Playing "Copy Protected" CD's

I've been trying to copy an old CD in my collection (Dave Grusin and the NY-LA Dream Band) on to my harddrive.  The disc itself was simply not recognized as a disc by my Mac and I had to disconnect the DVD-R drive to get it ejected.

Then I tried making a copy using my SmartAndFriendly CD copier.  That seemed to work (and it said PA meaning Passed) but once again, the computer wouldn't load it.

So then I tried playing it on my Denon 9000 (since I was streaming through the 205 at the time).  It showed the track counts but never got past 0:00.  It positively locked up the Oppo BDP-205, which I had to shut down, and then press "eject" to start the player up before it would try to load the disc.  The Oppo BDP-95 locked up similarly.

But I popped the disc into the Pioneer PD-75, and it started right up.

*****

There was a fairly brief moment in the mid 90's when record companies decided to thwart the newly possible copying of CD's (now that computer CDROM drives were available).

They threw in bogus crap in optical surface or digital stream so that the erstwhile CD's were not truly Redbook conforming.  But old style CD players that were not computers generally wouldn't notice the difference. 

It didn't work because it infamously didn't even work in all CD players, which themselves were becoming more and more like computers (a transition that was basically complete by the time you had DVD/CD players...which are basically little AV computers).

Some manufacturers were hoping "dual laser" systems would solve the problem.  CD's would get the "old fashioned" treatment.  But that wasn't possible because the resulting "dual laser" systems wouldn't read CD-R's (remember the Sony DVD-7000, a "reference" DVD player for at least a couple years, played CD's but not CD-R's).  Plus they were expensive.

Ultimately the audio industry bought up the recording industry and solved the problem for music simply by not giving a damn anymore about whether music copying could be technically prevented, but having million dollar litigation against copyright violators.  And also paying most musicians next to nothing for "streaming" music while just a few top artists make gazillions from multi modal appearances.

But that "not giving a damn" part has remained somewhat variable.  Copying from SACD's in the original DSD form was not possible for quite a few years until it was, but still not supported on most equipment.

(I see the SACD format as an attempt to bring back copy protection for audio, that's what David Rich concluded in a technical analysis published in Stereophile (!) in 2001.)

Anyway, nowadays many if not most audiophiles (like me) copy their own discs and other files onto their computer hard drives and use some sort of of software based system to queue up and play their music.  This is so much nicer than the olde days!

So then what about those "copy protected" CD's ?  Well, for this purpose, it may be necessary to have an old fashioned CD player which is not like a computer drive.

I have two such players (a Sony 507 ESD and a Pioneer PD-75) but only the Pioneer is close to hand.  In fact I set it atop the "for sale equipment" pile next to my system (only temporary, I said) even though it's not (anymore) for sale.  It's there because I didn't want to hoist it back onto the top shelf after getting it down thinking I'd sell it.

I thought it sounded special sometimes and might be keeping for that reason, I rationalized to my self.  Plus it's one of the cooler pieces of CD playing engineering ever, along with it's even more monsterous brother, the PD-95.  A friend was selling CD "dampers" for a decade.  I think it's ridiculous that such a tweak would help, but the Pioneer was doing the job the only correct way, by clamping the disc to a relatively heavy and damped platter.  So if having a stable platter was a big deal (and if you've ever seen a CD spin in a typical player, buzzing and all, you might think so) this was THE way to do it.  But after that, everyone just relied on digital processing to clean things up, which we now take for granted.  My friend positively hated the Pioneer and said it wasn't as good as his dampers on a Sony player (his favorite player from then and decades later was the Sony 990, a cheaply built player he started recommending to me as an "essential" upgrade only months after I'd purchased my first sort of "high end" CD player, the Sony 507 ESD, which had been his recommendation for the preceding 2 years...I still have the 507 and modified the drawer mechanism to eliminate the pesky "drawer sticking" problem...I consider the 507 my reference "early" CD player...it uses dual 1541A's in 8x oversampling, what converter you get in the 990 depends on which 990, either early AD or sony's own 1990 generation, which curiously enough was probably produced not only in the city I've lived in since 1992, but on the opposite side of the freeway from where I worked for 23 years, at least until Sony shut down their US semiconductor operations around 2001...I remember them shutting down and leaving the lot vacant for many years...that was when all the unique Sony made 1-bit converters used in the likes of the SCD-1 disappeared, and even Sony SACD players switched to using off-the-shelf multibit sigma delta converters from the likes of Analog Devices...while I believe those final 1-bits are the most special (as in "magical", not necessarily "accurate") of the lot for DSD/64 because it's native 1bit with 10x oversampling...1 bit "all the way" so to speak...which is why I hold on to my currently inoperative regularly laser eating DVP-9000ES as the poor man's version of the SCD-1...possibly useful for the ultimate 24/96 transcriptions of my SACD's using that uniquely good--or bad--approach).

