Protected AudioCDs

For this test procedure we used three audio discs with different audio copy protections. The ripping process on all protected Audio discs was carried out with Exact Audio Copy v0.9beta5. The sample protected Audio discs were:

• Sony's Key2Audio from "Celine Dion - New Day Has Come"
• Cactus Data Shield 200 from "Natalie Imbruglia - White Lilies Island"

The Cactus Data Shield 200, contains artificial errors that are not easily bypassed by the reader, while the Key2Audio contains a second session, causing problems for readers when trying 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 Sony drive recognized up to the 12th Audio track of CDS200 disc,

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

The test results are shown in the following table:

The Optorite DD1203 will rip both Key2Audio/CDS200 protected audio discs. Both discs were recognized and their contents were ripped at the maximum speed. However, the drive may not rip 100% accurately, since EAC reported timing problems.

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

This is a "special" CDS200 build, as it doesn't contain any artificial errors during the ripping process. Most problems occur when 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 could not rip the disc contents with EAC, because the drive would stop working during the process, and the whole system would freeze. We tried many times with different settings, but the results was the same. Nevertheless, the disc would playback properly with Windows Media Player.