i wanted to know the best available software for ripping protected audio cd's.
i have used eac but its rips at around 4x in my ltr - 52327s thats very slow.
thanx

That's the one.
Slowly but surely, as they say You'll spend much more time on searching, don't you think ?

4x seems rather slow for ExactAudioCopy even in the secure mode I use to get about 8x ripping on average in a Samsung 32x, about 10x from what I recall in my overclocked Liteon 32123s and I currently get about 12x in my Samsung SD-616Q DVD-ROM drive.

The latest version of EAC is V0.95 prebeta 3. It may also even be worth checking for dust, scratches or fingerprints on the CD. When EAC runs in the secure mode, it reads everything twice to make sure that the audio is read exactly as on the CD. If it encounters a troublesome sector, it will re-read it several more times until it gets some consistant read results.

There are two methods to try and speed up ripping:

First, try enabling C2 Error detection. This doubles the ripping speed on my Samsung to 24x and generally C2 errors would be sufficient in telling EAC to re-read the troublesome sector again. On really difficult to read CDs, C2 error detection may not be enough as there is always the chance of a damaged sector not resulting in a C2 error.

If you are sure that your CDs are clean and free of scratches, then use the burst copy method. First, do a test read of all the tracks for EAC to generate the CRC values for each track. Next do the ripping of the tracks and make sure that all the CRC results for ripping each track matches. This will give a lot fast ripping performance, but will not work that well with dirty or damaged CDs.

The discs are protected and you complain that you rip them at 4x ! ? ! ?

You're lucky that you can read them.

If they are CDS200 discs, the drive might slow down when ripping due to the errors mastered in the disc. This would be the clever thing to do if the drive is well designed.

Try EAC in burst mode or Feurio to check the real max. ripping speed of your drive.

thanx you guys,
i enabled burst mode and the ripping speed went to 20x that was teriffic.
seanbyrne,
"do a test read of all the tracks for EAC to generate the CRC values for each track. Next do the ripping of the tracks and make sure that all the CRC results for ripping each track matches"
i did a test and the crc displayed on both cases, i.e test & read crc were the same , why do we have to actually do this test? is there any chances that they may be diffrent in protected cd's
thanx in advance
cdfreaks is the best!

If your CD is protected by CDS200, then I can recommen CDex 1.51 - it burns like a charm - no fuss no hassle - it just works!

Yush!

There are a lot of good rippers to be found here

Yes, the errors introduced by the copy protection cancels the error correction mechanism for the data that are related to the damaged ones. Thus, besides the data intentionally erased to protect the CD, there are also some data, valid, but left without any error correction possibility inside the drive. These data can lead to different CRC when they are not read properly, while, on a normal CD, the internal error correction mechanisms would have always corrected them.

But there are chances that you get some clicks in the sound anyway, even with good CRC, because the protection was designed so as to produce clicks if the CD is ripped by a computer, the error concealement ability of a CD ROM drive being usually weaker that a hifi player's one.

Different drives will give you different quality (more or less clicks) from an audio CD protected with intentional errors (like SafeAudio, CactusDatashield200...). The fact that you get same or different CRC is much less important. Actually, if you have some clicks, you had certainly better to play the CD in a hifi player and record it with your soundcard !

Here are some analyzes : http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?showtopic=11504&