From the company that brought you
distorted video when you
connect your DVD player to your VCR, comes a new technology designed to give new audio CDs the nostalgic sound of traditional analog LPs! Yes, with Macrovision's new
audio CD protection scheme, when you rip the music, it will have an added bonus -
clicks and pops! This begs the question: So they've got clicks and pops, will it sound
warmer as well? Wait, this isn't a technology to make
CDs sound like
vinyl, this is a half-baked
copy protection scheme designed to thwart
MP3 and
OGG fair-use (
RIAA translation:
piracy)!
Slashdot,
ZDNet and
CNET have covered this story, but for the juicy bits, here's how it is supposed to work in a nutshell:
The CDs are produced with
intentional errors in the
datastream. During playback, standard audio CD players ignore the errors and
interpolate between the last good
sample and the one following the error, with only "barely audible"
distortion.
CD-ROM drives, on the other hand, rip the entire stream, errors and all, peppering your music with clicks and pops.
Okay, so it might be
vaporware, as of this noding, no one seems to have heard of any CDs that actually employ Macrovision's new protection. It is something to keep an eye, or an ear rather, if the new CDs you buy suddenly sound really crappy and you're not listening to (insert name of band you dislike here).