MP3 protection

[danielmak]

I downloaded an MP3 from an artist's myspace site and want to put the song on a mix CD. The MP3 sounds good when I play it in iTunes or with Quicktime (I am using a Mac G5). But when I drag it into Toast, it sounds bad. Loud metallic sounding static appears on the track, as if it is protected in some way. What can I do to remove this noise, which I assume is some kind of copy protection? Thanks.

[guns1inger]

My understanding is that MP3 doesn't support copy protection, which is one of the reasons the music industry prefer other formats. Try converting it to something else before you bring it into toast, or try burning it to CD from iTunes..

[kemcel]

Hi, danielmak.
I understood your problem, but still iam unable to help you, as i don't have sufficient knowlege of that.

[danielmak]

My understanding is that MP3 doesn't support copy protection, which is one of the reasons the music industry prefer other formats. Try converting it to something else before you bring it into toast, or try burning it to CD from iTunes..

I converted to AIFF in itunes and the version in itunes still sounds good, but when dragged to Toast, still sounds bad. I converted that AIFF to FLAC and dragged the FLAC into Toast, but had the same problem. I burned with iTunes and it worked. Thanks for the tip. I don't usually mess with iTunes beyond adding stuff to my iPod. Take care.

[jman98]

MP3 CANNOT be copy protected. However, you could have 2 issues with the original MP3 file.

1) The original might be of low quality with a low bitrate and the conversion just makes it obvious.
2) The original might be encoded with MP3 Pro which is NOT downwardly compatible with iTunes and probably Toast and it's botching the conversion for audio CD because MP3 Pro requires special software. I have no idea how to deal with MP3 Pro or what you would need to do so, but artists often don't understand technology, so yeah, I could see that somebody might actually think using MP3 Pro is a good idea. Or maybe they used it deliberately to make it hard for you to do anything with it if you downloaded it.