Recording certain recent cd's to a dcc 951 leads to "Copy Prohibited"

I have a setup with a CD 950 directly connected by coax cable to a DCC 951. If I try to record recent cd from Columbia Records it leads to “Copy Prohibited”.

Wy is that and is there a way around it?

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That’s the SCMS bit applied with no copy, this behavior was only intended to prevent copies of copies. I expected this to happen at some point. You could either get a device to strip the bit, a player that does not output it (DVD players for example), but it is not clear that it will have the tracks or you could rip the CD to wav and burn it onto a new one with the same track pause.

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I’m not having this issue with CDs, but I am having a “Copy Prohibited” problem with other digital media. I think it may be an issue with how Philips implemented SCMS, but that’s just a theory.

I’ve got a Sony DAT and MiniDisc recorders along with my DCC 730. I split an optical optical output from my source, so the exact same feed goes to all three. Content that records just fine on the DAT or MD will be blocked from recording as “prohibited” on the DCC. Right now it is showing up when I try to record music from iTunes output by my Apple TV. I am going to experiment with different ways of feeding the digital signal into the DCC (e.g. splitting it out of the HDMI with a converter or feeding it through a different route in my setup) to see if that makes a difference.

The audio from this source currently is being fed from the optical out on my TV into the input of my Sony E9000 and then back out from the optical out on there to the 3-way optical splitter.

Does anyone else use a digital media streamer to record to their DCC? Are there any recommendations?

The standard includes different categories, maybe Apple chose a category that the DCC recorder sees as something bad. Your HDMI audio extractor will likely fix it.

I have a CD (CD-single of “children” by Robert Miles) that also can’t be recorded on my dcc730 without SCMS defeater. My memories are vague but I came to the same conclusion: I think there is a bug in the firmware of the DCC recorder; it misinterprets the bits in the SPDIF stream in the wrong way and even though the CD is encoded as “copying ok” (or something) instead of “copyrighted, copy once” (or something), the recorder says “nope”.

The workaround is easy of course, even if you don’t have an SCMS defeater: just grab the disc in a computer and write it back to a CD-R, or record it from the computer’s digital output, or from the CD player’s analog output.

=== Jac

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I’ve been looking to buy an SCMS defeated, but they don’t look like they are much available anymore. Do you know if where you got yours from is still selling them?

It looks like I may have found my own answer. Audio Alchemy DTI boxes (which were used to reduce jitter in the digital signal) are supposed to help with SCMS as well.

I found one on e-bay and can let you all know the results in a week or so.

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Mine was a kit from Elektor magazine, in 1997 if I remember correctly. It has a CPLD to do the work, and that CPLD is not longer available.

If you’re good with electronics, my SPDIF receiver project on hackaday.io will get you there half-way though. There’s a Propeller SPDIF transmitter project by Scanlime out there too, which can be combined with my project and a little bit of missing code.

The project is stuck right now because I don’t have time. I may make an SCMS defeater kit with it in the future but the ultimate goal is to make an ITTS decoder.

===Jac

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I2S does not know SCMS either, so it would simply be a matter of slapping an S/PDIF decoder IC with an S/PDIF encoder IC together.

My Audio Alchemy DTI box arrived and I can confirm that strips SCMS. It works perfectly. I’ve got the digital out from my receiver going into it, then the output from the DTI going into a coax/optical splitter out to my DCC/DAT/MD decks.

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I’m having a similar issue with my DCC 951 but with the digital output from a PC sound card (M-Audio Audiophile 192). I can record to my Sony DAT and MD recorders with no problems but the DCC gives the prohibited message. The Audio Alchemy DTI seems a good solution but not cheap.

Has anyone tried using a microcontroller like an Arduino, ESP or STM, etc to strip the annoying bit?
I’m not unfamiliar with programming microcontrollers and might dig into it, Jac already provided a good starting point. It would be easier of course if someone already did some work.

In this case, try something else, you don’t need something fancy for perfect digital quality. Boards based on the PCM2707 connect via USB and are dirt cheap. The details would be interesting, but for this usecase it is far simpler and cheaper to try something else.

Hi Max, thanks, I realise these days there are cheap and easy solutions for my “problem”.
What intrigued me was if I could get a microcontroller to do the job.
More a proces of being able to catch and alter the digital music stream.