Well, to the technical side of the copy-protection rant:

How do you rip the CD's - to be able to play the music you bought on your riocar...!?

So far I had two CDs, on which rebuilding the TOC manually did NOT do the trick.
They still produced ASPI errors (preventing Audiograbber from reading the CD at all) or even short pauses in the middle of tracks (after ripping with EAC's 'secure mode', and waiting an hour or so for just one CD)...

The only way I managed to grab the Audio was to use EAC and switch off all security modes. I read the CDs two times and compared the checksums, to be sure everything is ok.
That way I still had perfect rips...but how long is that going to work ??

on the other hand...I guess sharing our knowledge here will take us directly into jail...so in a year or two, prisons are filled with MUSIC LOVERS

Doesn't EAC have a "detect TOC manually" option? I know I had to use this on a CD I bought which came up with rather unbelievable TOC information. There were other copy protection schemes which corrupted the actual audio data on the CD, relying on the CD player's interpolation, but I didn't think those were widely used due to major incompatibilities.

Hugo

Well even if they do make all cd's copy protected (wich really would piss me off and every one else too) you could always copy a "copy protected cd " by playing it on a standard cd player that will play the disk and record it directly as wav files on the pc from the audio in, they cant stop you from doing that. Shure it would be a pain in the ass and it would take forever, but it would work. Also what about that new sony hard drive car stereo that rips cd's in the car will that thing play "copy protected cd's" , and all the other hundreds of mp3 players that are sold, it would make all of them usless. They have alot to consider, and I hope they wake up and just ditch the idea and make cd's cheaper so people would rather buy one than download it or copy it. Almost everything in my empeg came from cd's I own and the songs that I got off the net are out of print so I could not buy the anyway.

But I really think they are beginning to use the more f***ed-up technique on newer releases. Ok, maybe it's just a coincidence - but both cd's that I mentioned above are brand-new...(De-Phazz from Universal / Westbam from BMG) so it looks like they press cd's that depend on the player's interpolation capabilities.
Thus giving you different audio-quality on different players...basically you don't hear the original music, but your player's version of it - while it is trying to fill up the space the 'fake-errors' take on the CD.
At least this is my understanding of how this stuff works.
And how I see it, it sucks big time.

Hi! I had the same problem trying to rip one of MY copy-protected CD's for my RioCar. What you can try doing is looking for the specific name of the copy-protection and doing an internet search for it...if it's a major label, i'm sure somebody out there has posted a "workaround." Most schemes that I read about involved having a bogus outer track that is read by your CD-ROM, but ignored by a standard CD player. So a lot of workarounds involve taking a Sharpie and scribbling out the outer track -- this worked beautifully with the protected CD I was ripping along with EAC. Interestingly, the workaround only worked in my cheapo CD-ROM, not my Plextor, which I think has some sort of error correction mechanism. Anyway, good luck. It's possible to do.

Valsalva

Well, to the technical side of the copy-protection rant: How do you rip the CD's

There are several different types of CD-audio copy protection being used. Each method requires a different approach to the rip.

Please check out www.cdrfaq.org for details on each of the copy protection schemes and how they work.

I once successfully ripped a copy-protected audio CD, but I do not know if it was the same system as what was being discussed in the EMI thread.

I'll settle for optical line out on the cd player to the optical line in on my front-panel SB Audigy. What do I care if it takes real-time to rip, I'll just do one ever night before I go to bed or something. And as for track names, the holy Tag&Rename will get them for me without a second thought!

Well, that, or just buy folk CD's direct from the artists at the shows. Hell, they just burn them on CDRs, you KNOW there's no copy protex on that.

I'll settle for optical line out on the cd player to the optical line in on my front-panel SB Audigy.

If I recall correctly, some of the copy protection schemes are designed to defeat even that one. Don't remember for sure, check www.cdrfaq.org for more details.

you could always copy a "copy protected cd " by playing it on a standard cd player that will play the disk and record it directly as wav files on the pc from the audio in

You can record direct to MP3 by using a program called Audiotools at unrelated inventions.com, which will detect the track breaks. I'm sure it's not the only one.

...but that way you record a signal that passed through more or less decent D/A and A/D converters...
Maybe I'm quite freaky about this, but what I really like about ripping CDs is that I get an exact copy of the material.

I couldn't agree more, and it's a last resort in my mind, but if it allows you to listen to your music, even if it's inferior, whilst this mess gets sorted out, it's better than nothing.

If I recall correctly, some of the copy protection schemes are designed to defeat even that one.

It is said to work by inserting bogus frames into the S/PDIF stream, but NOT to the playback hardware. That said, it would seem possible to hijack the I2S, Sony, or whatever internal digital lines feeding the DAC of the CD player and then connecting to something such as the S/PDIF boards above. Maybe not, but to me it would make sense that if the CD player's DAC is not seeing the bogus frames, then another device fed by the same digital lines would also be oblivious to them as well.

Stu

what I really like about ripping CDs is that I get an exact copy of the material

Well, not really. Since there's no error correction in Audio CDs, it's easily possible to get minor errors that were on the CD. Data CDs have error correction algorithms built in to avoid this possibility. I don't know if anyone's ever done a study on how prolific such errors are.

Someone correct me if I'm totally wrong here.

