Hi all,

I have a Protection controlled CD (Jethro Tull: A, there is also beautiful DVD Slipstream ...), and would like to rip and encode it for my car mp3 player. I do not know exactly how to rip this kind of CD´s correctly. When I used EAC (other grabbers usually reported ASPI failure, and did not even start ripping ...), grabbing the whole CD into wav took about 6 hours, but in Status window there were messages Read and Sync errors, and many suspicious events. I did not listen to wav file yet, but likely EAC is right there are some errors, I don´t know whether hearable or not.

Any experience/recommendations?

Cheers,

Crzmn

My experiences (I'm not familiar with CD hardware, so it's just average user experience):

- If you use C2 error info, you should try uncheck it (it seems copy protected CDs makes some mess in C2 reporting)
- You should try to rip single tracks (as wavs or mp3...) instead of entire wav - seems to speed up the process

I also experienced broken cuesheet when ripping whole copyprotect CD (mess in start times and lengths), so it helps to rip single wavs and compose my own cuesheet from it.

Well, it's really stupid to buy this kind of CD and have to trick with it this way
Hope it helps

Another option would be to try and rip in burst mode. Use test and copy in order to check for CRC matches (if you don't know what this means, just ask). Also, try reducing EACs read speed (EAC > Drive Options) when using burst mode as this can help ensure reading consistency.

Some optical drives just don't work with Copy Protected discs. This is especially true with DVD/CD burners.

I always rip individual songs, and do not use cuesheets. I will try burst mode, but the speed was automatically slowed down at 0.1-0.2 (that´s why it took 6 hours, but yet with mistakes ...).

Why not try listening to the wavs first? Or at least the suspicious positions.

Is it really a CD? Usually looking for the CD or "Compact Disc" logo is YOUR best protection against copy protection as any scheme that violates the CD standard isn't allowed.

That said, there are copy protected non-CD's in the same bins at the music store, so be careful out there!

Most likely, the speed was reduced because you were using secure mode and EAC was having a very hard time trying to correct errors. In situations like this EAC will go back and re-read to try and get a secure extraction.
This does not happen in burst mode, hence the need to use Test and Copy (and check for matching CRCs) as this is the only way to get an idea of whether your extraction was consistent (or, as secure as you're going to get). As a result the extraction speed will improve greatly, so much so that it can affect the reliability of the extraction, hence the need to manually slow down extraction.

just ripped my "Mauricio & Palodeagua" protected cd with dbpoweramp. no problems.

Well I'm trying to rip a protected CD too.
I had no success with 3 different drives.

To be sure that there are no errors I ripped them twice with different file names
with EAC in burst mode (safe mode was no better than being slower), than I invert pasted them in Cooledit. So I can detect at last visually the exact positions of read errors.

Using Cooledit's fill single click may be a solution as these errors are no longer than 4ms, but taking in consideration that they are present for almost every 10 seconds, this is an nearly impossible task for an entire CD.
Zoom in, read the time range for the error, switch waveforms, correct the error, switch back for the next error...

I don't want to use degiltch because it operates on the whole wave.
Any known application to apply degltch only on differing parts using two waves ?

I thought about such strategy of ripping copy protected CDs:

If your CD drive has 2 pin digital out at rear side, it can probably connected to SP/DIF in of the sound card (via coaxial cable?). Also, your CD drive must have forward/play buttons on front panel side. Knowing there are such contemprary CD drive units for about 10 EUR or so, it is not sooooo expensive to buy another unit. Cable should be no problem, I think...

Now, I have an idea of separating CD drive from IDE controller by unplugging wide 40 (or, alternatively, 80 pin cable) from unit or connection plugs located on the motherboard. I think by doing so your CD drive will probably exists as audio drive and there should be no copy protection foolishness for it.

While pressing forward button you can record 1:1 real-time track by track all those existing tracks in some sound recording program.

But it is so much faster than 6 hours and glitches free, no mistakes to edit in SF etc.

I would like to know what other people think about such recordings - are they 100 % accurate...

A friend of mine recently wanted me to copy a protected CD. It was Killswitch Engage - The End Of Heartache. Not my personal taste in music. I didn't know it wsa copy protected until my plextor CDRW went nuts halfway through it. I thought the disc broke my drive, I had to reflash the firmware to get it to work again. I noticed this "CD" was missing the audio logo. I tried it in my Lite-On SOHR-5238S drive and it didn't even notice. No errors, no slow downs. Using secure mode, no C2, caching disabled, Test & Copy. Came out perfectly. So some drives just don't like copy protected discs while others don't even notice.

I've tried setup described in my message and it works for me very well - but I don't know if it brings some coloration to the sound...

Feurio! is a good option. It has already defeated a couple of protections for me. You should try it if EAC is a no-go.
Good luck.

And from now on boycott copy protected audio CDs

Kwanbis,

you were right, dbpoweramp did not have any problems with ripping, and was very fast. It is a pity that it doesn´t seem to be able to use external Lame encoder, just internal dll, but it is robust and simple ripper, and in some cases useful. I only will check the quality of the tracks, if there are no pops/clicks, but at the first glance, wavs looked fine.

Thanks all involved in this topic for their interest and help.

Rgds,

Crzmn