I have digital cable and an home theatre receiver. There is a digital audio out on the box and a coax digital in on the receiver. I hooked up a cable and lo and behold i had dolby digital sound from all of my premium movie channels. I thought this was rather cool for the cable company did not use this feature as a selling point, but i just stumbled onto it myself. (whether i am intuitive or just dim witted is yet to be decided)

Now I'm thinking...i have all of these music channels through my cable provider...would i be able to stream them onto my hard drive, select the songs i want, then upload them onto my Rio?

If so, any thoughts on how to do this?

Thanks!

Ed

Just record waves or mp3s in real time and edit/upload as you see fit. Of course, this will infringe copyright etc etc!!

Does it? as I am paying for the data stream that gives me the music am i actually infringing on copyright laws, esp since I am not making this music available to others?

Also, can you suggest a way by which i can get these songs on my hard drive?

You can use a program like cool edit or some other that lets to record to a wav file from the line input or digital. Actually music match jukbox will let you record directly to a mp3 but the quality may not be that great. I have done the same thing from my direct tv audio channels, it works pretty well. As for the copyright stuff, I would just like to know what is the difference of recording from the radio vs. tv vs. internet why is it "ok" to record from the radio but not from the internet?

In my mind, the big one is that radio stations are not allowed to tell you when they're going to play certain songs. That means you'd have to put a lot of effort into recording the songs that you want. Also, radio stations are supposed to pay for songs that they broadcast, but that's mostly irrelevant because of the ``rebates'' they get from the record companies.

It's been pointed out that with today's computers and storage devices that it would be fairly trivial to record an entire day's worth of radio programming, but you'd still have to search through that entire day to find the song you were looking for and the broadcast of it has ostensibly been paid for.

It's been pointed out that with today's computers and storage devices that it would be fairly trivial to record an entire day's worth of radio programming, but you'd still have to search through that entire day to find the song you were looking for and the broadcast of it has ostensibly been paid for.

And then you'd have a low quality copy of something that has had the levels turned way up past eleven with a DJ talking over the fade in and the fade out. But is it legal? You can time-shift legally, so there's at least an argument in there. If you were keeping it to archive you might have a problem.

Matthew

I do exactly this from my DirecTiVo box. I run the digital out from the TiVo into my receiver, and the digital out from the receiver goes to an external USB sound card (my, now discontinued, Onkyo SE-U55). From there, you just punch "record", watch your TV show, and punch stop when done. Cut, splice, compress, tag.

I've used this to rip music from several "live" shows. My favorite source for good music is Sessions at West 54th. It only ran for three seasons on PBS, but Trio is rerunning it in syndication. Other sometimes useful shows A&E's Breakfast with the Arts and Bravo's Musicians. Trio on Tour occasionally runs bands I like as well.

Any other suggestions?

I think the issue is that digital music can be reproduced without degregation in quality an infinite # of times while back in the analog world taping a tape sounded progressively worse..there was NEVER any issues about taping an album to be played in your car casette deck..also cd's can be burned at a speed which is a multiple of playback while tapes were 1 to 1 ratio...thus the quality and speed at which music could be bootlegged is at the heart of the issue IMHO

a program like cool edit

just found out that cool edit was aquired by adobe and rebranded to "audition". just a little tidbit

I have a Yamaha HTR but I dont think it has any USB outputs...is there anyway i can rig up some cable configuration to do what you are doing?

is there anyway i can rig up some cable configuration to do what you are doing?

Just run a cable from the line out of your box, to the line in on your computer. It will probably have to be a cable that has male rca on one end, and a male headphone type jack on the other (but this really just depends on what kind of input you have on your computer). Or, if you have digital out on your box, and digital in on your computer, thats even better.

there was NEVER any issues about taping an album to be played in your car casette deck.

Um, actually, there was, once upon a time. Most of us just didn't know about the legal battles going on at the time. Organizations like the RIAA and MPAA have always fought against allowing consumers to copy things, even onto analog mediums.

What you need is S/PDIF input for your computer. Most high-end computer sound cards these days support S/PDIF, but virtually no laptops have it. External USB adapters can work, though; cheap ones cost $50, and the prices go up arbitrarily. A long list of such devices can be found at usb-audio.com.

How on earth did u find THAT one!

