It's been a while since I've visited the board. Mainly because contrary to popular belief, I do have a life. It's also been a while since I've made a guide. Here's one for you guys.
First of all, we're not really going to remove the DRM from your iTunes (or any other type of DRMed music) collection, we're just going to record them. Note that while this is extremely easy and foolproof, it's not for the lazy. There are other programs out there, like Tunebite, but none come close to the power you will get with Audacity. Second of all, depending on how big your iTunes library is, will depend on how long it will take to completely destroying the DRMed files. Third of all, this program can record anything that can be heard through the speakers. So, if for example you would want to do some illegal activity such as heading over to imeem or YouTube, you'd better have the original song in a CD or on your computer because depending on where you live, it could be illegal. And I will hear of no such illegal activity.
Let's get started. After you have chosen which song or songs you want to de-DRM, get Audacity and a program that burns CDs. DeepBurner is a good free tool.
Now open up iTunes or whatever media player that will play the selected DRM file, and open up Audacity. Change the setting next to the microphone volume to "Stereo Mix" and the microphone volume to "Volume Input: 0.1" as shown:
Now that we have that out of the way, simply hit the large red dot. When you move your mouse over it, it should say "Record" in the bottom left-hand corner. Now let the song play. When the song is over, go back to Audacity and press the large yellow square. There might be solid thin lines at the beginning and end, that's normal. Just delete them by left-clicking and dragging the line to the end or beginning. It'll get easier the more you do it.
Then save it as a WAV (recommended), Ogg, or MP3. Proceed to burn as much as can fit on a CD-R/W to save computer space.
Then, once you get your compilation complete, you're done. No more DRM ever to return to your compilation. And you did it all within legal boundaries.
When I replay after I record from Yahoo!Music, the audio becomes distorted. I know it worked before (last year, no distortion). I tried a couple of times recently and seems they (yahoo!music and radio station MusicOnDemand) have put in some kind of schema that sound card will not record with distorted audio. It seems distortion comes from low freq area. I've searched for a few times and did not see anywhere has this problem posted. Thought you might be able understand the problem after came across your post. When you get the chance, do you mind try it out. Examples:
Nelly Furtado: Say It Right
Rihanna: Umbrella