Having recently installed a Columbus I want to transfer my music library onto the hard drive. However, it seems that there is a problem in that a lot of the music in my iTunes library appears to be in non-MP3 format (AAC, etc) plus some of it is copy protected.

Can anyone recommend a way of converting (en mass) my iTunes library into unprotected MP3 that I can then load onto my Columbus? All the music is either purchased from iTunes or from my CD collection so I'm not trying to hack music I haven't paid for.

There do seem to be a ton of ulities out there for doing this kind of thing, but given the amount of spyware floating around these days, it's hard to know which ones are genuine and which aren't...so a personal recommendation would be very helpful indeed.

Thanks

I have been using this tool

Its excellent

http://www.maniactools.com/soft/m4a-to-mp3-converter/?version=6.1

For your uploaded CDs you can convert directly in iTunes. Can do the same for your purchased music I would assume, but it would likely remain protected. Not sure if there's an easy way around this, but a long way I use (cuz I don't buy much from iTunes) is to burn the music to CD and then reupload it and the protection will be removed.

keep in mind that converting from one lossy compressed format to another will result in poorer sound quality because during the decompress, recompress of the file more data is lost. For the best sound quality, if these are from original CD's then use Itunes to re-rip in MP3 format directly as the sound quality will be much improved.

If the content is protected, the best solution is to create a CD directly from itunes.