Copy protected CDs

[skynet]

I just start recently to re - digitize some of my CDs, in particular the Box sets, in high quality flac files, but is annoyingly slow with the ones that are copy protected, to which EAC is doing an amazing job but is taking like 10 to 12 hours per CD with that, i know is because of this protection, and EAC is one of the best software's for that out there but does anyone know any other method, perhaps?

Let me know if someone have anything

Regards

[Lord Reith]

I've never had that trouble. I remember ripping Let It Be Naked and it having issues but speed was not one of them.

As I recall the way it worked was by including a data track on audio cds, so when you put the disc in a computer, it would access the data track first and just spin endlessly. Some people used to draw over the data track (which looks like a ring) with a black texta so it couldn't be read.

So it sounds like maybe EAC is trying to read the data track, which as I said is designed to spin endlessly.

Unfortunately I can't remember how I got around this! Maybe I just used something else other than EAC.

[mitchellmichael]

Will Finder or Explorer let you just copy the files from the CD raw to a folder on your desktop? Then you can reformat, tag, etc. with whatever program. Might be a little faster rather than the software having to decrypt on the fly from the cd drive. Hope that helps.

[Lord Reith]

Will Finder or Explorer let you just copy the files from the CD raw to a folder on your desktop? Then you can reformat, tag, etc. with whatever program. Might be a little faster rather than the software having to decrypt on the fly from the cd drive. Hope that helps.

No they appear as .cda in a browser and it just copies them as text files.

My suggestion is to make an .img (image file) of the cd first using something like imgburn. Then open that in EAC.

[mitchellmichael]

Will Finder or Explorer let you just copy the files from the CD raw to a folder on your desktop? Then you can reformat, tag, etc. with whatever program. Might be a little faster rather than the software having to decrypt on the fly from the cd drive. Hope that helps.

No they appear as .cda in a browser and it just copies them as text files.

My suggestion is to make an .img (image file) of the cd first using something like imgburn. Then open that in EAC.

Yeah, that should work.

[skynet]

thank you both

I have tried imaging the discs, yes is faster and works like a charm

In particular i have this issue with the cds on the "Dark Horse Years" box set, funny enough i did not have the same problem with, for example the one you mentioned Lord Reith, "Let it Be - Naked" that was a "normal" extraction using EAC, wonder why the GH box is different...

Anyway, thanks again!

[Lord Reith]

That copy protection thing was quite mad. Let's stop people who own cds from ripping it to their phones... thereby forcing them to search for it on torrents. Surely that just made things worse, not better.

[monkeesfan1965]

To help try DVD43... It's an old program, and I don't want to say what it does, but it "helps"
Or, Try Ultra ISO...

[Kando]

For my own purposes, way back before easy pc rip software was available, I bought a really decent, but not overly priced Pro cd recorder. It allowed me to bypass the copy protection code, and play previously copied discs (done on my Yamaha CDR-1500, or elsewhere) out through the toslink connector, back to the Yamaha CDR-1500, and then rerecorded a new disc, again using their proprietary recording system.

Not exactly speedy, but the Yamaha used a system that spread out the digital 1's and 0's as far as the Redbook allowed, thus making them easier to read on all players, and somewhat improving sound on most at least a tad. I copied all my original silver cd bootlegs via the Yamaha. Ensures more steady play on car cd players, and eliminates having to worry about ruining the original discs. Definitely was worth it in the long run. Have always used Mama-a printable cdr's as well, because of their quality, and so I can at least add a little bit of professional look to them, via an Epson printer.


Edit: (4:00 pm) Sorry, I think the correct name for the Yamaha unit was HDR-1500, as it had a hard drive in it, which allowed you to save tracks/cds to it, and record the tracks/cds to cdr's at anytime, or just to use it as a jukebox, etc. You could copy any of these tracks to cdr/cd-rw's in a normal process, and still maintain the tracks on the hard drive, but if you recorded them using Yamaha's proprietary system the tracks would then be deleted from the hard drive. Additionally, any cdrs made with the proprietary system could not be recorded again by the Yamaha unit, thus the need to use a Pro unit that could bypass the copyright code, and feed the digital signal directly back to the 1500, if you wanted to use the special recorded cd's as a source for a new recording, or any other protected disc.

The HDR-1500 was also unique in that it allowed you to do all kinds of editing fairly easily once you got the system down, such as volume control, splicing and pasting, track numbering, track naming (for newer cd players that could show that info), etc. One of the last things I did with it before it went into storage quite a while back was realigning (cut and pasting) from the two early bootleg cd Get Back versions, which I realized had continuous takes separated into separate tracks for whatever reason. Yeah, I know that is child's play now-a-days, but at the time it was quite cool for me, lol. But the biggest task I undertook was to slowly and diligently copy each individual Beatles song, official and bootleg, from all the different sources I had, and compare them sonically against each other, so I would have the best of the best when it came time for creating my own personal use cds. This took a really long time. And now thanks to my time here, among so many great contributors, I will have a lot work to recheck, ouch. But at least having the 1500 made it a lot easier than it might have otherwise been (at least back then). Copy each version back to back, to back, to back, etc. and bounce between them listening for differences. I think I sometimes had as many as 8 different versions/sources to compare. These included all sources up through Anthology, bootleg and official that I could get my hands on in silver cd form.

Also, the Yamaha HDR's came in two models, each with a different hard drive size, and which I found out later could be upgraded to larger size drives with a few different compatible units. Hopefully mine will still work when I pull it out storage soon to work on all the great stuff I have managed to acquire during my somewhat short stint back in Beebleland, after such a long time away.

[Lord Reith]

I wish I'd kept my cd recorder. That was a lovely bit of kit.