[viator122]

Do you know what it is about copy protected CDs that makes them low-quality?

 

[19lexicon78]

it seems that my copy protected cd has empty data bits in the cd. perhaps that's why the sound is worse.


off topic: you know what's stupid. i do agree with mastergilles, i prefer aad>ddd. it has that analog sound.

 

[clemens]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 19lexicon78 i hate copy protected cd's because their quality is less than normal cd. i have one copy protected cd from john coltrane's blue train... it sucks. it's less detailled and less "sharp".

In that case, though, it might also be the remastering. Often remasters from old records which originally only came out on vinyl aren't done too well, in my experience.

 

[Bunnyears]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr.Radar Yes, that's right. But be sure to keep the "Shift" key pressed down until the light on your CD drive turns off.

this works for windows xp, but I'm not sure about other versions. I use itunes, keep the shift key depressed until the drive turns on the the information comes onto the screen. I've had no problems ripping. I did have major problems when I upgraded to a new laptop. The first time i synced with the ipod, everything came completely scrambled. That meant a couple of hours with itunes support on the phone, but it's okay now.

 

[Bunnyears]

Quote:

Originally Posted by clemens I had the impressions though that this year fewer new albums were copy protected than maybe one or two years ago. Am I wrong (I didn't buy too many new albums this year, mostly older ones, but those from 2004 that I have are all unprotected IIRC), or is the industry actually wisening up?

almost everything coming from sony is now copy protected. I haven't noticed and degradation of sound on my classical cds, so it just might be a problem with the individual recordings that you have.

 

[AdamWill]

If you return copy protected CDs, make sure you tell the store that's why you're returning it; the labels really, really, really are monitoring this stuff. Especially in America, where they anticipate the most dissatisfaction. Copy protection is much more common in Australia and Europe.

Quality - there are many, many ways of 'copy protecting' CDs; several are variations on the idea of introducing intentional 'errors' on the CD on the basis that the error correction on CD players will let them play the disc, but rippers - which attempt to make literally perfect copies - will hiccup. The various implementations are variously effective, but AFAIK none is completely un-rippable. Opinions differ on whether the 'errors' so introduced actually degrade audio quality (the people who push the schemes claim the 'errors' are designed in such a way that player error correction will give exactly the audio that was originally intended), I don't know if there's a definitive consensus one way or the other.

ripping - I *think* all protection schemes in the wild have been defeated to some extent, though the most recent CactusAudio scheme is apparently very hard. I have a copy of Lauryn Hill's MTV Unplugged 2.0 which comes on two CDs. The first one I can only rip in a certain version of EAC; the second one I can't rip in anything but cdparanoia under Linux. You have to be inventive sometimes. As someone has mentioned, the drive can make a difference, too - some schemes are defeated by oddball CD drives, like PCMCIA drives or old SCSI drives.