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Topic: A Cactus Datashield experience (Read 28210 times) previous topic - next topic
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A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #25 –
Hi, rather than start a new topic I'll add my CDS experience to this thread.

My brother received a CD through the post fom Carling named Best Of The Fest. The audio has clicks when played through my brother's CD-ROM (my 50 CD changer also clicks) but sounds fine in at least one normal CD player. So I suspect copy protection.

The CD was manufactured by Deluxe Global Media Services who use Cactus Data Shield for audio CDs. As there is no data session I conclude that CDS-100 has been used.

Using my Panasonic LF-D103 DVD-RAM drive I was able to rip the CD using EAC in secure mode. The rip was reported 100% accurate with no errors. Sounds good as well

Perhaps DVD-RAM drives are better than most at reading CDS-100 discs?

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #26 –
Aha... maybe I can test this too. I have an LF-D101 DVD-RAM drive, but unfortunately no CDS protected CD's, yet. Actually, I have hesitated in buying them because of incompatibility with my PC-based home theater system. Although I have a few protected discs which I have been able to rip using either CDex or EAC. A few of them I had to set CDex to non-paranoia mode (I guess similar to EAC's burst mode) in order to get a rip, the extraction would stop around 98% on the last track for a long period. I never checked what form of protection it was because I was able to get a clean rip in non-paranoia mode. I also recently was ripping a CD in CDex full/paranoia mode and it was taking a really long time on one track. I had just installed EAC the same day so I decided to give it a try on this disc. It had no problems even in secure mode. But I have also had the opposite happen... CDex able to rip in full/paranoia while EAC hangs on a track in secure mode. Guess it pays to have both installed.

Sorry I don't remember the disc, as I was (and still am) in the middle of ripping my whole CD collection...

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #27 –
Quote
(Hint @ spoon - you seem to be motivated to develop something like this ... )


Indeed I am, Fair-use is my middle name!

I have 2 CDs, RadioHead - Hail to the Thief (unprotected - europe release):



and the same CD from Mexico (protected, thanks to AtaqueEG):



To get around legislation, I am going to create a switch for the CD ripper to emulate a standard audio CD player, then I can interpolate.

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #28 –
Quote
To get around legislation, I am going to create a switch for the CD ripper to emulate a standard audio CD player, then I can interpolate.

That would be awesome!  Would this do what I think it could?  [Trying to understand the approach after reading this thread.]  Instead of copying a digital data stream as per a normal rip, instead it would be "recording playback" of CD audio, just internally?  (Or am I way off base in understanding this?)

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #29 –
Nothing analogue, it would rip as normal, when it came across a C2 error it would interpolate it out, just what a normal CD player would do.

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #30 –
Quote
Funny detail, the CD doesn't feature the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo anywhere   Philips really made them removing it.

the strange thing is most CDs i've bought recently don't have a CDDA logo anywhere on the disc. is this like a backlash of labels against the Philips policy or something?

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #31 –
woohoo! my first copyprotected disc arrived, and unintentionally ordered, too. got a bunch of cdsingles from AU for like $1 each ($6shipping on first, and $4 on the rest)... uses EMI ... will report in a bit (after this In-Grid CDS is done ripping...)

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #32 –
not a single prob on my LiteOn XJ-HD165H with EMI (CDS?) in burst mode. copied at around 8x for the whole CD.

well, there might be a click at the beginning (0:00.920) as the cymbal is ramping up in volume, but it also appears on the paranoid mode rip (which stopped, with complete dropouts in audio as if the CD were skipping less than a min or so into the first track), but that's all i picked up (on some half decent Sony headphones).

when i tried a normal copy in CDex, it sounded like the head was trying to plow into the disc as it spun pretty fast and loudly. it basically crashed until i launched Nero and the detection routines interrupted the drive (i believe).

neeeeext

i hear the japanese Ayu CDs are a bitch to rip, so, if someone would be so kind as to send me one (hk boots, copyprotection and all, are pretty cheap ^^)

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #33 –
well, the errors on protected discs are 100% repeatable, so using paranoid mode etc isn't going to get you a better rip. The only thing you can do, if your drive doesn't interpolate the errors for you already, is use something that will interpolate the errors, such as deglitch.exe

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #34 –
ok, EMI finally sent me an *unprotected* copy of Jane's Addiction - Strays after complaining that it wouldn't play in my car.  So now I've done a subtraction mix on the first track just to see what the CDS errors look/sound like after going through the LiteOn 52x CDRW and EAC. Well, the clicks are a lot worse than I thought they were, and I'm quite surprised that I didn't more readily hear them when listening to the rip of the protected disc.

