"Required" Music Player - Spyware / Crapware

SCCutler

SCCutler

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Spike Cutler
So I was copying our CD collection to the music directory on my PC so we could listen to it through the Audiotron music player (only CDs which we own).

Went to load an MCA disk (a Vince Gill Christmas album, FWIW), and it started an install process for a "Required Music Player"; will not play as a CD.

WTF? I know Sony tried to pull this a while back, were called on it, changed course.

How do they make a CD that an ordinary CD player sees as audio, but a PC cannot see except as data with programs, etc., and is there a workaround (besides suing the deceptively-trading ****-eating bastards for selling us a stunted product)?

Grr!
 
i think its just a sign, to not be listening to Vince Gill Christmas albums :)

My standard tech advise:

Buy a Mac :):)
 
Another rootkit, I see.

If it were me, I'd be taking the audio off of an external CD player and ripping it that way. Same way I do with vinyl.

But that's just me.
 
SCCutler said:
So I was copying our CD collection to the music directory on my PC so we could listen to it through the Audiotron music player (only CDs which we own).

Went to load an MCA disk (a Vince Gill Christmas album, FWIW), and it started an install process for a "Required Music Player"; will not play as a CD.

WTF? I know Sony tried to pull this a while back, were called on it, changed course.

How do they make a CD that an ordinary CD player sees as audio, but a PC cannot see except as data with programs, etc., and is there a workaround (besides suing the deceptively-trading ****-eating bastards for selling us a stunted product)?

Grr!
Click to expand...

Disable auto-run on CDs and you'll prevent it from running the software when you insert the CD. You still won't be able to play the music.

You should return the CD as being defective. These hybrid CDs don't meet the CD standard.

Still, DON'T BUY ANYTHING FROM SONY!
 
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hmm - I have a few of these hybrid CDs, usually, you can still get them to play by opening them in Windows Media Player. I hate it when they do that crap. I had a DVD do that to me a while ago.

to answer your question as to how they do it, you can do it yourself with Nero. Its a multisession CD. One session is a data CD, the other session is a music CD.
 
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wsuffa said:
If it were me, I'd be taking the audio off of an external CD player and ripping it that way. Same way I do with vinyl.
Click to expand...

Unless you have some type of digital output from the CD player and digital input into your computer you will have loss of quality. You are taking digital and changing it to analog and back into digital when you encode it on your PC.
 
So how do I get the CD-ROM to "see" the audio session?

FWIW, it is something called "Universal Media Player" from "Thinking Pictures, Inc.," of NYC.

This is a crockash!t.
 
jesse said:
Unless you have some type of digital output from the CD player and digital input into your computer you will have loss of quality. You are taking digital and changing it to analog and back into digital when you encode it on your PC.
Click to expand...

It's not nearly as bad as you think. It only gets really bad after 3-4 cycles. Radio stations have been playing off of CDs for years - running the audio through analog consoles and audio processing, and then using digital links that get reconverted to analog at the transmitters. This includes classical and jazz stations that run very light compression/processing and get high quality.

If you set the sample rate at or > 44.1, you'll generally be OK for a first dub.

The digital conversion loss is not as great as the digital compression loss. *If* the content on CD were compressed in, say, MP3, decoded to analog, and redigitized, the loss can be pretty significant. Somewhere, I have a recording of "what gets thrown away" in an MPEG compression.

Using a decent quality CD player will provide audio quality comparable to an old LP/vinyl. Some of us remember those pretty well... ;)
 
wsuffa said:
Using a decent quality CD player will provide audio quality comparable to an old LP/vinyl. Some of us remember those pretty well... ;)
Click to expand...

Some of us still have vinyl (and the turntable to listen to it with). :D
 
Ghery said:
Some of us still have vinyl (and the turntable to listen to it with). :D
Click to expand...

I packed up my Luxman when I moved from our rental house to the house we're in now, knowing full well that, as soon as I had an appropriate location constructed, I'd reinstall it.

That was 1992.

It's still packed.

Shame on me. :mad:
 
SCCutler said:
So how do I get the CD-ROM to "see" the audio session?

FWIW, it is something called "Universal Media Player" from "Thinking Pictures, Inc.," of NYC.

This is a crockash!t.
Click to expand...
Usually, all I do is open up the software I use to play CDs and tell it to play, and it plays.
 
I have not had any problem either. I use iTunes most of the time to play CDs and it plays all the ones I have. Even the ones I bought 3/$1 in China*.






* I don't think they were fake CDs as I had just seen on TV the Chinese government saying they cracked down on praters and I bought them just around the corner of the US embassy. I mean it was not like I bought their DVDs which were fake or even bothered to look at all the Rolex watches for $20 nor the Gucci/Loius Vitton/Coach bags that were also on the tables. Shoot the Chinese police were right there. They had to be real, right?
 
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smigaldi said:
They had to be real, right?
Click to expand...
Yes, they were real. Just like the Ralph Lauren Polo golf shirts I bought on the Star Ferry dock in Hong Kong. I bought the large size. Well, they were large.... if you were a child!

-Skip
 
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