How to I convert MusicNet@AOL to mp3

[VNG]

Have a question for you. I know I can run Audacity or dBpoweramp Aux and record what the soundcard is playing.

Does anyone have a trick or a program like the OMA converter for Sonicstage that will work with songs from MusicNet@AOL? The format is FractalForge (.MND)

I only have 29 days till my free trial is up and I want to download all the music the internet and convert it ;) .. so far Im on ABBA ;0

[xoas]

A user in a different thread
(see: http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=3010)
has suggested that MusicNet uses an Atrac encryption formula. Perhaps this link might help: http://forums.minidisc.org/viewtopic.php?t=6087

Let us know how you make out.
Best wishes,
Bill Mikkelsen

[Sob8]

Did you ever find a solution to this problem. The HiMD thing didn't work.

-Josh

[xoas]

If it cannot be decoded and converted as an Atrac type file, you are apparently stuck with being able to play this file in RealPlayer without being able to decode it as a RealAudio file in Music Converter.

This is the type of situation where you may have success in recording the file off your sound card as it plays in RealPlayer using dB Auxilary Input. If anyone has a better idea, please feel free tp share it.

Best wishes,
Bill Mikkelsen

[Unregistered]

No, I don't know how to convert the songs. I tried recording a song and you could just hear a faint part of the song in the background when I played it back.

I signed up for musicnet not being told you have to pay 99 cents per song on top of the $8.95 per month. I think when you pay the 99 cents they convert that one song to MP3. Now I don't know if it's a one time deal to record the song or if you can save the MP3 after you pay for it & reuse it. They don't explain it before you sign up.

[xoas]

For more information as to how to ercord from your sound card using dMC Auxilary Input see: http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=5362 (from the FAQ section for dMC at this forum).

Best wishes,
Bill Mikkelsen

[ChristinaS]

No, I don't know how to convert the songs. I tried recording a song and you could just hear a faint part of the song in the background when I played it back.
You probably did not adjut the Volume Controls in order to allow recording through the sound card using dMC Auxiliary Input.

Before using dMC Auxiliary Input, from your task bar right-click the volume control (the bullhorn) and select Open Volume Controls. Click Options>Properties>Recording. In the bottom part of the screen select all the unchecked controls to be shown on the recording panel. Click OK.

You'll be presented with the complete set of recording options. Depending on your sound card capabilities, you'll have more or less of them. You should however have something called Stereo Mix (or sometimes called What U Hear). This is the one that needs to be selected for recording from dMC Auxiliary Input, while all others, especially Microphone, should be unchecked.

For the selected input, raise the voume slider to about 2/3 of the way up before closing that window.

Then you go back to dMC Auxiliary Inout and do yorue recording.

For playbak, go back to right click on Volume > Open Volume Controls> Options > Properites> Playback, add all the different playback sources, click OK and make sure you have the volume sliders all the way up for all sources, mute the microphone and make sure nothing else is muted. Close that window.

During playbak you can always adjust volume from the task bar using the volume slider there or from your speakers or headphones if they have an independent control for that.

[Zamp]

I was in the same situation and had the same problem as VNG. Let me detail what I did, where I went wrong, and what you can do. Bear in mind that I know little or nothing about these things and I'd like to hear your comments, and tell me how to fix my own problem.

MusicNet downloads numbered files called .mnd to the AOL folder in the Program Files directory (e.g., 750216.mnd). The .mnd suffix wasn't recognized by my computer, and no media program would open them except RealAudio. Not knowing all that much about media files, I looked at the sizing of the files, plus the fact that my computer is set by default to open MP3s with RealPlayer, and assumed they were MP3s (which I now know they're not). So I renamed each file '.mp3', and the Real icon appeared by each file, and all was good. It was only after the files opened with RealAudio did I realize that they're not MP3s but "RealAudio with ATRAC3" as the file info puts it.

So I tried renaming .mnd files all kinds of things: .ra, .ram, .rm, .rmm, .rmx, rnx (all types of Real Audio suffixes). When I tried to burn audio CDs all of these types, RealPlayer told me I had "insufficient rights" or "unsupported media type" but had no problem letting me make a data CD. RealAudio is saying, you can play back this track with a RealAudio player but no other type of media player and not with a regular CD player either.