Here's a zipped wav of the difference between the CDS protected track and the unprotected track. It's very small, 50 or 60KB. Peaks as high as -10.27dB in there!

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #35 –
Wow, I'm gonna have to try that. I've got the exact same CD, protected with CDS200. Was yours Australian? How did you contact EMI?

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #36 –
Looking at two bursts, I didn't see any contiguous errors. It means that a hifi Player won't perform better than a computer drive.
Contiguous errors must be rare, I got about one or two clicks per track in Kraftwerk, that were not in the CD Player. These must have been contiguous errors (interpolable linearly by a hifi player and not necessarily by CD ROM drives).

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #37 –
Quote
Wow, I'm gonna have to try that. I've got the exact same CD, protected with CDS200. Was yours Australian? How did you contact EMI?

I'm in Canada. The back of the protected CD's jewel case lists a Quality Control email address, qc@emimusic.ca, and a toll-free phone number, 1-866-533-0220 but I can't remember if I emailed that address directly or if I used the form on their Contact Us web page. Might've been the web form. I got an email reply within a week or so I believe, and they wanted me to scan/email my receipt or fax it along with my mailing address. I didn't hear back from them after that, just got the CD in the mail a couple weeks later.

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #38 –
Quote
Funny detail, the CD doesn't feature the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo anywhere   Philips really made them removing it.

Buy empty jewel cases.
There is no CD-DA logo anymore.

Buy not copyprotected CDs.
There is no CD-DA logo anymore on the jewel case.

I don't interpret this!
Diocletian

Time Travel Agency
Book a journey to the Diocletian Palace. Not today!

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #39 –
last CD I bought was Primus's new one, it's got the CD-DA logo on the CD.

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #40 –
Quote
It should be possible to create a ripping mode that rips 1 sector at a time and any induced error should be interpolated, just as a normal CD player would


Spoon, did you do any rsearch or development yet?

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #41 –
Quote
i hear the japanese Ayu CDs are a bitch to rip, so, if someone would be so kind as to send me one (hk boots, copyprotection and all, are pretty cheap ^^)


I have a few Ayu CDs, but I dont think they're copy protected... I had no problem ripping them atleast  Maybe I bought them before copy protection got widespread in Japan

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #42 –
I've never had any problems ripping Cactus-protected discs (Plextor 20/10/40A drive). The main problem with CDS protection is that it actually weaves extra bits into the music stream (sub-channel or not, I don't remember that detail), hence the clicks... Which is probably why some of these discs don't have the CD-logo...  Normal CD-players are "stupid" enough to ignore these things (wouldn't surprise me if they didn't even notice), but CD-ROM drives are much more accurate, and try to error-correct...

Anyway, I don't buy CDS protected CDs... Don't want hidden things in my music...

My two cents...
Jurg

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #43 –
I have Ayu's Rainbow, it's copy protected (CDS-200 I think) and it made me cuss a few times. 

My Teac CD-W540E didn't recognize the disc as an audio disc at all, and that didn't change even after trying all existing options in EAC. Then I tried with my Pioneer DVD-116, inserting the disc into it made my windows freeze so hard I had to shut down the main power to get it work again.
In the end, I was able to rip the disc with a reaaaally old no-name 12x drive... EAC reported 80-85% track quality, I couldn't notice any clicks in the result, but that might just be my super-cheap equipment.
Moral: there is a use for ancient drives too. 

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #44 –
Quote
I have Ayu's Rainbow, it's copy protected (CDS-200 I think) and it made me cuss a few times. 