(My feeling is that Sony ultimately concluded the full on 1-bit systems were just too expensive because of the necessary power supply heft to get them to work right.  The 9000ES was the least heavy ES player to ever use this technology, and it weighed 30 pounds with copper chassis and everything.  This was true of the previous decade of top end Sony CD players as well.  IOW, the true 1-bit technology just was not scalable, in addition to having a bunch of curious very low level problems at high frequencies (idle tones) which are probably not important or perhaps even euphonic....perhaps best to leave those in there just as with the ripples in linear phase PCM decoding.  Then you get the full magic, just as when SCD-1 was introduced.  But also it was just deciding their separate US semiconductor operation simply cost Sony too much, and it already looked like they weren't going to rule the world with 1 bit audio, though they just might do so for high resolution video...which was being done elsewhere and they wanted to focus on that.  Perhaps those business considerations were even the only reason.  Or, perhaps multibit DSD/64 reproduction was better, which seems to be what everyone but me thinks.  Though PS Audio has sold converters derived from the original Sony approach for some time, so I'm not the only one thinking it might be special.)

*****

So now the PD-75 has an actual "purpose" though I think it hardly justifies having such a valuable player "just" for copying a few CD's onto my harddrive after conversion to analog via the PD-75 and back to digital on the DA-3000.  So far only one CD has needed this special treatment.

My earlier rationalization was merely that it might make some discs sound better, presumably because of some euphonic alteration (such as peak unlimiting...Pioneer is a nicely oversampled player with good enough electronics to do the high oversampling it does..."Legato Link").

If there is such a euphonic effect, I believe I can capture it sufficiently (just like anything else) at 24/96.

In sighted testing, I always feel the Pioneer is special.  And it also makes less mechanical noise than just about any player.  That may be the key benefit.  Probably players like Esoteric are quieter still (and Estoric had a mechanism that was similar in concept to the PD-75 but even more elaborate and heavy).

1000 Albums

Today I hit a minor bragging point milestone, I have now copied 1000 of my audio albums (that I have purchased) to my hard drive for playback with Roon.

 I wasn't thinking this was a lot, but some might.  I know audiophiles with 4000 or more albums on their hard drives.  And lots of audiophiles, me included, have over 1000 commercial albums in some combination of formats such as LP's, CD's, tapes, MP3 files, etc.  But it takes some work even to get CD's copied to the hard drive correctly   (though I now have a fairly streamlined and decent process using XLD), with the metadata correct, in the best folder, and checked for errors and avoiding duplication.  (I'm figuring 20 minutes median average time when there are no issues, but sometimes it can literally take days of cleaning and stuff to get a good copy.  This is especially true of digital copies of vinyl albums.  But even plain old CD's can be a lot of work.  Recently I tried to get around the strong buzz made when I was reading a particular CD.  So I copied at 4x onto a CD-R using my SmartAndFriendly CD copier.  Bu when I read that copy onto my computer with XLD, it had lots of Accurip errors, only one track was copied correctly.  So I went back to the original CD and copied it using my computer DVD+R drive.  Even with the loud buzz it copied correctly.  I'm now a bit worried about the SmartAndFriendly copier which I thought was perfect.  This isn't the first time I've made an "inter-copy" and in previous cases it was the best solution.  To make sure my backup disc wasn't harmed in this process, I removed the backup hard drive from on top of the DVD+R drive, after turning off backup and shutting it down.  Etc.  But usually it's the metadata which causes the most grief with CD's.)

