protected oma to mp3

I have a Sony HI MD minidisk recorder mzm-200 and I have previously, over 1.5 yrs ago, uploaded some of my personal field recordings and backed them up to hard drive. (cultural preservation for Tibet)
Some of these recordings are still in the oma format, having been uploaded with Sonic Stage v. 4.3 and saved to my back-up hard drive several months ago.
(OS Vista Ultimate 64 bit sp2.)
My computer crashed recently and I was unable to back up my Sonic Stage library. After this I tried to re-import the precious field recordings I made myself in Tibet after a reformat and fresh install of windows vista sp2 and sonic stage. (The files had been copied to another drive for back up, not backed up through the program.) Apprarantly Sonic Stage v.4.3 attached DRM rights to my self made recordings, recorded by me with a mic!

Even though these files were originally uploaded/transfered from my MZM_200 into Sonic Stage and saved onto my hard drive, now Sonic Stage will neither import back to its program my previously uploaded oma files saved onto my external hard drive

When i try to re-import the old ones previously transfered, then I cannot open the recordings because I get an error message about a copyright problem from Sonic stage program saying I don't have the rights. This error message makes me completely unable to use my precious field recordings.

I desparately need a way to remove the DRM wrapper imposed on my oma sound files and be able to convert them to MP3?

Please help I am desparate.

About OMA files

File extension OMA is used to identify audio files created through Sony OpenMG Music Format. OMA files are encrypted and conform to the Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding (ATRAC) format, a proprietary audio compression designed and used by Sony. OMA extension is similar to OMG extension which was also developed by the same manufacturer. Files using this extension can be opened on operating system platforms including Windows, Mac, and Linux.

OMA files can be protected through Digital rights management (DRM) by Sony (OMA files can be DRM-free). DRM provides limitation to the use of the product by devices with no copyright protection imposed.

Native Sony applications and devices can open and process OMA files. This includes the SonicStage whose later version was designed to remove the DRM protection on some files. However, license copies are excluded for such process preserving their copyrights.

Since Sony has an interest in protecting the copyright on the music that it sells, the design of SonicStage is closely tied to a requirement that the program guard against copyright infractions. Sony music players have a write-only design. Somewhat similar to an Apple iPod , it is not generally possible to move tracks from the music player to the PC hard drive, and thereby from one music player to another. Some earlier models (such as some of the Net-MD line) could not even transfer voice recordings made by the user (with the player's microphone input) to their PC.

Copy restriction is provided not by any one feature, but by a group of design features and software limitations. The main features being:

The software strictly enforces Digital Rights Management through its use of OpenMG . Sonic Stage ties the DRM license of each track to the hardware of the computer from which it has been transferred. SonicStage will not allow transfer of tracks from the player to another computer. It is possible, however, to backup "My Library" and import it into another installation of Sonic Stage on a different computer.

Music files have to be "wrapped" by Sony software in order to be played on a Sony music player. Sony has not introduced drag and drop support for music files. Although it is possible to load files directly onto a Sony player without using SonicStage, it is not possible to play music files loaded this way. Neither is it possible in most cases to transfer music files back to a PC. (all versions prior to 3.4)
The program does not generally convert OMG/OMA files to MP3 or WAV .

The program only encrypts in omg format, not mp3. The program encrypts any audio files imported into it in omg format, including audio files that are not legally downloaded, or illegally copied music.
The program lacks a true import album feature for WAV and MP3 files. The program imports tracks as is. Imported files cannot be grouped into an album with artist, title and tracknumber fields assigned at the time of import. This has to be done before or after import.

When WAV tracks are imported, they remain linked to their wav source file and the track can only be edited for as long as the WAV source file remains on the computer. This makes it difficult to use

Sonic Stage to edit CDs that have been ripped with another program.
Because of these security features there are limitations when using the program in Windows XP. Only users with administrator accounts can transfer tracks from SonicStage to Sony's devices.

As of version 3.4, an intermediate update mostly for Hi-MD users, some of the above restrictions have been relaxed. SonicStage 3.4 allows tracks recorded via digital/analogue inputs on Hi-MD devices to be transferred back in WAV format. Also, files in Sony's proprietary ATRAC format can now be converted to WAV.

3.4 is also the first update to the program to come out after Sony appointed Tim Schaaff , former Apple Computer executive, as senior vice president of software development.

