Let's put the digital to bed!

[beyer@frith.egr.msu.edu (Don W Beyer)]

I really wonder why this topic is being kicked around in gaffa, but
while it's here...

1)  It is not at all hard to go into almost ANY CD player and grab the
    digital data being sent to the DAC's.  This is all you really want
    anyway, as this data stream would have no "copy-enable bit" or any
    other such data other than pure 16 bit digital audio.

2)  The rub is that the sample rates of DAT and CD players are different
    enough to confound any simple attempts at direct digital copy.  I
    have heard that there might be players to record at 44.1KHz, but as
    to availability in the U.S...?

The real place to grab the data from would be right off the disc itself,
starting with the delta modulated audio/correction bits, and build up a
seperate data output to be sent to a DAT recorder.  While the encoding
algorithms are well documented, it would require quite a bit of DSP
hardware and hacking into a player.

How did this get started, anyway?

"all the above statements and opinions are generated by a 10 line LISP
program..."