Large numbers of audiophiles have access to millions of albums online through services such as Tidal, QOBuz, Apple, Google, Youtube, and others.

But somehow "my" albums are much more important.  If I go randomly searching through catalogues such as Tidal, I may have to listen to quite a few albums before I find one I like, or even tolerate, even in categories I think are good.

Sadly, this might even be true of a few "my" albums.

And this got me thinking of back in the early days of my audio hobby.

It has seemed to me like other people always knew exactly what albums to buy, and which to play, but this was never true for me.  I struggled at record stores.  How did anyone ever know what to buy?  More than once I had a friend pick out good albums for me at a record store.

Now my tastes were broad, but also very peculiar.  Never much listening to AM radio (which was BIG when I was a kid) and avoiding commercial rock and pop stations on FM, I was not tuned-in to any stream of recommendations like cool kids were.

I mostly liked classical music, always touted by my mother.  Though it seemed like most of our records were show tune albums, beloved by my older sister.  I only started listening to the radio in 7th grade (after buying a clock radio, I quickly progressed audiophile fashion to having my growing "hifi" turned on by a timer) but didn't do much until 1969 or so, when I bought a reel to reel tape recorder from a friend who was leaving state.

THAT was when I really got into listening to FM radio, at least for awhile.  It always helps to have "something to do."  But the radio I listened to was almost entirely non-commercial stations like KPFK and KCRW.  So I still wasn't getting tuned into ongoing popular music (or even "classical" music).  The tape recorder had a foot pedal to turn pause on and off.  So I'd have it set up in "record pause" and press the footpedal, by the side of my bed, when I heard something really good, and I created tapes of the best "songs" and "episodes."  But as would be true with VCR's and DVR's decades later, it's very likely I spent more time lovingly creating these tapes, than actually listening to them.

I only learned of the Beatles because that same friend who sold me the reel to reel tape recorder, and then he was gone, and my next friend was more into Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, which I didn't much care for.

So I really didn't get connected to popular music in high school.  Only classical music, which I was performing as a student cellist in the High School Orchestra.  And whatever I happened to hear otherwise casually.

But I had two different sets of friends introduce me to Pink Floyd when I was in College.  I heard Dark Side of the Moon in December 1973 while getting high on marijuana for the first time in a friend's dorm room.  Later some really cool girl invited me to a party when Wish You Were Here was being rolled out.

In the late 70's one friend of mine really loved "The Wall."  And yet another got me into Steely Dan.  A very nice (but way out) guy I only saw a few times got me into Eno.  Also some were into Progressive and Electronic Rock (King Crimson, ELO).

So that's about it, about all I knew, in popular music, by the time I was 24 (1980).  You couldn't just look up endless articles about any band online like you can today.  You either kept up with radio, relevant magazines, or had lots of cool friends.

I met an elderly Jazz Musician in the 1980's, and he helped me pick out some albums.  And some girl I danced with did likewise.  Finally I was liking New Age Jazz generally, which featured prominently on a San Diego radio station.  I might have bought a Windham Hill record or two, but somehow it wasn't as catchy as the radio.  (Only about 10 years ago, I rediscovered what I'd been missing all along.  Shadowfax and Pat Metheny.)

Now I know a lot more, obviously.  But still it's hard to find new things, and I simply hate all the recommendations given to me by streaming services.  They don't know my taste at all, or actually it seems like they know exactly what I like and then insist on giving me the exact opposite.

