[JaZZ]

I've bought Coldplay's «X&Y» as birthday present for a friend. Before giving it to her, I ripped it and burned a CD from it, to have the opportunity to decide if I must have this album myself. EAC worked about five hours on the extraction, with hundreds of error corrections, with read error and sync error in every single of the 13 tracks. Correspondingly «track quality» was as low as 78% in the worst case -- a value I've never encountered before. Surprisingly the playback quality didn't seem to be corrupted at all, without serious comparison though, since meanwhile I've given the original CD to my friend.

Now the question: Is the burned copy equivalent to the original CD when played on my UDP-1, or are the errors indicated and fixed by EAC audible in some way or at least theoretically a worse precondition than the original CD? Or does the player have to deal with the same arbitrarily introduced corruptions, with the sole difference that its own error correction has to handle them instead of EAC? Does the digital player have better preconditions with the original CD since copy protection is addressed towards computer drives, or is it better to let EAC do the correction job? I'm really not sure, because there was a case of a CD that could be played without a problem on the digital player, but EAC couldn't rip it without two or three audible errors. On the other hand there was a copy-protected CD that showed fine crackle, while the copy was perfect.

I'm also unsure if I shall buy the original CD a second time (I really like it!), on the other hand I'm toying with the idea to consequently boycott copy-protection-corrupted CDs and only pay for CDs corresponding to true redbook standard and allowing personal digital copies.

 

[Anders]

I think it is a good principle to copy copy-protected CDs and avoid copying unprotected ones.

There is a copy-protections scheme that consciously introduces errors in the data on the disc and these errors are then corrected by the error corrections system. The error is printed on the disc but the CD-player "thinks" that it is a read error and corrects it. This could create more jitter and have a negative effect on sound quality because the error correction mechanism causes more jitter. The principle behind the copy protection is that data drives have a different error-correction system and cannot read these discs.

I don't know what EAC does in these cases, the errors may have been corrected and then the copy-protection is removed in principle, but there may be more layers of copy protection. Another way to copy these discs is to make a bit perfect copy, which most copying programs cannot do.

 

[NeilPeart]

I ripped the new Coldplay X&Y CD without any difficulties whatsoever. All the tracks were successfully extracted with 100% quality and the extraction even approached 24X towards the end of the disc (secure mode w/C2 retrieval and no audio data caching – these are features inherent to my drive). I'm a firm believer in proper optical drives for optimal extraction. While some maintain that Lite-on and others are sufficient and quick, I've used the same Plextor UltraPlex 40Max (the UltraSCSI version, not the inferior UltraWide version that some assume is better simply due to the "faster" interface) for 5 years. Even other Plextors like the Plextor Premium and other mighty drives like the Yamaha CRW-F1 and Ricoh 8/20 cannot compare to the SCSI UltraPlex 40Max (PX-40TSi) - I know this because I've owned over 15 different optical drives and the only one that approaches the UltraPlex 40Max in terms of accuracy and speed is the Asus CD-S520/A5, but it's not as accurate nor as speedy with extraction (it does come closer than any other drive, however and it's much cheaper, much more readily available and uses the much more prevalent IDE interface).

 

[ilovesocks]

^^^^^^^^
yeah, what he said.

I ripped X&Y without any problem as well.
EDIT: Come to think of it, I've never had any problem ripping any CD, protected or not. Now, when making a direct copy using a program such as Roxio's copier-thing, which came with my computer, a lot of problems come up. It only works with maybe half of the CDs I've tried, and they were all old. But I've been able to rip to my heart's delight.

 

[KenW]

Triple play here as I had zero problems with the new Coldplay CD either. EAC worked fine.

 

[JaZZ]

Neil... (and all the others)

...I almost can't believe we're talking about the same CD. I've never had such extreme problems before with any copy-protected CD, and I tried both the LG GDR 8161B as well as the Plextor PX-716A -- the latter with the same difficulties, but even much slower. Maybe there are American and European versions around?

Anyway, I'd like to get an answer to my questions regarding which is better: using the ripped/burned (hence EAC-corrected and CP-free) CD-R or the original CD for playback.

 

[GirgleMirt]

I wonder how many do the following:

1) Buy old crappy portable cdplayer that doesn't read copy protected cd's very well
2) buy copy protected cd
3) copy cd
4) bring back cd for refund since it doesn't work because of cd protection
5) Rinse and repeat


Besides, I imagine someone buying the cd to play it on his Ipod will think twice about buying a cd next time.. As it would probably be much easier to just download it instead of going around the cd protection of the cd which circumvents fair use.

 

[NeilPeart]

I recommend the Asus S520A/5 if you can find it in Switzerland - it's almost as accurate/quick as the UltraPlex 40Max when extracting. It's also one of the quietest optical drives (it is an improvement over the UltraPlex in this regard) and it's less than $20 here (a huge advantage over the UltraPlex); the S520A/5 is my de facto ripping drive now that the Plextor is discontinued (and the UltraSCSI interface is all but absent from most machines). When I extract the files with the UltraPlex 40Max or S520/A5 (using the correct offsets and other settings) I cannot discern any difference when I burn with Nero's DAO to Taiyo Yuden media with my Plextor Premium CD burner.

 

[acs236]

Is it possible that the US and Euro versions are different (use different protection schemes)?

 

[JaZZ]

...and BTW, I'm downright mad about getting accused to not even manage proper ripping instead.

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by acs236 Is it possible that the US and Euro versions are different (use different protection schemes)?

Thanks for taking this into consideration! (Finally at least one person...)

 

[NeilPeart]

I never said you were improperly ripping - I only commented that your optical drive might not be the most suitable for quality extraction. Perhaps European releases do have special copy protection mandated by the EU, and such restrictions affect the extraction regardless of software/hardware. I never meant to imply anything Jazz - I'm simply offering suggestions for improved extraction based on my experience.

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NeilPeart I recommend the Asus S520A/5 if you can find it in Switzerland - it's almost as accurate/quick as the UltraPlex 40Max when extracting. It's also one of the quietest optical drives (it is an improvement over the UltraPlex in this regard) and it's less than $20 here (a huge advantage over the UltraPlex); the S520A/5 is my de facto ripping drive now that the Plextor is discontinued (and the UltraSCSI interface is all but absent from most machines). When I extract the files with the UltraPlex 40Max or S520/A5 (using the correct offsets and other settings) I cannot discern any difference when I burn with Nero's DAO to Taiyo Yuden media with my Plextor Premium CD burner.

Thanks, but... no, I'm not gonna buy a new CD-ROM drive just for one CD!

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NeilPeart I never said you were improperly ripping - I only commented that your optical drive might not be the most suitable for quality extraction. Perhaps European releases do have special copy protection mandated by the EU, and such restrictions affect the extraction regardless of software/hardware. I never meant to imply anything Jazz - I'm simply offering suggestions for improved extraction based on my experience.

Neil...

...I didn't really assume that you've meant it like this -- my interpretation was more or less a joke.

 

[JaZZ]

But yeah, now my original question has got lost. Anybody?