detail information

Now that we've taken a look at how well the 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 Exact Audio Copy (EAC) and CloneCD. In CloneCD we used the default 'Multimedia Audio CD' Profile. For more information on how to handle copy-protected audio discs 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 please visit www.key2audio.com.

Shakira: Laundry Service - Key2Audio 2

We first started EAC, inserted the disc and closed the tray. We waited until the CD-contents were displayed. As you can see the Plextor PX-W4824A drive can recognize the disc's contents and we see that it has 13 audio tracks and one extra (protected) data track:

After selecting all the audio tracks (we of course left the data track alone) we could extract them at full speed to our hard disk without any problems. Next we tried to copy the disc with CloneCD and the 'Multimedia Audio' Profile:

As you can see from the screenshot the disc is being read at full speed in 2 minutes and 27 seconds. We of course also wrote the created image to an ultra-speed CD-ReWriteable disc (at 24X!) to see if the tracks were indeed properly extracted. The disc sounded fine on our stereo.

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'.

Celine Dion: A new day has come - Key2Audio 3

We again fired up EAC and waited until the recorder has recognized the disc. As you can see the Plextor PX-W4824A drive again has no problems recognizing the disc's contents and we can see that the 'Celine Dion' disc has the same structure as the 'Shakira' disc. There are 17 audio tracks and one (protected) data track:

After selecting all the audio tracks again (we of course left the data track alone) we could extract them at full speed to our hard disk without any problems. The same result as we got with the 'Shakira' disc. Next we tried to copy the disc with CloneCD and the 'Multimedia Audio' Profile:

As you can see from the screenshot the disc was again read without any problems at full speed in 3 minutes and 9 seconds. We again wrote the image file to check if the disc had been properly extracted. Again the disc played fine on our stereo.

CCD-Lock:

Unfortunately we didn't have any Cactus Data Shield (CDS) protected discs available at the time of this review. But we can give you the results when trying to copy a protection based on the CDS protection. For these tests we used a program called CCD-Lock v1.72 RC1a. With this tool you can modify the CloneCD image control file and add illegal TOC (Table Of Contents) entries to protect your discs. In this example we protected an audio disc:

The created (copy-protected) back-up disc showed up as having a total play length of 00m:01s. The disc did play though after a while. We tried to read the disc with CloneCD and EAC but unfortunately the Plextor drive fails to recognize the disc and the contents can thus not be read.

Conclusion:

The results with the Key2Audio audio protection were as expected. The Plextor PX-W4824A drive has no problems whatsoever with the Key2Audio discs and could extract them at full speed using either CloneCD or EAC. Just as we saw with previous reviews the Plextor failed to read the CCD-Lock protected disc.

Next up in our Plextor PX-W4824A review, writing CD-ReWriteable media and the Mount Rainier tests...