Protected audio CDs:

We have tested all data-copyprotections so far. But what about protected audio discs ? Since the record industry is making the biggest losses ever due to piracy they started protecting their CD's from being copied and spread, without taking notice of the right to make a safety-backup.

Good against piracy but a pain in the butt for the honoust buyer who wants to protect his expensive CD's (especially in Europe) from being damaged. Well, we can already say that this Plextor is the ideal solution for that problem.

We took 2 of the most common audio-protections and tested how we can backup the protected CD's.

We did two major testings:

We tested wether the cd could be copied in one time

We tested if the tracks could be ripped in order to make a compilation from several CDs.

Cactus Datashield 200

Natalie Imbruglia / White lilies Island

Here you can find the prove that the CD is protected with Cactus Datashield, developed by Midbar technologies.

Also Clony detects the protection:

Â	CD copy	CD-rip	Comment
CloneCD V4.0.0 beta9	YES	NO	Â
CDMate V2.2.3 build 8	YES	YES	Â
Padus Discjuggler V3.50.830	YES	NO	Â
Blindwrite V1.2.4.9 Beta	NO	NO	Â
CDRWin V5.0 german	YES	NO	Â
Plextools V1.12	YES*	YES	* it will copy the first session only. That means that the backup will not be copy-protected anymore... This was the ideal solution cause from this backup, any other program could make a backup

Conclusion:

Plextor brings the ultimate audio solution in it's own program, Plextools. Backing up a protected audio CD never was easier. No third party software or tweaks were needed.

Key To Audio

N'SYNC / Celebrity

Here you can find the prove that the CD is protected with Key2Audio, developed by Sony DADC. The CD label also says that the CD is not playable on PC's.

And if that is not proof, also Clony detects the CD as Key2Audio.

Â	CD copy	CD-rip	Comment
CloneCD V4.0.0 beta9	YES*	NO	* only if we selected game copy (audio copy didn't work)
CDMate V2.2.3 build 8	NO	NO	Â
Padus Discjuggler V3.50.830	NO	NO	Â
Blindwrite V1.2.4.9 Beta	YES	NO	Â
CDRWin V5.0 german	NO	NO	Â
Plextools V1.12	YES*	YES	* it will copy the first session only. That means that the backup will not be copy-protected anymore... This was the ideal solution cause from this backup, any other program could make a backup

Conclusion:

Again the same as previous. Plextor brings the ultimate audio solution in it's own program, Plextools. Backing up a protected audio CD never was easier. No third party software or tweaks were needed.

Plextor has managed to bring us the ultimate solution for audio-protected cd's with it's own written software Plextools. Plextor has done it again and prooved to be one of the best in the market.

For all audio fans. This is a must-have drive. Oh, I forgot to mention; Plextools is only for owners of a Plextor. And this special feature is reserved for the owners of the new 40X.

Plextools V1.13 is coming and regarding of what has been already unveiled I can recommend this to anyone ! (Not public available yet)

Next we will do a write test with CD-Speed.

Protected CD's test

More write tests

Want to submit your own review? Click here

Reactions on this item

Posted by 123456789 on Monday 22 April 2002 21:28

We would like to see an option to switch poweRecII off in order to try and burn at 40x regardless the media

This is NOT negative, it's a precaution.
Why switch something off that is a great help for the right burning speed.

So it's a 100% score!!

Posted by roadworker on Monday 22 April 2002 22:29

Nice review....

Just 1 thing to add:it's obvious that the reviewer didn't use the best settings to get the quickest reading time for the LiteOn and safedisk 2...
Why?To make the Plex look better???

Posted by Fishbutt on Tuesday 23 April 2002 08:59

Heh, and I bought one today before even reading this review. I bought the us version with TLA#0000, firmware 1.00 and made in Feb 2002. I was going to look for anything referring to the firmware flashes and disabling the sd2.5+ backups. There was a rumor(?) about a previous plex burner that supposedly disabled that "feature" and made it so you couldn't reverse flash to a previous firmware version. I want to be sure of this BEFORE I flashed it to whatever the bios is up to now for it. I will go and look for plextools 1.13 tho...

My tests with cdda99b showed it's speed very good but it had to slow itself down a few times. CDSpeed tho, gave a constant reading. Plus I tried a brand new pressed music cd I got about a week ago (the first one was a few months old so it might of been dirty or something) and the results were great! I'll post some of the cd speed results shortly...

Posted by louiskhorweiwu on Tuesday 23 April 2002 15:18

any chance you did tests for reading damaged discs? scratched etc? very useful and was in other reviews, hope it gets included/ kept in mind for future reviews...

Posted by Fishbutt on Tuesday 23 April 2002 21:21

Before I read louiskhorweiwu's reply, I was already going to test the plex to see if it could read a scratched disc better than my previous drives. Those were a TDK VeloCD 12x10x32 which was one of the earlier models that was a repacked plex and a Pioneer dvdrom dvd-104 slot drive. Both of those drives could not read that disc without reporting errors. The plex 40x went through it fine, although not screaming through it like it normally does. Here's the clonecd log of the cd in question. The cd was "on the floor at the boutique: mixed by fatboy slim." It's a 2 session disc with audio and a video. I'm running a test on a really bad data cdr that someone gave me to try and read that looked like it was dropped on the asphalt outside. It used to be guarenteed to lock up the box anytime you put it in. Clonecd is running pretty slow but it's not locking up the pc yet. I'll post those results when they are finished.