Hey Tony I saw that on tech tv just the other week when they had the music wars show. The thing that got me is when the lady in the audience asked about the recording from radio vs. downloading and they said "umm.. uh.. when you download mp3s it is better quality". Most of the mp3s I have heard that came off the net sound like crap, and the radio actually sounds better. But what about when DAT came out and then they had to come up with the serial copy management system so you could only make one copy but not a copy of a copy. So they are saying its illegal because it is and identical copy or good quality, but an mp3 can be good quality but is nowhere near identical so what is the big deal.

but an mp3 can be good quality but is nowhere near identical so what is the big deal.

Because once the MP3 has been made, it does not lose quality on successive generational copies. If the first rip is done well, then it is very close to identical and can create an infinite number of identical generational copies.

For that matter, one could rip to a WAV or FLAC and then have zero degradation, and I'm sure the RIAA would be equally unhappy about that. MP3 happens to be the popular format now so it's the one they're concerned about the most.

How on earth did u find THAT one!

We have discussed the legalities of MP3 and file sharing many times on the BBS. When those discussions were happening, I decided to look up the history and the AHRA (audio home recording act, the law which governs home copying in the US) and see what the issues REALLY were. The site I linked used to contain the full text of the AHRA as well as a dumbed-down interpretation of it. Only I can't find those sub-links at that site any more.

create an infinite number of identical generational copies.

Actually, I don't think infinity is attainable.

Actually, I don't think infinity is attainable.

Okay, true. But the RIAA would like to think so. Imagine if they were allowed to sue over the theoretical number of generational copies made from a rip.

Did you have any luck with this project?

radio stations are not allowed to tell you when they're going to play certain songs.

Having worked in the radio broadcasting business for the last 30 years, I can tell you that this is urban myth. Perhaps this has been propagated by lazy DJs who didn't want to go to the trouble of looking something up for a telephone caller, and instead told the caller that he "...wasn't allowed to."

Announcers frequently (nearly always, actually) do pre-announce their music. They don't say "Be sure to listen at 11:42 this morning because we're going to play <song title>", but they do say something like "Coming up in the next hour are songs by <artists names> and the new hit <song titie> by <artist>."

Also, radio stations are supposed to pay for songs that they broadcast,

And indeed, they do -- through payments to BMI and ASCAP. These payments are made monthly, and are based upon the net revenue of the station. For some stations this can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.

but that's mostly irrelevant because of the ``rebates'' they get from the record companies.

The only "rebates" we receive from record companies is the occasional free CD that they would love for us to play. If it fits our format and is (in the opinion of the music director) worthy of airtime, it'll get get played. But 99% of our music comes from our music service -- in this case, Clear Channel Radio (yes, I know, the Great Satan of the airwaves, determined to destroy any vestiges of originality in its desire to air only bland, inoffensive music) and from that point we have a computer program (RCS, for Radio Computing Services) that sets up the actual playlists, blending tempos, artists, vocals/instrumentals, etc., with frequency of play based on national ranking of the song.

Despite the apparently commonly-held view that the radio business is a nefarious den of payola working hand in hand with the record labels to make absolutely certain that no worthwhile song from an independent artist is ever aired, the reality is much more mundane. It is very much a "nuts and bolts" business, appealing to the lowest common (and thus the largest) denominator. It is a straightforward game of numbers, and the music that the most people want to hear is the music that will get played. To put it another way, two competing stations would each rather have half of an 80% pie than have 100% of the remainder.

tanstaafl.

I should have been more clear when I said ``radio stations are not allowed to tell you when they're going to play certain songs.'' Of course they can pre-announce them, but they're not allowed to publish a time-specific playlist or repeat the same oredered playlist all the time. And I'm pretty sure that there's a time limit on how long before a song is played that you can announce it. I've actually read the policies on this, but I can't remember if it's FCC, Copyright, or ASCAP/BMI/SESAC policy, and I can't seem to find them now.

As far as kickbacks, I misspoke due to hatred and hyperbole. The big difference is that radio stations don't have to pay RIAA for broadcasting music since Clear Channel and RIAA might as well be one and the same. I suppose that there was no way to politically say ``Clear Channel stations don't have to pay us'', but since replacing ``Clear Channel stations'' with ``radio stations'' increases the count of stations by about four, they were okay with that compromise to help keep their hands clean. Any webcast is supposed to pay RIAA huge amounts of money, way more than the ASCAP/BMI/SESAC fees. That's why I used the term ``kickback''. As far as radio stations go, RIAA turns a blind eye, and I'm inclined to say that it's because Clear Channel plays music that RIAA wants them to play, by collusion or not. Of course, none of that money goes to the artists that you played. It all goes to the Billboard chart-toppers. I'd like to think that money that a classical station remits goes to classical chart toppers, but I doubt it.