December 01, 2004

Curious George I have asked this almost everywhere I know someone, and I have had no luck. Is there a way to play a song off of a compressed CD (the kind retail uses)? [MI]
posted by oflinkey 19 years ago
  • Sorry, didn't link the MI. Oops. I have a CD from the retail chain I work at that has a Christmas song on it that none of my friends belive exists. I cannot get it anywhere on the internets, and Amazon has a *waiting list* for the only CD collection I have ever seen it on. I have no desier to rip the song, all I want to do is truck my laptop to the annual Christmas party, play the CD, and then bring it back to work (my manager allowed me to take it home to see if I could get it to work, so I did not lift it). The CD is one of those CDs that need the special DMX player (as it has a mess of songs on it- hence compressed). I have asked AskMe, and I got bupkis there, as well as a few others places. Any ideas here?
  • I don't know about the tech bit of this, but can you clue us in as to the song?
  • Rip it to an ISO and let us monkeys have a crack at it.
  • On second thought, have you tried dragging the DMX tracks to an MP3 or WMA playing application? Y'know, it just might work...
  • yeah I agree - rip it to ISO and let some of us have a crack at it. More than likely has DRM technology on the CD.
  • there is software for both the mac and the pc that will route the audio output into a a file, usually an uncompressed wav or aiff. This is now usable without any stupid player. Search versiontracker.com.
  • oflinkey Call me psychic, but I think I may know exactly which song you are after. I've been looking for it too. And maybe we worked for the same retail chain, because that is where I originally heard this song too. Does it involve one of Santa's helpers looking down on children from a spaceship? (I won't divulge the name of the song here). I have been combing the P2P networks for this song but no luck so far. If you are able to rip this song, I would kill for a copy.
  • All right, what's the song?
  • and I've already mailed out my mofi xmas cd! I'm with MST, what's the song?
  • Kimdog- AAAAAHHHHHHHHHGGG!!! THAT'S IT THAT'S IT JINGLE-O THE BROWNIE Now, here is the question, which I will post as a new link...how do I rip it to an ISO? I am not at all musicfile savvy.
  • On second thought, I will not clutter the mainpage with my stupidity. I'll just, wait here... /whistles
  • could you maybe bring your laptop in, hook it up to the player and then record it thusly? you might have some luck googling for the company and "dmx" although there was a music-over-cable service called "DMX" as well. (also, lots of people use Muzak as a generic phrase, which doesn't help with the whole finding Muzak player dealies.) you can rip to ISO by using a CD burning program (Nero or Easy CD Creator - look for a Save Track option, in Nero it's in Disc Properties under Tools I believe and in the other, it's in there somewhere :-). if you have Windows XP, you can use the ISO Recorder PowerToy to do it (install, then right-click on the CD in My Computer). on Macs, use Toast or something suchly.
  • Well, mrg, I tried using ISO Recorder, but this disc is unholy- I cannot get right-click to open when I try. The disc just spins and spins. I wish I knew what to do- the cheezeeness of the song is so close I can taste it. filmgeek, can you tell me more about what I would look fof on versiontracker.com?
  • AH. I thought as much. Now, here is my next question. Is this the Tennessee Ernie Ford version? That is the only one I can find through Google. But I would swear the version I know is by Nat King Cole. And yes, it is one of the most fucked up holiday songs in ever created.
  • looks like a guy named Dallas Frazier released a single with this song on it as well: Capitol Records cat. number F2956 Jingle-O-The Brownie / My Birthday Comes On Christmas - Nov 1954 and this guy has one of the 45s for sale.
  • Incidentally, Jingle-O the Brownie was mentioned in a MeFi FPP last Christmas, titled "This is what it sounds like inside the brains of crazy people." :)
  • jeff, that was me who mentioned it. I have had this CD for a while and have been trying to get the song off of it since then. Kimdog- it is Tennessee Ernie Ford, and if you worked where I worked (hint- do you know who 'Kate' is? How about touch and go pure?) it was TEF. The Toys for Tots song thatr drilled holes into my psyche was Nat King Cole.
  • I guess we are/ were at different chains, Oflinkey. I had to "get in touch with my senses" where I worked. But I figure it was the same music licensing company rooting around in their archives. Maybe the version I heard was TEF and not NKC. I am going to call in Forksy on this one. He has an army of obscure music minions who will do his bidding.
  • About a year ago I looked for a way to take a song off one of these disks and had no luck. Research included digging in the obscure CD piracy boards where geeks live and die on figuring out the latest protections, formats and what not. Seems like not enough of the people in "the know" don't care about hacking these CDs.
  • Ok, this is how to rip an iso off a CD: You're going to need a program called mkisofs. I've been trying to find a windows version of this (any monkey want to help), as your previous comments make me think you're using windows. If we can't find a windows version of mkisofs, you'll need to get linux. Fortunately, this is easier than you might think. If you have two cd drives (ie a regular drive and a burner) you can get a linux CD like knoppix and boot right into linux. This won't work if you only have one cd drive, as you'll be in linux but won't be able to put the CD in the drive to rip it. :-) Can any windows using monkeys find a windows version of mkisofs? It's part of a related bundle of software called cdrecord, and somebody must have compiled a windows version at some point. When you have mkisofs, you have to run the command: mkisofs -fJ -o [name of file you want to record the iso image of the disk too] [name your computer uses to reffer to the cd drive] I think that's all correct. I do it a slightly different way, but that uses linux things that probably won't work in windows unless you're using something like cygwin to get a bash shell (don't worry if you don't know what that means). Can anybody take it further than this? I can respond to questions if you don't mind delay...
  • Why not use total recorder or something similar? Won't be perfect quality, but it's easy.
  • Is this DMX the same company as many digital cable companies use? I've got a "DMX Hollidays and Happenings" channel. If so, they might play the song on there. It might be worth putting in a VHS tape and tape it all day long on the chance they play it.
  • OMG! I finally found this song on a P2P. Only catch, is that it is an WMA file and I am on a Mac. Anyone know how to convert this to an mp3?
  • I think iTunes will do it. It's free on the apple site.
  • Nope. iTunes won't read the file.
  • I've got it and will post it later!
  • From his little red rocket ship: http://s56.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=0I5H6H2J6PZGH047SV2LP2FG4J