Isn't it outrageous...

May 11, 2006 3:09 PM

Surprise! Paul Simon's newest album works on an external CD player but not on either of my Macs. I assume this is a DRM issue (my experience, backed up by one Amazon review). The iBook says it can't recognize the CD and spits it out; the PowerBook says nothing and spits it out. Any ideas here, beyond bittorrent, returning the disc or initiating the class-action lawsuit? The label is Warner. There is no mention of DRM/compatibility on the disc.
posted by thejoshu to computers & internet (15 comments total)

But at least you can listen to the entire album on the website.
posted by mert at 3:31 PM on May 11, 2006

Is it a Dual Disk? I've heard that Macs have issues reading them. As a matter of fact, I believe there was a previous AskMe...
posted by lekvar at 3:32 PM on May 11, 2006

Nope, not a Dual Disc.
posted by thejoshu at 3:35 PM on May 11, 2006

Maybe you could rip it with an ubuntu live cd and see if that allows you to listen to it on a mac? Just a thought
posted by a007r at 3:46 PM on May 11, 2006

Oh wait.. I just realized that a live CD actually uses your CD drive :) unless you have two drives, or install ubuntu
posted by a007r at 3:52 PM on May 11, 2006

Another question: it works on my housemate's Windows PC, but it opens in iTunes and allows me to rip/burn as normal without asking me to install any DRM software. Could something else be going on here?
posted by thejoshu at 4:27 PM on May 11, 2006

If it goes to iTunes on the PC, you should be able to shut down that program and fire up some sort of player program (WMP, if nothing else) and directly play it.

You're not forced to use whatever program usurps the auto-play. (You can also override that using a right-click menu for the CD drive before you insert the CD.)
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 6:03 PM on May 11, 2006

the Amazon page for the disc has a few complaints about it not working on laptops/Macs, but only a few, as you've seen. googling was fruitless. how old are your portables? I've had CDs that were just plain bad act like that, and I've had drives reject discs because they were old (lasers wear out).

it let you rip on the Windows machine, though? you could rip the CD on your housemate's computer (use like Apple Lossless or something) and then burn back to CD and you'd have another copy of it that would be free of any DRM that might be on there. the fact that it let you rip makes me think there's no DRM, but maybe just a badly-mastered disc or problems with your computer.
posted by mrg at 7:02 PM on May 11, 2006

Have a look at the business side of the CD, particularly near the outer edge. If you can see an obvious break/line in surface within a few mm of the edge, you could try colouring that outer ring in with a black whiteboard marker.
posted by krisjohn at 8:34 PM on May 11, 2006

Steven - The issue isn't that I'm forced to use iTunes. This is a positive development: it's just to note that the PC doesn't give me any issues, while four Mac drives fail to load the disc.

mrg - I have now tried with four Mac drives between 2-3 years old, which all successfully play every other CD and DVD thrown at them. No luck. I imagine the reason there are only a few amazon reviews noting this is because the album only came out Tuesday. I have successfully used the PC with iTunes to rip/burn myself a working copy - but this doesn't solve the issue of buying a defective CD.

krisjohn - Good idea; I was thinking Sharpie but that made me too nervous! Other discs with the same outer ring work fine on my Mac -- though we could be discussing different types of outer rings; I don't know that any discs I've tried have any DRM lock.
posted by thejoshu at 8:43 PM on May 11, 2006

I had trouble playing a disk sometime ago - it came with it's own flash based playback for computers, which annoyed me and didn't work well. I ended up finding that while I couldn't seem to play it in a regular player (ie winamp), I could easily rip it using Cdex (freeware ripping for PCs, quite good and a small, neat program). So that may be an option, also though obviously not ideal. Cdex does rip as wav files or compressed (several codecs), so if it works, you can burn a second CD without much loss.
posted by jb at 5:23 AM on May 12, 2006

I think your problem is a computer that spits out a CD without specifically being told to. Doesn't that violate the second law of robotics?
posted by Hogshead at 6:01 AM on May 12, 2006

Send it back.
posted by mkultra at 8:48 AM on May 12, 2006

Odd... it runs fine in my dual 2GHz G5. Played it through about a dozen times already. Good thing I didn't read this before buying it yesterday.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 10:05 AM on May 12, 2006

For the benefit of future searchers, it doesn't work on my Mac either. Right now, I'm going to rip it on my dad's PC and then AIM the files over here.
posted by danb at 5:39 PM on July 3, 2006