Are you asking about the standard MPEG AAC format, or the proprietary Apple rights-managed iTunes Music Store format?

Yes for telecharger with ITMS and to use on SSL

Apple do not license their DRM to third parties. The only way to play music bought off the iTMS is with iTunes or an iPod.

This is not any more topicality. Inform.
Sorry for my bad english...

See it!

arstechnica.com

Hmmm it says that it uses quicktime, but quicktime cannot decode iTMS AAC files.

I don't know but it seems that APPLE released it...

The article is mistaken. The COM interface merely allows scripting of iTunes on Windows, the same way you can with AppleScript on the Mac. This does NOT mean you can decode DRM'd AAC files from within a third party application like Scratch LIVE.

Yes but APPLE released the DRM of the AAC some days ago.

Got a link?

Hello Steve - Sean in San Francisco here . . . I've used a program called "MegaSeg" (dj automation software) which is able to play both personally encoded AAC files and those that i have purchased from the iTMS - any idea how MegaSeg is able to handle these files?

From their site . . .
"Q: Can MegaSeg play music files purchased via Apple's online music store? (AAC/MPEG-4)

A: Yes! Music purchased via Apple's iTunes Music Store is in a new format called "AAC" (for Advanced Audio Coding). This is the audio compression (codec) of the MPEG-4 file format (files with an .m4p and .m4a extension). With QuickTime 6.2, MegaSeg has the ability to play all AAC encoded files."

DJs can use the software provided by the Hymm project to take the DRM off iTMS purchased files. The most important thing is for SSL to support regular AACs. This would be a fantastic feature and a real time and money saver (AAC files sound better than MP3s at lower quality, enabling DJs to have larger collections of music using less drive space).

AAC is the audio CODEC from the MPEG-4 spec. It is an open ISO/IEC standard. I am hoping that Serato will support this becuase it allows for superior audio encoding at a much lower bit-rate.

Thanks,

:: chuck hasek
:: dj saint
:: www.mercury26.com
:: denver, co

Unfortunately "open" in this context does not mean unencumbered with patents, so AAC cannot be decoded for free.

The work around for iTMS purchases is to burn it to a cd and then re-import and the iTMS protection will be gone.

I also believe the AAC format source is open the iTMS protected source code is not.
So the question ifor me is will SSL support regular AAC files that are not the iTMS protected files in the future?

Peace
17

No, their is a license fee assocaited with using the AAC codec, please see the link below.

www.vialicensing.com

Thanks,

:: chuck hasek
:: dj saint
:: www.mercury26.com
:: denver / boulder co

So ITMS ACC files will probably not be incorperated into a update, but rather just burn them to a CD and re-import them?

ITMS AAC files will never work with Scratch LIVE or any other program that is not iTunes, unless Apple licenses its DRM (Digital Right Management) technology. Currently Apple has a proprietary system for protecting copyright material and all music downloaded from their store can only be played on iTunes or an iPod.

AJ, FS2 announced to work with AAC (www.finalscratch.com) . How ist that possible then?

AAC is an audio codec, like mp3 is an audio codec. If you have QuickTime Pro, you can create ACC files yourself. The AAC files you get from from iTunes music store have DRM (digital rights management) built into them as to not allow unauthorized usage. The AAC files you can make yourself do not have DRM built in. I'm sure the AAC files that FS2 will support will not decode the DRM.

This is similar to copying movies. You can watch movies fine through the player the manufacturer chooses, DVD or VHS for example (think iTunes). If you try to copy to use in another medium, like pressing record on your VCR and play on your DVD, you are left with undesirable results. Movies have a form of DRM built into them called Macrovision which will changes the gain of the brightness signal (the video gets burst of dark and light intermittently). This is done to ensure they will always have control of their property (think music, movies in this case).

Sure, but even non DRM AAC files would be useful for use with your own CDs - you can get better quality at the same bitrate compared to MP3...

Paul

What do you mean by use with your own CDs? Are you refereing to the control CDs to scratch with (as opposed to the vinyl)?

No - I mean making AAC files from your own music CDs (as oppossed to DRM AACs downloaded from the iTunes store), sorry for any confusion!

Paul

And you get even better quality with Vorbis, which has been promised for a future version of SSL.

Sure, but AAC encoding works with iPods, which means not having to encode things twice for some people...

