Copy Protection

[GA Russell]

I submitted today my review of the new Joe Lovano album I'm All For You, which will go on sale May 4. I recommend it!

The promo copy I received is copy-protected. The fidelity is rather poor. The sound has a soft edge, far from sharp and clear.

Do you think the old-timey fidelity is related to the copy protection or was it more likely to be a deliberate decision to make it so?

This is my first copy-protected CD. If all CDs suffer in fidelity due to copy protection, a lot of people are going to be angry. But I don't want to start any false rumors, so that's why I'm asking.

Do you think the fidelity and the copy protection are related?

[Claude]

I bought the new Norah CD for a friend and will be able to check the sound. I've avoided copyprotected CDs until now (I ordered all the latest Blue Note CDs in the US), this is the first one I can test.

I tried to play the CD on my office PC with Windows 2000. As expected, the redbook tracks are invisible to the PC and only the compressed tracks can be played. But even that wasn't possible on the PC I'm now, as the CD needs to install a software player to play those tracks (hidden in a big file), and it requests administrator privileges to do that. :rolleyes:

[EKE BBB]

I couldn´t play my copy-protected "Search for the new land" CD on my office PC (Windows 2000 Pro). Same problem, Claude.

[Claude]

I took the Norah CD home and played on my Sony SACD player (SCD-XA777ES). The recording quality is not great (very studio-processed), but I didn't notice any anomaly related to errors on the disc. But in my Philips DVD/SACD player DVD963SA it produced clicking noises throughout every track and was unlistenable. I know people who only have this popular player for their CDs. They would have been screwed with this copyprotected disc.

I then put the CD into one of my PC drives, an older ACER CD-RW 12x burner, and installed the software player from the CD. The compressed files are 128kbit Windows Media files. It's the Macrovision CDS200 protection scheme.

Now comes the odd part: I started my CD grabbing software Easy CD-DA Extractor 6.5 (http://www.poikosoft.com) (not a piracy tool) and was able to see all the audio tracks on the CD, as well as a data track. The audio tracks could all be grabbed normally, and sounded fine. No clicking noises. So the copy protection was completely non functional on this CD drive. If my friend who I bought the CD has problem playing it I will be able to burn him a clean copy. This would be an illegal act :o

But on my Pioneer DVD drive, only the first track showed as an audio track within the grabber interface, the other as data tracks. When I grabbed the first track everything went normal until 99% of the process, then the drive locked completely up and I couldn't get the CD out. I had to reboot my PC.

So it seems that the copy protection works well on DVD drives, but can easily be defeated by some CD-R burner drives.

[mmilovan]

Copy protections are hardware dependent.

For instnace, you can get clean copy of CP discs with some Plextor CD drives. The other drives might not be able to see audio content of such protected CDs, but there is always a solution.:smokin:

And it is called Exact Audio Copy.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Supposedly, if you hold down the shift key while you insert the CD into your PC, it won't auto-start the playback software. This might help.

Later,
Kevin

[Claude]

I don't think the shift key will make a difference with the Cactus Datashield protection, because unlike that other system (whose name I have forgotten), it doesn't use an auto-installing software driver to prevent CD ripping.

Even if autostart is disabled, the audio tracks can't be read correctly in DVD drives and many CD drives. It's a hardware issue.

And BTW, Kevin, if the shift key trick works you've just violated the DMCA with your post :tongue2:

[Rocket #9]

Just FYI, the BN copy-controlled discs are appearing in Thailand, whereas I haven't seen them in Singapore. Oddly enough, Hong Kong seems to have both varieties.

Obviously, this all depends on where the discs are being sourced from, but it's interesting to see how these things spread.