Ripping copy-protected CDs in 2024

Several years ago, some of the major record labels began deliberately corrupting CD releases so they couldn't be 'ripped' on a PC or Mac. To put this into context, this was in 2001-2002, when CDs were still the mainstream delivery medium, streaming was unheard of, and only a few geeks (raises hand!) had a music server or portable MP3 player (whether an iPod or something else).  At the time, I had an additional sound card (SB Live if memory serves) shoved into a spare PCI slot, with a long run of screened cable going to the home cinema amplifier (again if memory serves, this was a Yamaha DSP-AX620) via SPDIF, and the whole thing running on a custom-written jukebox system that used queueing requests to create an on-the-go playlist. In fact I found the code for this a few weeks back, it's pretty hideous.

Anyway, digital music wasn't really a 'thing' for the mainstream, and certain music labels (Sony Music) were paranoid about discs getting ripped and shared via Napster or Audiogalaxy (remember those?). So they introduced 'copy protection' on certain titles; the most notorious of which were Shakira's "Laundry Service" and Celine Dion's "A New Day Has Come".  This protection worked in two ways.  Firstly the disc was authored as a multi-session ISO, with the second session (the outer TOC) being deliberately corrupted.  Secondly, the disc had deliberate sync errors in the data stream, which would cause many rippers to fail even if the first problem could be overcome.

Around that time, I had an in-car CD player (also from Sony) with a built-in 16GB hard drive, that would rip CDs to ATRAC format (the same format used by Minidisc). This wouldn't read these protected Sony Music discs either. I solved the problem 20-odd years back, but recently needed to re-rip one of the infected discs.

So, the first problem, the corrupted TOC.  A CD drive that isn't multi-session compatible won't be affected, but these are few and far between, and are unlikely to support digital audio extraction. However, readers of a certain age may remember that this could be defeated by judicious use of a marker pen.  Specifically, a green CD-R marker was used to obliterate part of the outer TOC (the second session). Once this is done, the drive will read the first session, which is that used by a normal CD player.

So far so good.

Now on to the second problem. The disc was deliberately corrupted so as to introduce sync errors into the stream of data coming off the disc.

As a result, when you attempt to rip the disc with Exact Audio Copy, even though it can now read the TOC, the result is each track containing only 5 seconds of silence.

I'm in the process of re-ripping most of my CDs to FLAC (lossless) format. Although I challenge anyone to hear any difference between a lossless file and an MP3 encoded with LAME using the -V0 setting, there are valid reasons for keeping the master archive in FLAC.  It's lossless, end of.  Basically you can make a lossy file (whether MP3, AAC, Vorbis or some new format that hasn't been invented yet) from the FLAC and it's a first-generation encode.  So I needed to re-rip the Celine Dion album, this time to FLAC.

Now, I'd solved this problem before by ripping the disc (after the marker pen treatment) using CDParanoia on a unix box, then burning the resulting WAV files back to a blank CD-R.  Unfortunately, after over 2 decades, the CD-R has degraded.  Also unfortunately, I no longer have a desktop unix machine, so this isn't really an option.

In fairness, all but the last 2 or 3 tracks still ripped perfectly, but by the time EAC reached the outer edge of the disc a few glitches were audible (clicks etc). But I felt I could do better.

So I tried something.  I put the original Celine Dion CD into the left-hand drawer on my Sony CD recorder (RCD-W100).  After a few seconds, it spun up, read the disc and displayed the CD Text titles.

Thinking it couldn't be that easy, I stuck a blank audio CD-RW into the right-hand drawer and waited for the 'Blank disc' message to appear. I then pressed the "CD Syncro High Speed button".  I figured I'd try high speed mode first, I could always try again at normal speed if this didn't work. Amazingly, after a few seconds, the disc started to copy:

And about 20 minutes later, it was complete. The recorder even carries over the CD Text data, producing an exact clone of the original CD, but without the copy protection:

So I ejected the re-writable disc, loaded it into the PC and waited for EAC to do its thing:

Not only did it recognise the disc, it matched with Gracenote, pulled down the album art, and fetched AccurateRip data for the album.

On ripping the disc, no errors were detected, AccurateRip confirmed that the rip was bit-perfect, and there were no glitches or pops on the finished files:

I've created a FLAC version for archival purposes, then created a set of MP3 files at -V0 quality for actual listening. The FLAC rips will live on an external hard drive as a backup.

The copy protection scheme used here was developed by Sony. I used a Sony CD recorder to defeat it. I'm actually perversely pleased with that.