Would the file converters mentioned above convert protected .ram files or other RealAudio media files to mp3s? If yes, it would would help to change the .mnd file to .ram before running the converter. Does the converter work with .mnd files?

The problem I face is that the .mnd files I originally named .mp3, before I realized that they're not MP3s, are stuck that way. I can't figure out how to make the computer realize they're not MP3s. I can change the program MP3s are opened up with for all files computer-wide, and I even deleted the association 'MP3' in the file type option, but nothing I do will make the computer realize the files it thinks are MP3s are not.

Thanks for your help! If you prefer to respond to my own problem by Private Message instead of in the forum because it's off topic, that's cool, too.

[ChristinaS]

I was in the same situation and had the same problem as VNG. Let me detail what I did, where I went wrong, and what you can do. Bear in mind that I know little or nothing about these things and I'd like to hear your comments, and tell me how to fix my own problem.

MusicNet downloads numbered files called .mnd to the AOL folder in the Program Files directory (e.g., 750216.mnd). The .mnd suffix wasn't recognized by my computer, and no media program would open them except RealAudio. Not knowing all that much about media files, I looked at the sizing of the files, plus the fact that my computer is set by default to open MP3s with RealPlayer, and assumed they were MP3s (which I now know they're not). So I renamed each file '.mp3', and the Real icon appeared by each file, and all was good. It was only after the files opened with RealAudio did I realize that they're not MP3s but "RealAudio with ATRAC3" as the file info puts it.

So I tried renaming .mnd files all kinds of things: .ra, .ram, .rm, .rmm, .rmx, rnx (all types of Real Audio suffixes). When I tried to burn audio CDs all of these types, RealPlayer told me I had "insufficient rights" or "unsupported media type" but had no problem letting me make a data CD. RealAudio is saying, you can play back this track with a RealAudio player but no other type of media player and not with a regular CD player either.

Would the file converters mentioned above convert protected .ram files or other RealAudio media files to mp3s? If yes, it would would help to change the .mnd file to .ram before running the converter. Does the converter work with .mnd files?

The problem I face is that the .mnd files I originally named .mp3, before I realized that they're not MP3s, are stuck that way. I can't figure out how to make the computer realize they're not MP3s. I can change the program MP3s are opened up with for all files computer-wide, and I even deleted the association 'MP3' in the file type option, but nothing I do will make the computer realize the files it thinks are MP3s are not.

Thanks for your help! If you prefer to respond to my own problem by Private Message instead of in the forum because it's off topic, that's cool, too.
Ok, you can just rename those false mp3's back to what they were before, i.e. .mnd . Then at least that confusion will be out of the way.

Can you burn the .mnd file to audio cd using Real Player? It should allow you since you hold the rights to them, unless you've downloaded them on a different machine initially.

Now I've never seen one of those .mnd files so I obviously don't know how Real Player handles them, but if it plays them it should burn them to audio cd..... unless there's another catch.

But just to make sure you're using Real Player properly to burn audio cd's:

Tools> Preferences > CD > CD Burner > make sure you don't use Track-at-once (thus it will use Disk-at-Once for audio cd's).

Now if the burning to audio cd still doesn't work because of protection, then you can use dMC Auxiliary Input to record the audio from each file as it is played through your soundcard. Slow, but not much slower than converting from Real Media to anything else.

[Zamp]

Let me address each of your points in order.

I can't just rename the file by adding .mnd or .ram to the end of the file name. In Windows XP the filename just has the period in it with the 3 letters, and Windows still considers it an MP3 file. That was the first thing I tried :) . I can't find any way to convince Windows that the file it thinks is an MP3 file isn't. The only reason I was able to rename it from .mnd in the first place was that Windows didn't recognize it as any file it had ever seen before, and thus put the .mnd right up there in the file name.

I also thought I'd be able to burn .mnd straight to audio CD. As an .mnd file, nothing's allowed. In the rights tab (when you click the name of the song playing, a box comes up) it says Protected Content, and it says 'no' for 'Allow CD Burning'. If you try, you get an error message 'insufficient rights'.

