Well, just to explain some things: M4P is a DRM protected AAC file format. This means, the seller (Apple iTunes) wants to control where and how you play those files to protect them from being shared with other people. As far as I know there is no way to convert those files to DRM protected WMA files, that the fuze might play, so the only way to make them play is just by removing the protection, which is obviously against the will of Apple.
iTunes however must be able to play those files, which enables software to capture the sound from the soundcard. It also offers the possibility to create Audio CDs without any copy protection, so that one could rip the CD to unprotected files, or even create a software that pretends to burn an audio cd, but rips them directly to MP3 files. In my opinion the best way to accomplish removing DRM from the files is without decompressing, because every recompression involves additional data loss. The Fuze can’t play AACs, which is the compression that M4P and M4A use, but some other players can, and rockbox also can (which will enable to play those files on the Fuze, once rockbox gets fully ported to the Fuze; currently the development is at an amazing speed, so that the port could be finished in a few months).
So you could convert M4P just by removing the DRM, but without decompressing them, so you have small and handy files without any additional sound quality loss. This can be done with the freeware myFairTunes, which only supports specific older versions of iTunes. Look at the patchfile.xml that comes with myFairTunes, to see which versions are supported. This software creates M4A files, that can be converted with any software, that supports the AAC codec.
Message Edited by calv on 11-22-2008 12:03 AM