Paul

Indeed, AAC is better for some people (pretty much iPod owners only), mp3/vorbis/wma is better for others (owners of any other audio player). You can never support too many formats :) I was just pointing out that I think Vorbis support will be here before AAC, and unless you are wedded for some reason to AAC it might be sensible to investigate your options :)

that it is not true

Care to elaborate? From what I've read it is completely true, unless you're talking about the apps of questionable legality which strip out the DRM.

Guys, I quoted ni/stanton, and it has been said there. How is this possible?

I'll repeat what AJ said in my own words:

NI/Stanton say they will support AAC. That's fine. There's nothing stopping anyone from supporting plain vanilla AAC. It's a format, just like Vorbis or mp3 or whatever. If they so desired I don't see any reason why SSL couldn't support AAC.

HOWEVER, the files you download from iTunes Music Store are NOT just plain AAC files. They are AAC with the FairPlay DRM embedded. This is the problem. To use a FairPlay DRM AAC file you must have the decode stuff licensed from Apple - it's impossible to play otherwise. And Apple (in their infinite wisdom) have so far refused to license FairPlay to anyone else.

So the upshot is this - if you create the AAC file yourself (in iTunes, or any other app) then you will be able to play it on winamp, or FS2, or anything else which supports AAC. However, if you buy a track from iTMS, you can ONLY play it in iTunes or on an iPod. Not on FS2, not on your Rio mp3 player, not in winamp.

This is why DRM sucks. DRM (of all types, not just Apple's) stops you doing (perfectly legal) things you want with your legally purchased music files. Let's say I spent a ton of cash at iTMS and legally bought loads of songs. Now I want to play them on the road. I have to buy an iPod, I have no other choice. So Apple is using the DRM (which is supposedly there to "protect" the artist from bootleggers) in order to force people into buying their players. That, in my eyes, is underhand and every bit as bad as anything Microsoft have ever done. Not that MS are any better, they're using the DRM in WMA for the exact same purpose. This is why Vorbis is important, this is why open standards are important. Even if Vorbis gets DRM extensions (which it may), because it's an open standard ANYONE can implement the DRM. So I can still buy my player from whichever manufacturer I choose, not whichever manufacturer the vendor of my music chooses. This is why I have spent $$$ at online music stores which provide me with non-DRM songs (BeatPort, AudioJelly), and not one cent on iTMS or Rhapsody or Napster or whatever.

(Note: there are, as I mentioned, apps of questionable legality which attempt to turn your iTMS AAC file into a regular AAC file - I'm not discussing those).

radish you're def speaking to the choir here. drm is bunk. i really think the major reason the itunes music store has drm is the major labels wouldn't jump if the files weren't protected. it's a shame these days greedy execs and lawyers run the industry. basically itms wouldn't have the catalog that it does (that the masses want) if it weren't for drm. beatport and audiojelly are def on the right track, but i wouldn't rule out the possibily for them in the future (when these services grow and expand) to include some form of copy protection on their files.

I think you're partly right. Sure the (major) labels insist on DRM, but Apple are being sneaky by using the DRM to also sell iPods. If Apple licensed FairPlay to other companies or made it an open standard I'd be much happier.

The other difference is the labels themselves. The majors are all about DRM and control. The smaller indie labels (who, let's face it, make all the decent dance music) understand that DJs & mixtapes make their industry what it is. Imagine if the only dance music came from SonySquare and Positiva *shudder*. I used to work with a fairly big dance label in the UK on the PR side and they loved the idea of selling stuff for download because it meant they got more cash. If they sell a vinyl for $8 they see like $1 of it. If they sell 4x $1.50 downloads they see probably $2. Plus, they don't get left with shelves full of unsold stock when a track doesn't sell as well as they hoped.

Copying will always happen, it always has. The trick is not to try and technically control it (this will fail as it has always failed in the past) but to make it unattractive. I could download tracks from Kazaa for free, but BeatPort is easier, and the rips are extremely high quality. For this alone I'm willing to pay a buck or two.

i don't think people buy ipods just because it has drm on it. in other words, people don't buy from the itunes music store primarily to use it in their ipod although it is convenient that synergy exists. there's plenty of people who don't even own an ipod but use those bought files and turn them into cds for their cars or use them to enhance their music collection. aac is not the only format the ipod supports. if it was, then i'd think you'd have a real case though. plenty of pirates (who download their music illegally) have an ipod just because it's great hardware.


i totally agree. basic economics. more companies need to take that marketing angle. i think the majority of people pirate music because $20 for a cd with only one song on it (with the rest filler) doesn't make sense but somehow record companies don't get that.

radish, then the bottom line is:

stanton and ni are somewhat fooling you with the AAC support, cause most people (incl. myself) think that with AAC support you can also play all the AAC files which you bought from iTunes shop. Right?