Firstly, for more of the time, I'm looking for music without words, and that's virtually impossible to find on streaming services.  There is No Such Category, since any kind of music can come with words, especially when you venture beyond known classical composers.  I myself create Electronic Music (including my latest album, Mythic Rocks, now on all streaming services) with no words, but if I try the category of Electronic Music on any particular streaming service, nearly every song recommended will come with words...  I've even come up with several conspiracy theories to explain this.  They need the words for subliminal brainwashing of some kind.

Anyway, that's one reason why it's good to have your own personal collection of music, though nowadays you could just have use the "playlist" or "favorites" or "My Album" features of whatever streaming service(s) or music manager(s) you are using, and accomplish the vital "pre-selection" of music without actually "owning" anything.

But then there may be things that are hard or impossible to do.  Right now I mostly listen using my mplay playlist generator (which now features splay and tplay for even better play management) and it's easy to make playlists for music on my hard drive, but not so easy to make textfile playlists of albums on streaming services...if it's even possible I haven't yet figured out how to do it and they might never make it possible).  So right now I need lots of "owned" music to keep my all-waking-hours automatic jukebox working.

And there are other things.  Often there are individual tracks which are duds and I really want to remove them.  That's much easier to do (or even uniquely possible again) when you own the music files.

HDCD recordings need to be properly decoded, which is not possible on my system (or most nowadays) without doing it in advance on the files.

Finally, I have even gone to the point of editing tracks of music when they have peculiar misfeatures but are otherwise indispensible.

But the "automated" (scripted) playlist generation is the big thing for me now.  I'd get much more use from the streaming services I use if they let me create and use text playlists.  As it is, I'm thinking of cancelling Tidal and keeping just one paid service, QOBuz.

Anyway, back in the day when I was struggling all by myself to pick out new records at the record store I'd end up with a variety of conundrums.

In generally they'd be pushing "the latest thing."  But "the latest" album of some band you knew little about might well be their worst.  What you'd really like would be the "best" album by that band.  To find that, you'd have to get away from the end-caps and other displays and into the long aisles of recordings.  Even then you'd have a hard time figuring out which album of some band would be the best one to buy.  If you asked the sales person, likely it would be "the latest" which would be recommended.

I loved reading the recommended lists in The Absolute Sound and Stereophile.  But I could never remember what had been recommended when I got to the record store.  (And at most record stores such things would be impossible to find anyway...).

Somehow there was always a huge mental gap between the "independent" recommendation of albums and the purchasing process.  And even in our hypercommercialized online world, it seems there still is.

Then back in the Vinyl days, whatever I bought, after some long protracted selection process, would invariable be warped or have some skip or something.  And I'd never get back to the store on time to exchange.  Or if I did, the next copy (preselected by the store staff) would have an even worse problem.

So it's not surprising that when I get down to the never-before-copied parts of my collection, I could be running into a lot of "clunkers" I really don't want to listen to that much.

OTOH, it may just as well be, and actually is most of the time, more like re-discovery.  Things that sounded awful in days back when they were put at the bottom of the pile are now sounding amazingly good.  At various times in the past, my system of the day could make some things, and perhaps a lot of things, sound awful.

I didn't myself get a decent handle on this until I started doing acoustical measurements, around 1998.

But even then, there were endless issues, including amplifier bias problems, and even the discovery of the requirement for a down tilted response on electrostatic systems which was only my discovery last year, when I applied a slight boost at 1kHz to make everything fit this curve better (and sound much nicer).  I've made the most progress in the actual "sound" since I've been retired, now nearly 4 years.

Anyway, gems are turning up as I get to the bottom of my bedroom rack.  Such as Laura Marie, a musician I heard at a San Antonio Luminaria.

There's still much work to do on this pile, and there are many other piles.

One thing that this copying work does is create a new opportunity to listen to things as if they were new, again.

And I also benefit from my mplay playlists which ensure I ultimately hear everything.

