LG GSA-4120B DL Recorder - Page 7

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

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

The test results are shown in the following table:

With Key2Audio discs, EAC didn't report any timing problems and at the same time, Read&Test CRC check comparison was the same for corresponding tracks. The drive could not rip 100% accurately the CD200 disc where Read&Test CRC check comparison was not the same for corresponding tracks.

• 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 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 ripped the disc contents with EAC and burned the wav file produced from the Cactus Data Shield 200.0.4 - 3.0 build 16a disc with the latest Nero version as AudioCD+CD-Text. The burned media was checked for C1/C2 errors and for BETA/Jitter errors with PlexTools software using Plextor PX-712SA (firmware v1.03) and LiteOn LDW-811S (firmware vHS0Q).

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

• BETA/Jitter Error rate from PleXWriter PX-712SA

The C1/C2 error graphs show that the drive did not manage to produce a 100% error free disc.

We then tried to extract all wav files with the Plextor PX-712SA and PlexTool DAE Error Correction 5th Level enabled:

No reading errors were reported after extracting all files. The C2 errors as reported from Plextools could be due to the writing quality of the drive, since the disc was burned at the maximum speed.