebite is a Windows software product, which, once installed on the PC, fully automatically or manually records the music you have purchased online as you are playing it back. It is completely legal to record and playback on a different reproducer of yours."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/skin.jpg" /><br /><br />Not a bad idea, but this software brings to light the problems associated with DRM limitations. I can't necessarily play the songs I download from online music stores on <i>any</i> device. This software may make a good temporary solution to this problem, only just.

[sub_tex]

I can't necessarily play the songs I download from online music stores on any device.

Well, not with the big music stores anyway.

There are others. . .

[OSUKid7]

NOOOOO!!! it's not freeware :( I'll continue my search for a free alternative. :|

[coffeeFreak]

Considering that it is a real time transcoding software, it is useful if you continually do it for each song you buy. However, if you already own a couple gig of drm music, it would take several hours or even days to listen through all of your music collection, regardless of your computer speed?... Immediately the software seems not very useful... :?

[[email protected]]

Hang on a minute...

I'm not very up-to-date on DRM, but if this is all it takes to get aroud it, why do they even bother? There's got to be a catch somewhere, like lesser quality, right? Does it capture analogally (?) from the soundcard and convert back to digital?

[coffeeFreak]

Hang on a minute...

I'm not very up-to-date on DRM, but if this is all it takes to get aroud it, why do they even bother? There's got to be a catch somewhere, like lesser quality, right? Does it capture analogally (?) from the soundcard and convert back to digital?

Reading from their website, it seems that they're capturing whatever your soundcard output. Quote from tunebit.com:


System requirements

Windows XP or Windows 2000. At least 600 MHz. At least Windows Media Player 9 for WMA recordings. Full-duplex compatible soundcard. If the sound card can't record directly through Wave-Out, a loopback cable will be necessary (Line-Out to Line-In).


This means that if you have MSN messenger on, and someone is chatting with you while you play the music, I suspect the bell sound will show up in your recording...

As for the quality, since it's reading sound signal, and re-encode it into ogg (or mp3) the quality should largely depend on your sound card. If your soundcard produce nice and crisp output sound, then it should sound good after being re-encode. So, yeah... it looks like there's possibility of quality drop.

[[email protected]]

Thanks coffeeFreak.

If it captures everything that the souncard outputs, I'll pass.