Decrypting CDs

[bradcal]

Not sure if it's the right forum for it, but here goes.

What is the difference between the copyright protection employed on dvds as opposed to cds (music)?

The reason I ask is because I have managed to rip a particular cd (legally owned) to my hard drive, but when it comes to burning I have had no success.

Would it be easy to adapt DVD Decrypter for instance, to also decrypt cds?

Look forward to any insights.

[Doom9]

I don't know the exact techical details (or better, I don't recall them.. I know I've read through it before) but basically copy protected audio CDs are no audio CDs to begin with. They are pieces of plastic that look like audio CDs, often illegally use the audio CD logo, and which can be read by some standard red book audio CD player or devices compatible with the standard. Copy protection can use different mechanisms like invalid TOC (table of content), making PCs and PC drives (PC CD/DVD-ROMs are often also used in cheap DVD players and car audio players) choke on those discs. There are a few other mechanism and you can find details on them on a site like this: http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_protections.shtml

Copying protected CDs is as far as I know actually more complex than copying video DVDs. With DVDs we have a common standard and clearly defined ways on how a disc can be read (DVD Decrypter by default does the same as any software DVD player and only resorts to brute force if required). With CDs, you rely on the drive to ignore certain illegal features of the disc, and you have to read the CD on the lowest possible level. There are not many drives that can handle any type of audio CD protection, so I suppose one of the reason why lighning_uk hasn't added audio CD ripping is that it would result in hundreds of thousands of bogus error reports just because the drive can't actually handle the type of disc you're trying to rip.

So the answer to your second question, from a guy who's never coded a DVD decrambling tool or DVD player, is that it wouldn't be so easy. And there are actually specialized tools for the task. For instance, the on-the-fly DVD decryption driver AnyDVD claims to also handle audio CDs.

Last but not least, it surprises me that you can rip the thing but not burn it.. I thought it was supposed to be the other way round. How do you rip and how do you burn and where do the errors ocurr (and what errors exactly?) You should rip the content to a bunch of WAV files that you can burn using any of the most commonly used CD/DVD burning tools.. as wav files there should be no problem whatsoever to burn them as any form of copy protection has already been stripped away (keep in mind that unlike DVDs, CDs are not encrypted, they rely on pervertions of the specs to prevent certain devices from playing them).

[bradcal]

Thanks for the input.

Like you, I was surprised that I can rip it, but not burn it.

I have ripped it to my hard drive using windows media player 9, a pretty decent program in its most recent guise if you ask me.

Taking on board what you said about converting the files to wav, I open DBpower converter, which then asks me to select the files to be converted. All good so far.

When I get to the folder I created for this particular disc (John Mayer - Room For Squares), these files are nowhere to be seen!

Any idea?

Cheers

[sysKin]

Originally posted by bradcal
When I get to the folder I created for this particular disc (John Mayer - Room For Squares), these files are nowhere to be seen! Oh that has nothing to do with protection ;) If you can rip to a harddrive than the file is yours, you can burn it.

The error you're making is that you use WMP9 to rip the files into wma format, and later you use a burning program that doesn't support wma. Simple as that.

For full audio quality, don't use any compressed format like wma or mp3. Many cd burning programs can rip audio tracks for you (nero->extras->save tracks, easy cd-da creator-> something) into uncompressed wav files. Do that, and you'll be ok ;)

Radek

[Tuesday]

If you're looking to rip CDs the best proggy i've found is CDex.

http://www.cdex.n3.net/

It can normalize the volume levels (if you want), get the song title/artist info via CDDB and even produces 100% DRM free good old .mp3 files :) or plain .wav ready to be burnt (although there are plugins which enable it to produce many other formats too)

hope u find it useful

[Mug Funky]

CDex isn't bad, but EAC is best for "difficult" CDs. these being heavily scratched or copy protected (which amounts to the same thing - it's literally like buying a CD with scratches alredy on it, which of course no sane customer would do if they were aware).

but bottom line with read protected (that's right, they're not copy protected, they are read protected) CDs is to simply not buy the horrid things. ask the store for a real CD, and if they refuse write to the record company and ask for one.

[bradcal]

Thanks again for all the help.

The problem in regards to my burning program not recognising the files is that I'm not actually trying to burn them at this stage, I'm only trying to convert them to .wav using DBPoweramp Converter.

After opening DB and being asked to select the files to be converted, these files are not visible, but at the same time, other .wma files are visible. This suggests to me that it has nothing to do with being unable to recognise the file-type. (Hope I'm making sense here?!)

In the meantime, thanks for the program recommendations, I'll have a crack at ripping with those to see if that sorts out the problem.

One last bit to add...the cd itself doesn't have any visible sign of being copy protected (i.e. the usual logo associated with copy-protected cds)