I'm ripping a copy protected CD with EAC 0.99 using test/copy. It consists of 11 tracks and a data track.

First, I attempted to rip it using burst and got 3 tracks correct. Then I switched to Accurate Stream+Caching and got track 1-7 correct, but I'm unable to get a perfect rip of the 3 last tracks at all. I tried every possible combination and low drive speed to get matching CRC's on these tracks.

Eigher I get different CRCs, or I get a Read Error.

ClonyXXL reports it to be protected by Cactus 200.5.1.91- 5.10.090 with TOC Illegal.

I'm ripping with a LiteOn LH-20A1S, and usually don't have too much problems ripping these "infected" discs. The CD itself seem fine. Theres only very light minor scratches visible under a lamp, and it doesn't seem to apply to the outer tracks - Discs in this condition have never posed a problem to me.

Does anyone have any idea how I can get a perfect rip of this disc?

Since CDS200 discs feature artificial read errors, it is highly unlikely that you will get an accuraterip-confirmed copy off your disc since the source material itself isn't particular accurate (and thus, the AR info could very well be unreliable itself).

In terms of error numbers or damage level, not all CDS200 versions are equally rigid which might explain why you got some discs ripped without hassle and why you are experiencing trouble with this particular disc.

In the past during the high times of CDS in 2002/2003, I ripped some 50+ CDS200 discs with a Plextor PX-40 SCSI CD-ROM (which seemed to interpolate reliably between the disc errors and thus enabled matching - but not necessarily accurate - results) without major problems. My Plexwriter Premium doesn't seem to care about CDS200 either. Apart from that, any other drive I tried failed at some point.

That's not true. If just ONE submitted AR value matches the rip, then it's indeed accurate!

I actually managed to rip the last track twice in dBpoweramp accurately. I think it's weird if they applied "artificial" read errors on just two tracks.

Not in this case.
Maybe you just used a drive with the same error correction strategy as the one who submitted the AccurateRip result. But if a CDS200 error affects two samples in a row, both your drives will produce the same click (Accurately ripped), while a hifi CD player doesn't click.

If there is an extra block in just one sector (CDS200 uses sectors of 99 blocks instead of 98 in order to confuse burst mode players), your drives can both miss it while a hifi player can play it. Again, accurately ripped, but 6 samples removed before CIRC results in a nice, consistent from drive to drive, glitch.

Have you considered a refund? Maybe you can buy a different pressing of that album which is not damaged.

Luckily I didn't pay full price for it. It was a refurbished off eBay.

Edit: Anyway, how many people have recieved a non-copycontrolled pressing of an album when they complained?

I actually think I got it right this time. My laptop LG drive seemed to rip the tracks that my LiteOn couldn't rip... Likewise the LG couldn't handle some of the tracks my LiteOn had no problem with. Weird thing.

This is why I have two different USB drives sitting on top of each other... if one encounters problems with a copy-controlled disc, invariably the other can read it.

Okay THIS copyright madness is driving me NUTS!!!!

I've come across 4-5 discs with this protection and surely all these discs are ripped with consistent errors. That is each of my drive can rip these with matching CRC's, but on any other drive the CRC are different. It's driving me crazy that I can't know for sure, what i've ripped is actually the way it was meant on the disc.

Are there really NO way I can get around this, or should I just stick with a copy and believe that it's OK?

try the new dBpoweramp R13 and set ripping method to defective by design. This is exactly what the mode is designed to deal with, intentionally broken CDs.

Still not getting inconsistent results across my drives. I read that most drives should handle CDS200 with a firmware upgrade, however the firmware updater from Liteon is broken, so I'm unable to see if that would do the trick right now.

With such CDs you are not going to get AccurateRip verification, different drives will return different data when it encounters an unrecoverable error (well it is possible if someone with the same drive ripped the CD and posted to AR, but that realy narrows your chances).

I'll recall them "lossy-cd's" from now on

What's the best way to rip these? Using the drive's errorcorrection or should I use the R13 method of interpolating?

Many drives will self interpolate, for those that do not (ie you can hear clicking) R13 can interpolate (but needs c2 support to identify the errors).

Is the interpolation in drives and dBpoweramp linear or something else? How can I determine if my drives interpolate? I noticed that my Sony CRX0811 gives quite good results on scratched CDs, but as it slows down very much on those CDs I thought it could be that it reads the "real" data without interpolating.

If the drive does not interpolate you will hear clicks.

Hm yes, if there are errors. But I’m not sure if there are errors or if the drive reads the data correctly. I guess I have to rely on C2 data? The point is, EAC says not all drives provide C2 data, so I ran the C2 test in EAC with a scratched CD. One of my drives reported C2 errors (a Liteon LTD-122), but the other one (Sony CRX0811) didn’t. So I don’t know if the Sony is still able to read the disc without errors (I don’t hear clicks) or if it interpolates and doesn’t report the errors.

You may want to read up on CDS200.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cactus_Data_Shield

Proper playback (and extraction) relies on the drive's ability to interpolate through deliberate erroneous data.

Based on what Spoon is saying, if the drive does not interpolate but provides C2 pointers, dBpoweramp will be able to do the interpolation for you.

Theoretically, if dBpoweramp is interpolating the errors, shouldn't two different drives provide the same results, as the same interpolation algorithm is used?