iPod CD rips on one Mac, doesn't on another

[Michael CM1]

So I buy ONE CD and all hell breaks loose.

I bought "Lady Antebellum" at Best Buy today since it was on sale for $7.99, which beats iTunes' $9.99. No big, just buy it and rip it like the "old" days. Well, it didn't play in the CD player in my dad's Tahoe (hurry up and fix me car, body shop), which I just chalked up to it being a factory unit in a 2002 vehicle. The newer Sony CD changer played the disc.

I get home and I insert the disc into my early 2007 MacBook Pro. It spits it out. Rinse, repeat, still no luck. My dad has his iMac set up nearby, so I put it in to rip on his. No problem at all on his iMac G5, which is nearly 4 years old.

So I ask, WTF? Is this disc likely defective in some matter? It had no scratches or smudges, so it seems to me like my MBP is on crack.

 

[szark]

It might possibly have a form of copy protection that the newer drives recognize (which prevents you from copying it), but the older drives don't (which allows you to copy it).

I've noticed this issue with some new discs lately, all of which do not have the official "CD" logo, which means they most likely have copy protection. That's one of the reasons why I keep my older equipment running.

It would also explain why some CD players might not be able to play it, since those discs do not conform to the CD specification.

 

[Diseal3]

It might possibly have a form of copy protection that the newer drives recognize (which prevents you from copying it), but the older drives don't (which allows you to copy it).

I've noticed this issue with some new discs lately, all of which do not have the official "CD" logo, which means they most likely have copy protection. That's one of the reasons why I keep my older equipment running.

It would also explain why some CD players might not be able to play it, since those discs do not conform to the CD specification.

So now the music industry dosen't want you ripping music onto your computer... Thats a bunch of ********. The music industry wonder's why piracy is such a big problem. Other then that I agree with Szark, must be some new protection.

 

[Teej guy]

It also could just be a bad pressing which some drives can read, but produces too many errors for others.

 

[Michael CM1]

It might possibly have a form of copy protection that the newer drives recognize (which prevents you from copying it), but the older drives don't (which allows you to copy it).

I've noticed this issue with some new discs lately, all of which do not have the official "CD" logo, which means they most likely have copy protection. That's one of the reasons why I keep my older equipment running.

It would also explain why some CD players might not be able to play it, since those discs do not conform to the CD specification.

Since when did CDs have copy protection? I didn't think any did.

But I did check and the disc did have the Compact Disc logo. I have no clue what's up, but I got the AAC files from the older iMac. I think I may take it back anyway because it should play in a $2,000 computer.

 

[Teej guy]

Since when did CDs have copy protection? I didn't think any did.

But I did check and the disc did have the Compact Disc logo. I have no clue what's up, but I got the AAC files from the older iMac. I think I may take it back anyway because it should play in a $2,000 computer.

The price of the computer doesn't really have anything to do with whether it'll play a specific piece of optical media. If a disc is a bad pressing and is outside the tolerences of a certain drive, it just won't work. In my PC at home, I've got two optical drives, and occasionally I'll come across a disc that won't rip in one drive, but will work fine in the other.

Copy protection was tried on CDs a few years ago, but there were quite a few problems. They might still be experimenting with it, but it's not common anymore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_Protection#Copy_protection_for_audio_CDs

 

[gnasher729]

Since when did CDs have copy protection? I didn't think any did.

For many, many years. There was one infamous case of a CD that even managed to break certain Macintosh models (it was by Celine Dion, and many people observed that it is better having a broken Mac than listening to her). Apple fixed that problem, and as a result certain kinds of copy protection don't work on certain Macs.

It's basically a music CD with completely corrupted data tracks added. A plain old CD player never looks for data tracks, so it isn't affected. Your clever car CD player which also plays MP3s and lots of other things looks at the data tracks and throws up. Old Macs look at the data tracks, are clever enough to notice that these data tracks are wrong, and ignore them. Newer Macs seem not to like that kind of CD anymore.

There are other tricks they can play, like tracks with ten minutes of silence added if you import them in iTunes.

 

[Teej guy]

It's basically a music CD with completely corrupted data tracks added. A plain old CD player never looks for data tracks, so it isn't affected. Your clever car CD player which also plays MP3s and lots of other things looks at the data tracks and throws up. Old Macs look at the data tracks, are clever enough to notice that these data tracks are wrong, and ignore them. Newer Macs seem not to like that kind of CD anymore.

Other types of copy protection: Auto-run programs on the data portion of the disc which would try and install software that wouldn't allow the CD to play (easily defeatable by just...not...installing...the program.) How about my personal favorite: corrupting the audio stream itself in an attempt to make it un-rippable.

I will never buy a copy protected CD. The whole thing is completely absurd anyway. Frequently, a certain title would have copy-protection in one region of the world, but would not have copy-protection in another! Unbelievable.

 

[Cynicalone]

I've seen this happen before. I could not get it to rip on my main iMac, but the CD would rip on my Super Drive connected to my MacBook Air. Not sure why but this stuff does happen.