Capturing streaming audio vs Recording streaming audio: Replay Music vs Media Catcher

[any ANONYMOUS forum user]

Hi eveyone, I read on this forum that the sound quality is better if you capture streaming audio rather than to directly record it from your sound card. I currentlly use Replay Music to record music from a subscriber site and wondered if I would be better off buying Replay Media Catcher to capture the audio streams? I tried the trial version and was impressed with how it tagged streams and downloaded them so quickly as wma files. However these files were DRM protected and so I couldn't burn them to CD.

If I were to record these files with Replay Music when playing them on Real Player for instance would the sound qualilty be better than if I simply directly recorded the streaming audio in the first place. If not then I will probably just stick with Replay Music
Many thanks
Sean

When you capture streaming audio, you get better quality (unless you use lossless compression that gives much larger files). Recording depends on the quality of your sound card, on the formats that are used for streaming audio and your recorded files, on the recording settings. Besides everything mentioned above it depends on you whether you can notice the difference between recording and capturing.

It is always better to test trial versions to make a better choice. You did it and most probably you already know what is better for you.

As for DRM-protected WMA files, I don't think that Replay Media Catcher can capture them. You might wanna try other audio converters or CD burners. And just right click on such a WMA file and see whether the appeared window has the DRM tab or not.