Can PCM out on a CDROM or CD Player be captured by a SPDIF input on, say a sound card, and captured as a wav file? This would be a nice circumvent to a lot of these stupid copy protection (ripping prevention) schemes. Any info appreciated.

Yes, but only on CD players which have that kind of output. And it would require a sound card which had that kind of input. Most don't (in both cases).

More details here.

hmm... Ive been thinking about how much effective bitrate you need with PCM to be able to fully capture the sinewave between 20-20 000Hz. Since the maximum degree of the input PCM only can be 45(degrees).
So with a output frequency of maximum 20KHz then the PCM is coded at aproximatly 40KHz that would mean that the maximum output degree would be 60(degrees)?

hmm.... where was i going with this? ..... I think i´ve just answered my own question when i had to think about it. First i thought that why use a higher bitrate when PCM only can fallow the analog wave of maximum 45degrees. What i didnt realise is that it only fallows that rule when the bitrate is the same as the analog frequency. Damn.... sometimes youre just stupid until you sit down and think som things through....

what a meaningless post.... but hey... ill post it anyway.... so maybe someone else dont have to be as blunt as i was! Knowledge is for sharing!

greets!

Can PCM out on a CDROM or CD Player be captured by a SPDIF input on, say a sound card, and captured as a wav file? This would be a nice circumvent to a lot of these stupid copy protection (ripping prevention) schemes. Any info appreciated.

Problem is, it won't retry bad sectors like a real ripper would.

Peter

I'm doing exactly this with my DirecTiVo (+ laptop + Onkyo USB external audio card), so I can capture "live" music performances to put into my empeg. It's all pretty straightforward. The Onkyo gizmo comes with software that has a record button, then lets you set up "mark" points to separate what you recorded into tracks. Each track gets written to a separate WAV file, quite suitable for running Lame (or whatever you prefer).

I've never had skipping issues, although the original signal, in one song, had a 30ms blank spot, probably a result of noise in the satellite reception.

Also, for what it's worth, the Onkyo box's documentation claims that you can't just run a CD player's output through it. This sort of copy protection may or may not occur with other S/PDIF boxes. All I know is that everything works perfectly from my DirecTiVo.