My Teac CD-W540E didn't recognize the disc as an audio disc at all, and that didn't change even after trying all existing options in EAC. Then I tried with my Pioneer DVD-116, inserting the disc into it made my windows freeze so hard I had to shut down the main power to get it work again.
In the end, I was able to rip the disc with a reaaaally old no-name 12x drive... EAC reported 80-85% track quality, I couldn't notice any clicks in the result, but that might just be my super-cheap equipment.
Moral: there is a use for ancient drives too. 

it seems like some discs with seemingly the same protection are harder to rip than others... Jessy's Look @ Me Now (EMI) and Ayumi's Free & Easy seemed relatively easy (although time consuming as usual) to rip, but Karaja's She Moves (La La La), also an EMI was the bane of one of drives, the one that caused XP to switch the drive into old, slow IDE mode from all the errors, not to mention it didn't even rip a second or two of audio even over night. i should have complained to EMI that they ruined my drive ... (they might have enjoyed reading about it tho)

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #45 –
I use ANYDVD from Elaborate Bytes. It removes any audio-copy-protection. Just enable ANYDVD and rip with EAC 

I have succesfully ripped the album: "Phil Collins - Testify" at 100% track quality on a Plextor 708A in combination with anydvd. The ripping speed was 5-6x in secure-mode. This CD is protected with CDS200.0.4 (3.0 build 16a)

I listened very carefully to a couple of section (where there were click before) and couldn't detect any clicks anymore.

A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #46 –
It is already well known that CDS200 behaviour is drive dependant. A software defeating copy protection on one drive can be completely unuseful on another.

Quote
Normal CD-players are "stupid" enough to ignore these things (wouldn't surprise me if they didn't even notice), but CD-ROM drives are much more accurate, and try to error-correct...


CDS200 just introduce errors, look : http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ndpost&p=143884

And read again this post above : http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ndpost&p=127665
Clicks are interpolated by CD Players.
Some cdrom drives might be as good as cd players at interpoling, some are definitely better at error correction... but some new errors can appear in the neighborhood of CDS200 errors.

Quote
Quote
It should be possible to create a ripping mode that rips 1 sector at a time and any induced error should be interpolated, just as a normal CD player would


Spoon, did you do any rsearch or development yet?


The first thing to do is testing recent drives. Most already interpolate, like Spoon planned to do. So if something is to be done, it should be an advanced interpolation, more advanced than the one already existing in cd rom drives.
If recent drives already perform advanced interpolation (like maybe that NEC NR7800 ), all this is useless.

Re: A Cactus Datashield experience

Reply #47 –
Hi,
I will describe here my experience with Cactus data shield.
Not long ago I bought the album "Loveparade compilation 2001". It says on discogs
https://www.discogs.com/release/155963-Various-Join-The-Love-Republic-The-Loveparade-Compilation-2001
Quote
CD 1 contains Multimedia player, special for PC, which is part of copy protection system Cactus Data Shield 100 (which breaks down on MAC OS). CD 2 is NOT copy protected.

When I put CD 1 into my drive, my drive HL-DT-STDVDRAM GUD0N saw it as a regular Audio CD with no data section. So I guess it's CDS100. Foobar didn't want to play this "Corrupted file" album at all.
Exact Audio Copy saw 99 tracks :)
Extraction was not possible; invalid read command for the drive even though it was set to good.
My second drive Liteon slimpypeebau108 also detected Audio CD, again unable to play in foobar (corrupt file). Exact Audio Copy sees 99 tracks. However, extraction is possible and runs tolerably without errors. I don't hear crackling in the sound either. Only 17 tracks are played. Track 17 is a ghost track, there is only silence on it.
My third Plextor PX-760A drive, which I use for archiving Audio CDs, handled this disc best. Exact Audio Copy detected 17 tracks. And detected this CD in freedb database. Foobar won't play the disc. When ripping in EAC on track 17 of the spectrum, the drive jams and loads the disc endlessly. Probably not The Plextor PX-760A does not support overreading in lead in and out areas.
However, I did the ripping of the range, omitting track 17, because there is nothing on it anyway, I only ripped 16 tracks and added a CUE file via EAC by manually deleting the last annotation to track 17 in notepad. Everything works fine. CRC rips from LiteOn and Plextor drives are the same.
Sorry for any possible ambiguities, I don't know all the technical terms in English, I use EAC in Polish.