MaximumPC 2005 03

MASSIVE DIGITAL MEDIA HOW-TO MASSIVE DIGITAL MEDIA HOW-TO MASSIVE DIGITAL MEDIA HOW-TO MASSIVE DIGITAL MEDIA HOW-TO MASSIVE DIGITAL MEDIA HOW-TO

3 MA XIMUMPC MARCH 200 5

RIP EVEN THE MOST

RELUCTANT AUDIO

CDS!

The history of audio-CD copy protection

is sadder than the sight of a 60-year-old

cocktail waitress squeezed into a poly-

blend halter top. Celine Dion’s A New

Day Has Come uses Sony’s Key2Audio

protection, which has been known

to crash many PCs. A quick Google

search reveals a method of defeating

Key2Audio with—get this—a Sharpie.

Velvet Revolver’s Contraband uses

protection software from SunnComm,

a company that once threatened to sue

a Princeton graduate student under

the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

(DMCA) for revealing that the disc’s

copy protection could be defeated

simply by holding down the Shift

key after dropping the disc into the

computer’s optical drive.

But the latest scheme designed

to prevent ripping audio CDs to your

hard drive just might be the worst:

Macrovision’s SafeAudio technology

is a misnomer; this copy protection

actually works by damaging the

audio signal. Audio CDs use an error-

correction algorithm called Reed-

Solomon, which tolerates minor disc

errors (such as those resulting from

scratches) by “guessing” at the missing

data. The technique is effective, but if

the algorithm has to guess too many

times consecutively, it will introduce

distortion and even skips.

Here’s how the damage occurs:

Macrovision’s SafeAudio works by

deliberately injecting extremely brief

bursts of noise into the data stream.

This isn’t a major issue when you’re

playing an audio CD on your PC,

because it plays the disc just like any

old boom box—it uses Reed-Solomon

error-correction. The digital audio-

extraction process, however, chokes on

this sudden burst of tear gas.

But none of these protections—not

even SafeAudio’s heavy-handed

approach—prevent you from grabbing

the audio stream after your soundcard

has converted it back into analog

waveforms to be sent to your speakers.

We’ll show you how to do it, and what

steps you should take to get the best-

quality results. It’s time consuming, and

may look complicated at first, but it’s

really a breeze after the first time. And

here’s a thrilling bonus: If you have a

DVD-ROM, this method will also allow

you to make an MP3 of the audio from

a DVD-Video, so you can listen to The

Big Lebowski during your morning

commute.

And it’s all perfectly legal and

ethical—provided, of course, you

currently own a legitimate copy of the

disc.

One Way or Another, We’re

Going to Get That

Music

1 First, download and install

the fantastic open-source

audio editor Audacity from

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/.

Then hop over to http://mitiok.

cjb.net/ and grab the free LAME

MP3 encoder as well.

2 Install Audacity. Extract

the contents of the LAME

encoder zip folder you

downloaded to a temporary

directory. Locate the lame_enc.dll

file and move it to the directory

in which you installed

Audacity (this DLL is the

only file you’ll need from the

LAME package, so you can

trash the temp folder).

3 Launch Audacity. Before

you begin recording, you

need to do some basic

configuration tweaks. Go to

File > Preferences and click

the Audio I/O tab. This is

where you tell Audacity which

hardware to use for playback

and recording. We’re using

our Sound Blaster soundcard

to record and play back audio, so we’ve

selected SB Audigy Audio from the

drop-down lists under Playback and

Recording. From the Channels drop-

down list, select 2 (Stereo).

4 Now, click on the File Formats tab.

Under MP3 Export Setup, click the Find

Library button. Click Yes on the dialog

box asking you to locate the LAME

encoder, navigate to the Audacity

directory, select the lame_enc.dll file,

and then click Open. Use the Bit Rate

drop-down menu to select your bit rate.

We recommend selecting a bit rate of

at least 192Kbps for music; if you’re

ripping audio from a DVD that’s mostly

conversation, you can get away with

as little as 64Kbps.Click OK to finish the

configuration process.

5 Now we’re back in the main

application window. Access the drop-

down menu circled in the screenshot

and select Wave from the list. This tells

Audacity that you want to record the

audio to an uncompressed WAV file.

6 Now it’s time for a test run. Insert

the CD you want to record into your

optical drive and launch your media

player. If you’re familiar with the

contents of the disc already, skip ahead

to the loudest portion of the CD—this

will help you adjust the recording level

to minimize distortion (do the same

for the loudest portion of the DVD, if

that’s what you’re up to). While the

song is playing, click the red Record

button at the top of the window (it

looks grayed out, but that’s just a poor

design decision). You should now see

red bars indicating that a signal is being

recorded. Watch the bars as the track

Audacity allows you to record audio from even

copy-protected CDs using the analog signal from

your soundcard.

Select “Wave” to record to an uncompressed WAV

file—but be aware that these files are gigantic.