I agree it sounds like a lot of people will buy thinking they can play all the stuff from iTunes store and be highly upset when they find out they can't. Anybody seen a disclaimer from Stanton/NI saying you will only be able to play "basic" AAC files?

SpinThis: I agree completly that people don't only buy iPods because of iTMS, but Apple themselves have freely admitted that iTMS doesn't really make them any money (of the 99c per track the labels get like 80c or something, with the servers, dev cost, bandwidth on top Apple make a tiny profit) - it's a marketing tool for iPods. Personally I have another brand of mp3 player because of the iPods amazing inability to playback mix sets without putting a break between each track (which kinds of ruins it). I can't imagine being a dance fan/dj and having to use an iPod. Euch. But that's another issue and I'm not here to start a war, to each their own :)

nik39: Exactly.

Ahh I see that [i] doesn't work on this forum. Apologies :)

It does now. Huh, that was much easier than I expected.

woot!
now that's what i'm talking about

AJ - I wrote about this earlier to Steve West.

I have used a program for quite some time that handles iTMS AAC files directly from iTunes - the files do not have to be processed in anyway. The program is called MegaSeg <www.megaseg.com> its basically a music automation tool (think iTunes on steroids) At anyrate, it may be helful to check out and see what their work-around is.

yes, another megaseg user! i thought i was one of the only people who used that program. of course, haven't touched since i bought ssl. i contacted the guy who writes it (who by the way is almost as good as the ssl support team at answering questions, though not near as fast as implementing new features) and asked about a way to import all my bpm calculations that i had stored in megaseg. he told me i should write a program that parses the database file structure megaseg stores its settings in, i told him he should use the damn id3 tag the way it was meant to be.

great program for college radio stations and helped make me a better dj, but i'm sticking to ssl now.

The reason MegaSeg works is because it uses Quicktime (which is an Apple product obviously) to do the actual playback. SSL doesn't (and realistically couldn't) hence the problem.

Radish is correct. We actually tried Quicktime, it would have been a beautiful solution in terms of the large number of supported music formats that would be instantly available, however there was a slight problem. When Quicktime loads a file, it somehow manages to suck all the CPU for a second, so much so that the other mp3 suffered from an audio hiccup. We may revisit this solution again in the future, but for now we are decoding files ourselves.

Peace to the Apple fans, but from a technical point of view the Quicktime player sucks and always has :) Hence my "and realistically couldn't" comment!

i don't see M$'s Media Player doing any better.

Here we go. Can I make a valid statement without it turning into a Microsoft vs Apple debacle? I didn't say anything about media player, and media player is utterly irrelevant to this discussion. The point is that Apple have intentionally made it so that QT is the only way to play their iTMS files, and QT is unsuitable for use as a playback engine in something time critical like SSL. That much is fact. Speaking personally, I also find QT player to be very irritating in it's use of nag screens, and very badly performing in general. I prefer to use pretty much any other player (in fact, I don't even have QT installed on my current machine). But that is purely my opinion.

Just a little question, there are some mac (and also linux) options to run an app with less CPU priority ("nice"), wouldnt that solve the problem?

apparently not; you made a perfectly vague statement ("quicktime player sucks") so I made my own, basically harmless. seems you took that personally.


and the point is? for a valid comparison, isn't microsoft doing the same with their wm files? the last time i checked they were the kings of proprietary formats. i'm not saying apple's decision to use drm in their product is the right one but apparently they're doing something right because people are buying from them.


that much remains to be seen. the ssl team, as talented as they are, aren't apple and it's possible apple could help the ssl team out with a solution that would work when (and if) serato decides to revisit qt decoding.

And completely meaningless - this discussion is about playing protected AAC files, and whether QT allows you to do that or not. Media player is off topic, you brought it up not me. I didn't mention Microsoft, you did. That's what I hate about some elements of the Apple community, as soon as someone criticises some Apple product you get branded a Microsoft fanboy and people start making comparisons with Windows. Did you even consider that I might think Apple AND Microsoft suck equally?



Again, what have microsoft got to do with anything? This discussion is about Apple, iTMS, AAC and FairPlay. It is not about WMA or anything else. I hate DRM in all it's forms and I don't support any format which uses it. That's why I have all my stuff in Vorbis.

