detail information

After having checked how the drive performs with protected data discs, it is time to test its performance with protected audio CDs. Some people don't even own a "normal" CD player anymore, so it is important to know if the drive can handle protected audio CDs, or if another drive is a better choice for this task. While Plextor drives are known for reading protected audio CDs pretty well, LiteOn drives never were really good at it. Only latest firmware upgrades improve that situation. Now lets see how this new drive performs!

The following protections are checked:

• Key2Audio: V1, V2 and V3
• Cactus Data Shield : 100 and 200
• Doc.lok.: V1/2 and V3

Key2Audio

The Key2Audio copy protection has been developed by Sony DADC. These discs do not meet the Red Book specifications for audio CDs, so they may not contain the "CD-DA"-logo. Many drives do not even recognise these discs, so that ripping is impossible. Some other drives completely hang, and require a reboot in order to get the disc out of the drive.

Version 1:

The CD we used for the first Key2Audio test was Kuschel Rock 15:

Kuschel Rock 15 (Key2Audio V1)

With auto insert notification switched on, only Feurio was able to read anything from that discs. After deactivating auto insert notification, things looked differently: it took about 20 seconds for the drive to recognise the disc. Then, EAC showed all tracks correctly:

EAC: Kuschel Rock 15

Ripping was no problem at all, CloneCD did not have any problem either. So the LiteOn drive can read Key2Audio V1.

Version 2:

The disc used for the next test was Shakira - Laundry Service, protected with Key2Audio version 2:

Shakira - Laundry Service (Key2Audio V2)

After inserting the disc, EAC shows the following:

EAC: Shakira - Laundry Service

Again, neither EAC nor CloneCD had any problem with the Key2Audio version 2 disc!

Version 3:

For the final Key2Audio test, I've used Celine Dion - A New Day Has Come, protected with version 3:

Celine Dion - A New Day Has Come (Key2Audio V3)

Again, EAC showed the contents of the entire disc correctly:

EAC: Celine Dion - A New Day Has Come

Ripping of the Celine Dion disc worked flawlessly. For performance tests, I've read this disc in CloneCD, giving the following results:

CloneCD: Celine Dion - A New Day Has Come

The reading process was finished after 2 minutes and 10 seconds, giving an average speed of more than 33x. This shows that the LiteOn drive is, unlike most Plextor drives, not decreasing speed on its own when reading subchannel data is enabled. The created copy was of course created ok. The Key2Audio tests show that the new LiteOn CD-writer can handle the protection without any problems!

Cactus DataShield

Cactus DataShield 100:

The disc used for this test is a pretty new title, Peter Maffay - Tabaluga und das verschenkte Glé¼ck.

Peter Maffay - Tabaluga und... (Cactus 100 V3)

Even some Plextor drives with "single session only" enabled cannot read this disc and unfortunately neither could the LiteOn drive: although all used programs (CloneCD, Feurio, EAC, cdda2wav, ISOBuster) were able to see the tracks, it was not possible to read anything. The drive reported nothing but read errors.

Cactus DataShield 200:

The Cactus 200 disc I used is Gré¶nemeyer: Mensch, which is protected with "CDS200.0.4 3.0 build 12b":

Gré¶nemeyer: Mensch (Cactus DataShield 200)

Now, EAC again shows the contents correctly:

EAC: Gré¶nemeyer: Mensch

It was necessary to lower reading speed to 4x to avoid a lot of timing problems, but the tracks were ripped well.

There's something important you should know about Cactus: this protection is continuously improved and developed. For example, this particular disc seems to be specially designed to cause Plextor drives generating bad values if "detect TOC manually" is used. So it is possible, and even likely, that later versions of Cactus 200 might not work in this drive, unless LiteOn compensates for this. However, LiteOn seems to have taken a very clear position as to audio copy protections.

Doc.lok

This protection is also using weird TOC manupulations, in order to confuse drives and prevent them from recognizing Doc.lok protected discs.

Doc.lok. V1/2:

This is a really hard protection, and even some Plextor drives, which are otherwise known for reading most protected audio discs, cannot recognize Doc.lok V1/2 protected ones. My Doc.lok. V1/2 disc is called Helium Vola:

Helium Vola - (Doc.lok. V1/2)

The LTR-48125W (firmware VS08) does not recognise the disc! But, as EAC shows, this issue does not occur in the new LTR-52246S:

EAC: Helium Vola

Again, all tracks were ripped flawlessly. CloneCD took its time to analyse that disc, but after that had been done, reading was no problem either:

CloneCD: Helium Vola

The disc contains only 61 minutes of music, so it was read faster than the Celine Dion disc, and took 2 minutes and 3 seconds.

Doc.lok. V3:

The disc we used for the Doc.loc version 3 test is called Hitzone 21:

Yorin - Hitzone 21: (Doc.lok V3)

The drive recognised the disc and EAC showed the correct contents:

The disc can be easily ripped:

So, Doc.lok was also no problem for the LiteOn LTR-52246S drive!

Conclusion

Let's summerize the results in a table:

		LiteOn LTR-48125W		LiteOn LTR-40125S		LiteOn LTR 52246S	Toshiba SD-M 1502
		VS06	VS08	ZS0N	ZS0P	6S02	1816
Key 2 Audio	V1
	V2
	V3
Doc. lok.	V1/2
	V3
Cactus Data Shield	100
	200

The LiteOn LTR-52246S drive performed very well with almost all protected audio CDs we had available (or bought), which eliminates the necessity of having another drive, such as a Plextor drive, to read protected audio discs. Even more interesting is that LiteOn has released firmware ZS0P for the LTR-40125S, which also adds support for reading of Key2Audio, Doc.lok and Cactus 200 now. Although Cactus DataShield 100 V3 cannot be read, and CDS200 has to be read at slow speed:

Well done, LiteOn!

Next up in our review, writing CD-ReWriteable media and the Mount Rainier format...

Protected Data

CD-(M)RW Tests