Access Denied.
I was hoping in this space to offer an enthusiastic review of Ray Charles' 1984 album of country duets, Friendship, recently reissued by Sony Legacy. Certainly, with guests like George Jones, Chet Atkins, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Ricky Skaggs it's almost a sure thing that I would love it.
But I can't. Unfortunately, Sony's proprietary Digital Rights Management scheme has thus far prevented me from hearing the music on the disc. These days I mainly listen to music in three places: on my computer as quiet office background listening, and more seriously on my Ipod and on my car's cd player. So far, my car stereo won't even read the disc, so no go there. The disc informs me that to play Friendship on my computer, I must first let the CD install proprietary Sony software that will monitor and limit the number of copies of any kind I can make of the music thereon. This is distateful at best (even more so if I had bought this rather than gotten a review copy), but I want to hear this record: I’ll bite. Unfortunately, my computers, work or home, won't just play the music even after installing the software; instead, rather than the little player starting up upon disc insertion, I must go into the disc's menus to find the proper .exe file to make it work. And forget about using Windows Media, Real, itunes, or other media software to play it; you must use the disc's own jukebox software only.
Similarly, to put the music on my IPod requires that I download further software, in this case ActiveX 9. I have the choice of ripping to a proprietary Sony audio format (ATRAC) or .wma. Given that Sony promises that ATRAC is "technology that compresses your music so efficiently it’s hard to detect the difference," and given that .wma's audio quality isn't so hot either, Forget all that. My ears are good enough to hear the high-level compression dulling the hi-hat cymbal in some mp3s, so it’s a cinch that “hard to detect” isn’t going to cut the fricking mustard. In fact, I have tried – and failed – to get legitimately copied .wma versions of the album’s tracks onto my Ipod. Guess what: access denied.
Since it is now clear that I have a choice between listening to Friendship on small speakers at low volume in my office while I work (which is no way to form a serious opinion) or not hearing it at all, I am going to pick a third option: chuck Friendship in the trash and make sure never to pick up one of Sony’s pathetic, insulting, crippled, DRMed jokes again.
But I'm sure that the album itself is a winner.
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For future notice: Never
For future notice: Never install those "helpful" programs that say they will let you listen to the music. First of all, they suck. Second of all, they work by mucking about with windows device drivers; not a good idea for your computer.
There is a fairly easy procedure to get around this. First, you hold down shift when you insert the cd to disable windows autoplay that starts the sony software. (Or have autoplay disabled in Windows.) Second, you need to rip the music to mp3, ogg, or whatever using a good program like [url=http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/]CDex[/url] or [url=http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/]EAC[/url]. Now you can manually load them up on your ipod. Alternatively you can also rip to wav and use the wav files to burn a new, uncorrupted, cd for your car.
Finally, I'm not sure what type of corruption sony is using, but some are harder to deal with than others. If you hear pops or crackles in your music after extracting it, use [url=http://members.home.nl/w.speek/deglitch.htm]Deglitch[/url] to fix them. It does a pretty good job for that, not quite as nice as a cd that was uncorrupted in the first place, but not bad at all.
As a nice F-U to sony, why don't you make some copies your fixed product and give them to all your friends? That is legal, you know.
See, that's funny! I'm a
See, that's funny! I'm a computer-savvy guy, can network a printer in nothing flat with one hand tied behind my back. But I never paid any attention to the media-hacks that have been going around. I heard about that whole shift-key thing a while back, but never linked up the shift-key thing with Sony DRM, like maybe I should have.
I deeply appreciate the links, and will be utilizing all those tools to crack open Sony's nut to get at the delicious, delicious meat inside.
I can't believe this is legal. More than that, I can't believe Sony hates its consumers this much. It's a midline release! Midline! Twelve bucks! What the hell!?