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Now that we've taken a look at how well the SCSI 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 only used PlexTools. 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 and, as you can see from the screenshot below, the disc was recognized without a problem:

We then of course ripped all the tracks to our hard disk and listened to them to check if they were ripped properly. All tracks sounded fine. Now let's check a newer Key2Audio version:

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 we inserted the disc into the SCSI PlexWriter, it was again recognized without a problem. Ripping of the audio tracks was also done just fine:

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. We then enabled the 'Single Session' option in PlexTools (to prevent the drive from reading the second (protected) session on the audio disc). As you can see from the screenshot below the tracks were now displayed correctly (after re-inserting the disc):

Ripping of the audio tracks also went fine, although PlexTools did report that some tracks contained errors. We however could not hear these errors in the ripped tracks...

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 PlexWriter and waited till the disc and the audio tracks had been recognized. Unfortunately the PX-W4012S drive failed to recognize the Doc.loc disc but when we opened the drive's tray and let PlexTools close it again, the tracks were recognized after a while:

After the tracks had been recognized, ripping them was no problem at all.