detail information

Now that we've taken a look at how well the external Plextor drive can handle data protection it's time to see how well it does with protected audio discs. Audio discs are protected more and more and so it's important a drive can read these protections. For the tests we used PlexTools and CloneCD. For more information on how to handle copy-protected audio discs please read this thread on our Audio forum.

Key2Audio version 2:

The first protection we're going to take a look at is Key2Audio developed by Sony DADC. The disc we're using is 'Shakira: Laundry Service' protected with version 2 of the Key2Audio protection. On the front of the CD-cover we can read the text 'will not play on PC/MAC'. For more information on Key2Audio you can visit www.key2audio.com.

We first started PlexTools, inserted the disc and closed the tray. We waited until the CD-contents were displayed but unfortunately the Plextor PX-S2410TU failed to recognize the disc. We of course also tried to read the disc with CloneCD but we got the same error:

Key2Audio version 3:

For the Key2Audio version 3 tests we used an audio disc with the title 'Celine Dion: A new day has come'. On the front of the CD-cover we again find the text 'will not play on PC/MAC'. When it came to reading the protected audio disc we unfortunately had the exact same result as with the previous Key2Audio version: the Plextor PX-S2410TU simply cannot recognize the disc.

Cactus Data Shield:

For the Cactus Data Shield (CDS) tests we used an audio disc with the title 'Bitte Ein Beat 5' protected with CDS200. On the back of the CD-cover and on the disc itself we can find a small logo mentioning that the disc is copy protected by Midbar Tech (www.midbartech.com).

We first tried to read the disc with PlexTools but as you can see the disc lay-out is detected wrong (the red text is incorrect, there should be 15 audio tracks and 1 data track):

This behaviour was expected since we saw the same thing with the Plextor PX-W4824TU drive. Unfortunately the PlexTools software does not support 'Single Session' option for the external PX-S2410TU drive. With this option enabled we were able to read the CDS200 disc with the mentioned PX-W4824TU drive but since the option does not work for the PX-S2410TU drive we were unable to extract the audio tracks.

When we tried CloneCD it also failed to read the disc and thus the only option we had left was the Exact Audio Copy software (which, as said before on page 5, didn't work with the Plextor drive). Although we could detect the audio tracks when we used the 'Manually Detect TOC' option we were unable to extract them:

Doc.loc:

Doc.loc is another audio protection and can be recognized by the text 'DOCdata' on the inner ring of the disc. On the back of the CD cover we can read the following text:

"This product features copy protection technology, as we feel the necessity to protect our artists and ourselves from illegal copying; it is intended for use in standard home CD audio players and may not play on other devices, especially computer drives."

Doc.loc is a protection that has been produced by the DOCdata company (www.docdata.com) and when you insert an audio disc that has the Doc.loc protection in a computer drive it will simply keep searching indefinitely because the drive cannot recognize the disc. To test this 'theory' we inserted the protected audio disc in the Plextor recorder and waited till the disc had been recognized. Unfortunately, just as we saw with the Key2Audio protection, the PX-S2410TU drive again failed to recognize the disc. We of course tried with both the PlexTools and CloneCD software but the results were the same: the drive cannot read the Doc.loc protected disc.