In reply to:

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and if I could get IASCA to (a) watermark their files and (b) allow empeg to display the watermarks, then maybe, just maybe...

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My thoughts on this are: don't watermark. Leaving aside the issue of audibility, there's also the question of what the absence of a watermark means. It might very well be possible to obliterate a watermark by amplifying the audio outside the range of the microphone attempting to read the watermark, or changing the equalisation in a way which is still legitimate for IASCA competition.

I think MD5 or some other message digest 'signature' generation procedure should be used. How to verify that the track that you play is the same track that IASCA supply is the main question. My answer is: display the checksum immediately after playing the track, and the checksums don't get released. If the IASCA judge wanted to be satisfied they can give you a track off a CD you haven't seen and ask you to verify the signature of it. Only if you could duplicate the signature that the IASCA generated off the same song - a signature which you didn't know beforehand - would it prove that your signature generation procedure is not rigged.

What do you think of this solution? And, more importantly, what do people think IASCA would think?

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