Posted by Fishbutt on Tuesday 23 April 2002 21:22

I 3:01:34 PM CloneCD Version 3.3.4.1 started!
I 3:01:34 PM ElbyCDIO Driver 3.3.3.1
I 3:01:34 PM ElbyCDIO.dll 3.3.4.1
I 3:01:34 PM CCDDriver.dll 3.3.4.1
I 3:01:34 PM ElbyECC.dll 3.1.0.0
I 3:01:34 PM Searching for SCSI/ATAPI devices...
I 3:01:34 PM Device Scan found 1 CD-ROMs and 1 CD-Writers!
I 3:01:34 PM Registered to:
I 3:02:24 PM Starting copy from PLEXTOR CD-R PX-W4012A to H:My

Musicfatboy.ccd
I 3:02:24 PM Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: No
I 3:02:24 PM Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Yes
I 3:02:24 PM Fast Error Skip: No
I 3:02:24 PM Don't report read errors: No
I 3:02:24 PM Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner: No
I 3:02:24 PM CD contains CD-Text: No
I 3:02:24 PM Reading Track 1... (Blocks 0-12512)
I 3:02:47 PM Reading Track 2... (Blocks 12512-28571)
I 3:03:14 PM Reading Track 3... (Blocks 28571-37890)
I 3:03:29 PM Reading Track 4... (Blocks 37890-52144)
I 3:03:53 PM Reading Track 5... (Blocks 52144-63512)
I 3:04:12 PM Reading Track 6... (Blocks 63512-83852)
I 3:04:46 PM Reading Track 7... (Blocks 83852-99550)
I 3:05:12 PM Reading Track 8... (Blocks 99550-120409)
I 3:05:47 PM Reading Track 9... (Blocks 120409-141819)
I 3:06:22 PM Reading Track 10... (Blocks 141819-155740)
I 3:06:46 PM Reading Track 11... (Blocks 155740-169389)
I 3:07:08 PM Reading Track 12... (Blocks 169389-187623)
I 3:07:39 PM Reading Track 13... (Blocks 187623-198718)
I 3:07:57 PM Reading Track 14... (Blocks 198718-209953)
I 3:08:16 PM Reading Track 15... (Blocks 209953-229028)
I 3:08:48 PM Reading Track 16... (Blocks 229028-244683)
I 3:09:14 PM Reading Track 17... (Blocks 244683-264302)
I 3:09:46 PM Reading Track 18... (Blocks 264302-274862)
I 3:10:04 PM Reading Track 19... (Blocks 274862-302227)
I 3:10:49 PM Duration of operation: 00:08:24
I 3:10:49 PM Reading Track 20... (Blocks 313627-330513)
I 3:10:58 PM Duration of operation: 00:00:08
I 3:10:58 PM Reading finished!

Posted by Fishbutt on Tuesday 23 April 2002 21:29

The way that music cd was scratched was from this...

Look at the inside of a cd jewel case. The tiny "fingers" that are in a circle arrangement that grab onto the hub of the cdrom, that's what scratched it. Apparently, the cd slipped out of the jewel case slightly and it was still 98% shut. The cd hub holder scraped across the surface of the cd pretty good. Good enough to make any audio cd player that it was put into skip alot. As you can see, it went through it without reporting errors! Whoopee! I just saved an old cd that I thought that I'd have to buy another because this one was accidentally damaged!

Posted by lanky on Wednesday 24 April 2002 04:48

The review looses 1 point for a rather obvious error:

On page:
http://www.cdfreaks.com/document.php3?Doc=74&Page=12

I quote:
"The result shows that the PX-W4012TA initially begins the writing at 16x whereas it changes speeds after 6 minutes to 24x and after 16min to 32x an finally after 58min to 40x. The overall average writing speed is 29.88x."

The part:
"initially begins the writing at 16x" is wrong. If you look at the picture it starts at 20x!! Please rectify.

Posted by PieterViljoen on Thursday 25 April 2002 19:38

Note: Please be aware that PlexTools 1.12 (as shipped and downloadable)is NOT compatible with Windows XP! This notice appears on the autorun dialog of the software CD.

Posted by on Thursday 02 May 2002 02:27

Great review , but get the names and serial keys out of the screenshots.

Posted by qbfabar on Thursday 27 June 2002 20:54

Very good review.
Why not include in the audio protected test programs such as Feurio and EAC which have proven even better than Plextools in copying protected audio cds ?

Posted by on Monday 08 July 2002 11:50

NO MOUNT RAINIER??? No mention being made of Mount Rainier support, or lack of it in the review article? Looked at the specs as well on the plextor site, and again no mention of it. Surely this should be a negative point.

Posted by on Thursday 22 August 2002 19:59

I bought one yesterday before reading this review...it definetely blows my old burner away(it burned a whole 700Mb in under 5Min) but Im having trouble burning anything past 80Min or 700Mb still,both with 700Mb media, and 800Mb media...

Posted by on Tuesday 07 January 2003 17:49

http://www.plextor.com/english/news/Mt.%20Rainier.html This is Plextors page on this subject and here it is in a nutshell.
Plextor PX-4012TA and PX4012TU drives are Mt. Rainier 'ready". Once Mt. Rainier is stable, a firmware upgrade will be offered at a later date to make the drives Mt. Rainier compatible. Future Plextor drives will be Mt. Rainier-compatible on release.

This review was very helpful I give it a 99%

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