Now, once I change the suffix to a RealAudio suffix, the only indication that it's not burnable is the "protected content" line for the rights summary in the Clip Info view. If you click the 'rights' tab, there's no value for 'Allow burning to CD', 'Allow transfer to non-secure device', 'Allow transfer to secure device', 'Allow backup'. (The same goes for any suffix I apply to the file.) That's when I get the 'unsupported media type' error message.

I have and had my RealAudio CD burning options set up the same way you have it in your image. It's a good thought, though.

I guess I will have record it through my soundcard, but I was hoping to avoid that. Even for converters that don't have any quality loss, it's very time consuming. Any other thoughts? Thanks, though!

[LtData]

Go to your folder options and turn off "Hide Extensions for Known File Types" and go back to the "mp3" file. You can now change it's extension.

[ChristinaS]

God, I hate Micosoft's stupid idea of hiding file extensions by default (as well as hiding system files) in Windows! What a patronizing, asinine and trouble-prone assumption that people don't need that information! :thumbdown

We have dealt with this in the FAQ section of the forum at http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=5361 .

[LtData]

Well, I'm sure nobody wants some computer noob to accidentally change the extension one of their documents when they rename it, resulting in a call of "My document won't open!". So there is a purpose in it for the new computer users, but those of us who know what we're doing can turn those options off.

[ChristinaS]

Well, I'm sure nobody wants some computer noob to accidentally change the extension one of their documents when they rename it, resulting in a call of "My document won't open!". So there is a purpose in it for the new computer users, but those of us who know what we're doing can turn those options off.
Nah, this is too lame an excuse! Besides, whenever you rename a file and change the extension you should get a warning anyway, that should pretty much take care of renaming by mistake. Well, it should ;)

But if we didn't have this silly thing, people wouldn't be thinking that all the files showing the WMP icon for instance are mp3 files or all those showing the Real Player icon are Real Media files.

I find the defaults in many applications are pretty poor. Sure you can tweak things quite well, but that requires more knowledge first of the fact that something else is available and then of where to go and set it.

Have you seen the array of information you can display about the files in a folder by enabling all that? I only just ran into it lately myself and I thought I'd struck gold :D

[Gloria]

:D Well I found out how to convert Music net file to mp3 I used PolderbitS Sound Recorder and Editor 4.0 from www.download.com and this works I have transfered all my files to mp3 and have made audio cd from them I give this software A A++++++ :cool:

[Gloria]

Well I found out how to convert Music net file to mp3 I used PolderbitS Sound Recorder and Editor 4.0 from www.download.com and this works I have transfered all my files to mp3 and have made audio cd from them I give this software A A++++++

[Arya]

Thanks Gloria.
Yes,
PolderbitS Sound Recorder and Editor does work well.
I simply clicked for .WAV, CD Quality, played the song and then started recording. The only drawback to convertering this way is that you have to listen to the whole song, in order to converter the whole song.

[apathy]

i downloaded polderbits and the editor, what do i do now just play the mnd file thru realplayer? what do i hook up to my sound card? or do i even need to hook something up to sound card? basically i need to be walked thru how to use this polderbits and convert all 1200 musicnet files(mnd) to mp3. can someone plz help me. thanks, ApathyRx

[yettenschwag]

Have a question for you. I know I can run Audacity or dBpoweramp Aux and record what the soundcard is playing.

Does anyone have a trick or a program like the OMA converter for Sonicstage that will work with songs from MusicNet@AOL? The format is FractalForge (.MND)

I only have 29 days till my free trial is up and I want to download all the music the internet and convert it ;) .. so far Im on ABBA ;0
Have you found a DRM (.ra / .mnd) decoder yet? Ive done the sound card thing, but I hate waiting around to do things in "real time". There has to be a better way. Anything you come across would be greatly appreciated. yettenschwag@aol.com

[Blondie2001]

Yeah...I just know enough to know if I convert the files, I don't have to pay the freaking .99 a song. That's crazy!! So could someone pretty please explain how I do this?

[Blondie2001]

Wow...I figgured it out! I'm smarter than I thought I was :D