Plextor PX-130A

6. Protected AudioCDs

Review Pages

1. Introduction
2. Transfer Rate Reading Tests
3. CD Error Correction Tests
4. DVD Error Correction Tests
5. DAE Tests
6. Protected AudioCDs
7. Protected Disc Tests
8. Quality Scans
9. Conclusion

For the test procedure, we used three audio discs with different audio copy protection schemes. The ripping process on all protected Audio discs was carried out with Exact Audio Copy v0.9 beta5.

The tested protected Audio discs were:

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

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

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

The test results are shown in the following table:

Plextor PX-130A	Key2Audio	CDS200
Plextor PX-130A	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

With Key2Audio discs and CDS200, EAC didn't report any timing problems and at the same time, Read&Test CRC check comparison was 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-716A.