But to set the record straight, Microsoft licenses the DRM in WMA to third parties. Apple don't. So if I wanted to write a player which played WMA files I could, if I wanted to write a player which supports iTMS AAC files, I can't. That's the point.



Of course they are - no dispute there. They made a very nice looking player (iPod) and sold a lot of them because they appeal to people. They did a lot of clever marketing, nothing wrong with that. And they set up a reliable, easy to use website to buy music from, again I have no problem with that. What I dislike is their sneaky use of FairPlay and restrictive licensing to push people into buying iPods, and prevent them from playing the music they have bought on whatever device/application they please (for example SSL). I can't believe that you are perfectly happy with the fact that Apple have PURPOSEFULLY stopped you being able to play back all your iTMS music on SSL. It wasn't an accident, it's part of their strategy. Doesn't that piss you off one tiny bit?


Thank god. Or SSL would cost $1500 and only be available in pink or blue.

Which app do you want to run nice'd? SSL? That would make the problem worse (if it had any effect at all), as it would have less priority thus get less CPU time to itself. If anything you want to push the priority up.

how is apple pushing people to buy ipods? i don't see the logic. the way you make it out to sound is "shit, i bought a tune from the itunes music store.. now i need an ipod to play it on" which is completely untrue.

if apple's drm were as jacked up as you claim it is, they wouldn't let you play the file on anything outside of itunes and an ipod; you can still burn that file to cd and reimport the file into ssl now. itunes is free; if you had to buy it, i think you'd have a point, but nothing prevents you from importing tracks you bought from itms into ssl at the moment. i never claimed apple's solution was the perfect solution. i don't buy music from itms myself; i only really buy vinyl.

No, I want QT to be run on nice mode, and then let QT decode the mp3 in advance (when you map a track) and buffer the decoded mp3 as wav/aiff/whatever.

Well the problem it takes a second of 100% CPU when you first tell it to load the track. If you nice'd it, it would take more than a second of less than 100% CPU. Still might affect SSL, still probably wouldn't get the data to SSL in time (if you map a track, you expect to be able to play it straight away - at least I do).

Well unless you're willing to jump through some pretty extreme hoops (running illegal software to strip the DRM, or causing further sound quality loss by burning and re-ripping) it's completly true.


They don't (see below).

.
To be pedantic if you rerip it it's a new file. To be less pedantic, if you take an AAC file and convert it to mp3 or whatever you're losing additional sound quality. Plus it's a huge PITA. I may as well just buy the regular CD and rip it - it's faster than using iTMS.

Anyway, this is my last word on it. I have nothing against iTMS or those who use it. But I do believe that Apple, whilst claiming to be the fair and equitable end of DRM are in fact the most restrictive DRM vendor in the market. They could take away that burn to CD option at any time, and then where would everyone be? I'm going to continue (like you) to buy my music in non-DRM forms, and hopefully the industry at large (including Apple, MS and the record companies) will get the hint.

Somehow I doubt it though.

I dont understand the problem then. I thought the major problem is that QT hogs the CPU for a certain time which makes SSL to skip audio (or similar). So now if I can get QT to use less CPU time and therefor SSL not to skip, then we are all done, or did I miss anything?

Personally, I wouldnt have a problem if SSL would take some seconds until it maps a track if I am then able to use by DRM protected files which I bought. Come on, you knwo how much time you save if you just use the computer to search for a track rather then digging through your crates, thats tremendous of time you save. So why not giving up some seconds so you can use DRM files? I also think pre-decoding a mp3 (when mapping a track) would be nice anyway if that reduces needle drop latency.

Because things are rarely that simple :) Like I said, it might work, you might let SSL keep enough CPU to keep playing. But you would get a long pause before you could play the file. If that's OK, then fair enough. But we don't really know what QT is doing in that second. It might be hitting the disk controller hard, in which case nice will make no difference, and SSL might get stopped anyway.

the former digital dj software i used (megaseg) was quicktime driven. sometimes when loading a track, all the audio would drop out for a split second. this is a second that i'm not willing to give up. yeah, saves time digging through crates, but i'd rather hunt for music than feel like a jackass everytime the crowd looks up to the dj booth when the audio drops out before a new song starts.

DJ 3pm, I thinkg you misunderstood me. I said, if you could lower the CPU usage of QT, then QT would take a bit longer to decode the AAC, then SSL would _not_ drop audio. Of course no dj want to have a audio hiccup during their set.