For this test procedure we used three audio discs with different audio copy protections. The ripping process performed for all protected Audio discs was performed with Exact Audio Copy v0.9 beta 5.

The tested protected Audio discs were:

• Sony's Key2Audio from "Celine Dion - New Day Has Come"
• Cactus Data Shield 200 from "Natalie Imbruglia - White Lilies Island"
• Cactus Data Shield 200.0.4 - 3.0 build 16a "Aiko Katsukino - The Love Letter"

The Cactus Data Shield 200 contains artificial errors that are not easy to bypass with the reader, while the Key2Audio contains a second session, causing problems on readers when they try to read the Table Of Contents (TOC).

The tested tasks are:

• Recognition of the inserted disc (Yes/No)
• Ripping all wavs (with EAC's Burst Mode) to the hard disk with copy&compare function.
• Listening to the produced wavs for any click/skips.

The ASUS drive recognized up to the 12th Audio track of the CDS200 disc,

and with the "Retrieve Native TOC" option removed, the 13th Data track.

The test results are shown in the following table:

ASUS CRW-5232A-T	Key2Audio	CDS200
	Ripping process completed, EAC reports no problems, Read&Test CRC comparison successful for all tracks	Ripping process completed, EAC reports no problems, Read&Test CRC comparison successful for all tracks

The ASUS CRW-5232A-T will rip both Key2Audio and CDS200 protected audio discs. Both discs were recognized and their contents were ripped at the maximum speed. No timing problems were noticed with both test discs.

• Cactus Data Shield 200.0.4 - 3.0 build 16a (Aiko Katsukino - The Love Letter)

This is a "special" CDS200 build, since it doesn't contain any artificial errors during the ripping process. Most problems occur then trying to write the ripped wav files, since the produced CD-R disc contains C2 and CU errors! This "problem" is rumored to be connected with specific chipset weaknesses..

We ripped the disc contents with EAC and burned the produced wav with the latest Nero version as AudioCD+CD-Text. The burned media was checked for C1/C2 errors with PlexTools software using Plextor PX-716A (firmware v1.08).

ASUS CRW-5232A-T	CDS 200.0.4 - 3.0 build 16a
	Reading and writing performed without any errors

• C1C2 Error rate from PleXWriter PX-712A (8X CLV reading speed)

• BETA/Jitter Error rate from PleXWriter PX-716A

The C1/C2 error graphs indicate that the drive manage to produce a 100% error free disc.

Lets try to extract all wav files with the Plextor PX-716A and PlexTool DAE Error Correction 5th Level enabled:

No errors were reported after extracting all files.