In addition to decoding (or transcribing...which might be slightly better in some ways) HDCD's, I try to make transcriptions of all DVD-Audios and SACD's  too.  Since my system runs on 24/96 and 24/48 anyway, there is no benefit from preserving DSD from SACD's or other sources.  (I personally don't believe there is any benefit anyway, all the important characteristics of DSD are captured by 24/96, nothing better than 24/96 is needed for anything except possibly production.)  And vinyl too.  I prefer to transcribe vinyl whenever I'm playing it at all.  And those transcriptions become part of my collection too.  Perhaps even multiple transcriptions, comparing different players, turntables, or techniques.  (I put some redundant copies in a different folder so they don't get auto-selected for playlists.)  Actually despite thinking about it a lot, I don't have that many LP transcriptions (and many I do have are ready to be upgraded with better recordings on better systems).

Trick for when Album Leveling doesn't work

 Level adjusting is very serious business.  Back when I first got Sonos in 2006 and tried "random play" the difference in levels made many things unlistenable, often because too loud.  (And yet, I'm a person that generally likes "realistic loudness."  But in a playlist of music, something that is too loud sticks out like a sore thumb.)  I believe that virtually all the inexplicable differences that audiophiles claim to hear due to tweaks that have no explanation that is reasonable to audio engineering are actually level mismatches in disguise, since we can hear differences as small as 0.1dB (though it's not easy).

Now I rely on Roon's "Album" Volume Leveling, which works great in most cases.

Sometimes, however, it doesn't.  Typically when I am playing back programs recorded from FM radio, for example, which are highly compressed.  Or my own compositions.  Roon fails to dial back the maximum level to make up for the high degree of compression or high level of deep bass/extreme highs.  It does no good if I make the recordings at -6dB, Room simply adds +6dB gain.  Depending on various factors, Roon either amplifies up to peak level of 0dB or it reduces below that level if it thinks it's going to sound too loud.  But sometimes if fails to reduce, or even increases the level when it's not needed.

Two commercial albums that exhibit the same problem are Beautiful Vol. VII by Andean Fusion and Respighi Ancient Airs and Dances Suites Nos. 1-3 by Rico Saccani.  The latter is actually what inspired the present experiment.  Roon album leveling increases the level by 2.2dB.  It sounds much better without that boost.  Beautiful is already recorded at maximum peak level and Roon reduces it by a whopping 4.4dB but that's still not enough.  It doesn't help when in addition to being highly compressed, albums are very dry (little reverb or ambience).  This can make recordings sound painful even in the absence of distortion or clipping.  "In Your Face."  A slight distance is more comfortable.

I discovered I could stop this by appending a "needle drop" click (excerpted from recording vinyl) amplified to maximum level.  But needle drops at maximum level are a bit annoying.

A single cycle at 1kHz was just as bad or worse.  I didn't even want to try a single peak cycle at 20kHz, it would exercise the maximum peak level on a 150W amplifier that is powering my supertweeters.

But my subwoofers have internal digital EQ which steeply rolls off bass below the tolerable limits of the woofer.

So I tried a single peak cycle at 1 Hz (1 sec).  It works well, and I hear hardly any sound at all (just a very soft click).  This can be easily added to the end of the last track of an album, or any digital recording, using Audacity which can generate any tone, even 1 Hz, of any duration down to 1msec.  While playing a single peak cycle at 1 Hz, I see the digital meters on my EQ going to 0dB slowly and back.  With a peak level signal, Roon will not add any gain.  When the 1 Hz peaks at only 0.999 in the Audacity generator level control, Roon adds +0.1dB gain, so I decided might as well go all the way to 1.0 then Roon won't mess with it (Roon can't, other than lower the level).

(The first time I did this, I was scared out of my chair by a temporary shadow caused by a plane flying overhead just at that moment.  I didn't intend to invent the black hole speaker.)

I'm not sure if this would work on all systems.  Most do reject deep subsonics quite well however.