Problems with DRM protected OMA files

I almost got there... and gave up. Luckily I had saved almost everything in WAV since the last export to DRM-free .oma files.

What I think you have to do, among other things, is to duplicate the registry (as it pertains to Sonic Stage) and restore the DRM keys if they are there.

The second key step I am sure you have to do is to set yourself back in time to the exact moment (give or take a few hours) when the keys were last valid. There seemed to be some sort of time element embedded into the keys. If you haven't touched any of the file in the sonic stage folder, this may not be a huge problem.

The third key step which was also beyond me, is that you have to duplicate your user ID somehow on Windows (eek!). There are utilities out there which map user SID's (you know 500-1-blah blah) to human readable ids. Then you have to be able to log on to that user under Windows.

I am pretty sure they used all three elements (time, user id and keys) in the scheme.

If one uses a Sony RH1/M200 to record live via mic in PCM...they can then convert to WAV using Sonic Stage with none of the worries. The same could be said of anything recorded on these units in real time. In other words, once you learn the tricks, it is not so bad. Even if you never convert recorded (uploaded) files, you can use the file conversion tool, say once a month or so, and you will have DRM free OMA files for everything.

All I have are the original OMA files, and they won't even play on my new PC because they are not recognized as belonging to me. If you read the web, you will see that if you can't play them, then you are stuck. There are many misconceptions about how to get around this, and many folks have spent many hours with no results. Yes, I know if I *could* play them then I could use an analog connection to capture the sound on another device. You would lose some quality of course, but at least you would have the files. But making an analog copy is not even possible if you can't play the material.

If you can play back your .oma files with Sonic Stage you can convert them to .wav from Sonic Stage itself, with Save in .WAV Format under Tools. For 2.x versions of SonicStage, Sony has .Wav Converter (free) to do the same thing.

linux-minidisc - is a project dedicated to collecting as much information as possible regarding NetMD/HiMD hardware in order to get it to work on Linux and BSD.

The original software supplied by Sony supports Windows and, for some MiniDisc models, Mac OS X only. The Windows software Sonic Stage is bloated, sluggish and annoys its users with lots of DRM restrictions. We want to create a simple transfer software for HiMD and NetMD walkman which will run under our preferred operating systems and is free of any of the annoying "features" of the original software.

Unlike iPods or other well-known portable MP3 players, Sony MD devices employ a highly secured and encrypted storage and transfer system of the audio data, which makes an understanding and implementation of software for these Sony models much more difficult. However, thanks to the stubbornness of some guys on the net, there has already been some progress in understanding the Sony software and thus there might soon be free transfer software for at least the HiMD models.


Status

What works yet:

• upload of MP3s from any HiMD-device
• upload of PCMs with a known constant encryption key from any HiMD-device (such PCMs are created by the MZ-RH1/M100/M200 for example)

What has been tested/known to work, but lacks implementation:

• formatting of HiMDs (use himdformat under Linux, requires SCSI-library)
• renaming/moving/deleting of tracks on HiMD
• upload of ATRAC-1(SP) tracks via NetMD with the MZ-RH1

What does not work yet:

• upload of encrypted audio with unknown key (ATRAC/PCM) from HiMD: we do not fully understand encryption yet
• download of PCM/ATRAC3/ATRAC3+ (with either encryption type) since we do not know yet, how the MAC is calculated
• download of MP3s
• support for NetMD-download since we do not know how data has to be encrypted for transfer

Thank you for your information, which I read. However I didn't see a solution yet. If you have a way for me to recover my files and remove the drm from falsely imposed drm copyright protection by Sonic stage, then kindly advise in a simple and clear manner. I would be so grateful.
Best wishes,

Originally Posted by khandro

Thank you for your information, which I read. However I didn't see a solution yet. If you have a way for me to recover my files and remove the drm from falsely imposed drm copyright protection by Sonic stage, then kindly advise in a simple and clear manner. I would be so grateful.
Best wishes,

linux-minidisc seems to be the only project that might help... but only in the future.

Originally Posted by khandro

Thank you for your information, which I read. However I didn't see a solution yet. If you have a way for me to recover my files and remove the drm from falsely imposed drm copyright protection by Sonic stage, then kindly advise in a simple and clear manner. I would be so grateful.
Best wishes,

linux-minidisc seems to be the only project that might help... but only in the future.