Data CDs have error correction algorithms built in

Right, that's why only 700 MB of data can be put on a standard 80 min. CD, whereas approximately 800 MB of CDDA can be put on the same disc. The error correction data takes up that much space on data CDs.

Stu

> But what I really like about ripping CDs is that I get an exact copy of the material.

pupvogel: But, you only have an "exact" copy of the material until you encode it as MP3, at which point it gets crushed.

Yeah, it's a last resort to do an audio rip (ie: not a real data extraction). Hey, I had to "rip" my U2 - "The Fly" single from cassette because I really loved the B-sides on it. Then there's my classical music collection on vinyl... that'll take some patience.

Then there's my classical music collection on vinyl... that'll take some patience.

You can save some time by playing your 33s at 45, and using a bit of audio software on the computer to make it sound proper again.

Well, then you'd be capturing at 44.1kHz, then resampling, I guess. Doesn't sound like a great idea to me, especially since you'd only be saving about 25% of your recording time, plus you'd still have to flip the disc, which is much more troublesome than being 25% faster at such a slow speed, anyway.

I had some considerable correspondence on this, in another place, as to whether it would be possible to really save some time doing this with a 78 turntable and a double speed cassette deck. The only real problem was that you couldn't get a cartridge that would catch the higher frequencies.

With 1200 LP's and 800 cassettes, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

In practice, doing them at ordinary speed led to a wave of nostalgia: "I haven't heard this for years, it's really good or, what the hell did I ever see in this". Well worth the time spent and it's probably going to save much time in finding and correcting scratches and clicks in real time.

Well, not really. Since there's no error correction in Audio CDs, it's easily possible to get minor errors that were on the CD. Data CDs have error correction algorithms built in to avoid this possibility. I don't know if anyone's ever done a study on how prolific such errors are.

There's less error correction in audio CDs than there is in data CDs, but they still have the Reed-Solomon thing, and decent drives (EAC's "C2 Error Reporting" flag) will tell you on which samples Reed-Solomon failed. Good rippers will then reread that sector in the hope that different samples might be wrong next time, and thus that one pristine copy can be reconstructed from the two errored ones. Less-good drives will just say "there was an error somewhere on that sector" which makes the whole thing a bit more of a lottery.

Peter

Eh? There's no "error correction" on any type of CD, be it a ROM or an audio disk. Error correction is performed in the player when reading back the data, which is just encoded symbolic groupings. On audio players, there isn't much need for a huge amount of correction since dropping a few symbols will just mean the audio stream is interrupted. What the player does when this happens depends on the strategy: audio mute or just let it through ("click").

On ROMs, there is additional data in the form of data structures (directories, file data, etc.) and (for example) sector and record checksums to improve the drive's ability to correct errors read off the disk - this is probably what you mean.

Re-read the post and I see you are not saying this, as I have posted in response to the wrong poster! Sheesh what a plonker.

Well, some kind of error correction must be there - if there wasn't, why do Audiograbber (and all the other rippers I tried) have so much trouble reading tracks when there is a scratch on the CD ? Without any kind of error-correction they'd just go on reading at the same speed, because they wouldn't have a clue that something is wrong... (no?)

The way I try to make sure I have a perfect copy is to read tracks twice and to compare Audiograbber's checksums. If there is no readable data somewhere in the track, it should be quite impossible to get the same checksum twice on a bad track... it's my understanding that EAC is doing something like this in the secure modes. Either with that C2-information (whatever that is) or by re-reading the information.

Reed-Solomon? Really? If that were the case, then any errors should be correctable by the drive, not just reportable. I'll give you that I'm not an expert, but RS sounds incorrect to me on audio CDs.

The support for the eorror correction (that is, the additional data needed for the error correction to be used) is on the CD in many cases. I know that the data CD standard specifies some error correction algorithm to be used. I was under the impression that there was no EC on audio CDs, but I might be wrong about that.

Of course a plastic disk with some aluminum and paint cannot magically fix itself, but the drive's firmware can't pull corrected bits out of thin air, either.

It's on DAT audio tapes. I know that.

Stu

Reed-Solomon? Really?

Red Book audio CDs use CIRC, cross-indexed Reed-Solomon codes. 'Tis true.

If that were the case, then any errors should be correctable by the drive, not just reportable.

Not any errors, of course, just most small errors. C2 error reporting tells the ripper which samples even Reed-Solomon couldn't correct. In this case the drive usually interpolates the missing values, in the hope of not causing an audio click.

Peter

Wow. Didn't realize that the algorithm was that advanced on Audio CDs. Regardless, data CDs definitely have *more*.

Here's some relevant info I found:

Data Modulation & Error Correction, which describes the EC on all CDs.

CD-ROM Sectors, which describes the layout of CD-ROM sectors, including where the EC is, but doesn't describe the EC itself. Can't seem to find that anywhere.

Edit: this page claims that it's just another round of CIRC.

errr, one way I did some of those copy(un)protected CDs is to take a black marker and cover the track that is located to outer rim of a CD. If you want you can use DryWipe Markers as well. Then you can run some of the CD copy programs like Nero and grab the image which you'll record onto a new CD. Hey presto, CD you can rip into MP3

That only works on one of the copy protection schemes. The others are done differently.