It was just too good to be true, sitting there on the Circuit City shelf, all plump and ready for the picking -- a new plug-and-play external CD burner. No screwdrivers, no complex setup or SCSI connections -- or so the packaging said. I had been waiting for this, so it was time to bust out the plastic.
I remembered wanting to check out Hewlett-Packard's CD-Writer Music when I first read about it in August. The friendly sales guy told me it used the super fast, super simple USB port, and had all kinds of great features for personalizing my music collection. And I had the money (US$300) to burn.
But while I thought I was buying one of the first CD burners for simpletons, what I was really getting was one of the first drives designed to appease the royalty-hungry record industry.
The first sign of trouble was when I got it home and read the requirements to see if my clone PC was up to the job. Some people might have done this in the store, but not my style. Windows 98, the manual said. Ouch. So after spending what seemed like an eternity wiping Win95 off my computer, reformatting the drive, and installing Win98 I got down to business.
Thankfully, the bundled Sonic Foundry Jukebox software installation was pretty smooth, with wizards and all that automated jazz that makes it hard to mess up.
So I set off to burn my first disc compilation, a Tom Jones meets Run DMC and the P-Funk all stars mix. The CD audio was translated, before my unbelieving eyes, into a Windows Media Audio (WMA) file that was stored on my hard drive. I had some reservations about using the new Windows Media format after attending the launch party earlier this year, but figured I'd give it a go.
Oops -- when I went to burn the disc, a "buffer underrun" error message got in my face, and the job was aborted. Buffer underrun sounded like a serious geek alert, so I broke for a cool, refreshing beverage.
I looked at the requirements again, and aside from Win98, the burner also wanted a 166Mhz processor, at least 32MB RAM, and a bunch of extra hard drive space. My machine was all that and more, so I unsuccessfully tried to have the drive write CD audio tracks at the advertised 4x speed, then 2x, before finally being able to burn a few tracks at 1x, which took about 5 minutes per track.
When I went to listen to the CD on my stereo, though, there were noticeable gaps in the songs, and it sounded kinda like the 8-track in my old '75 Cadillac Coupe de Ville.
I then discovered that Windows Media files would only write at 1x, so I didn't really have any choice in the matter anyway.
Another limitation with the drive is that it will only burn data on CD-R "consumer audio media," or CD-Audio, discs rather than normal CD-R or CD-RW discs. This limitation is a drag because the CD-Audio discs can cost twice as much as standard CD-R discs -- US$4 versus $1-2 per -- because the record industry gets a royalty payment on each CD-Audio disc.
That was enough frustration for one day, so I bailed.
The next day I took the burner to work -- where I could use a Win98 laptop with a faster processor and loads of RAM to see if things improved. This time, the software wouldn't recognize the IBM ThinkPad's CD-ROM drive, so I finally broke down and did the unthinkable: I called tech support.
The HP help-desk guy told me to use the burner drive to read the CDs, and then swap in the blank disc after files were saved to the hard drive. Yeah, if you say so. Now I was finally able to burn them at 1x and produce a disk that actually sounded pretty good.
But when I asked about some of the other issues I had with the product, the surprisingly candid tech support guy said, "You know, you don't have to use the software that was bundled with our product, see, there's this ..."
Now we're getting somewhere.
One of my original questions was why HP's CD-Writer Music wouldn't let me copy a CD mix I had previously recorded.
And why could I only burn at 1x, via the Windows Media format, when the drive was being advertised as a 4x drive? And why couldn't I burn a regular CD-R disc in the drive?
So I called the folks at HP and Sonic Foundry to get some answers.
Apparently, one of the protections built into the Siren software --put in to appease the gods of the music industry -- is the "Serial Copy Management System" (SCMS), which is used to prevent multiple copies of digital music being made. The SCMS -- ironically pronounced "scums" -- bit adds information to the data stream so that it cannot be recopied.
With professional recording decks and higher-end Sonic Foundry software, the SCMS information can be eliminated, but with Siren's mass-market software it's locked in.
"With Siren being much more of a mass-appealing product, with people that are unaware of how pirating issues affect the industry, we are probably going to put in some protective barriers just to let them know that we are really taking the high road on that issue," said Dave Chaimson, a product manager with Sonic Foundry.
George Prokop, product manager for the CD-Writer Music said that HP wanted to respect the wishes of the recording industry even though its Secure Digital Music Initiative isn't cooked yet.
"There may be faster ways to copy data, but not recognizing copyright issues, which was one of our number one goals," said Prokop.
"People ask, 'Are you SDMI compliant?' We can't tell, because the spec isn't solid enough to know. But we know the direction they're moving, and we'll do the best job we can meeting those needs," explained Prokop.
"Our total solution will only work with the CD-R digital audio media, so that if copyrighted material is being copied, then we meet the direction and goals of SDMI."
On a recommendation from a friend, I decided to get a copy of Adaptec's new Easy CD Creator 4 as a faster alternative. I installed the software on my home computer and burned a CD track, all within about 10 minutes.
No buffer underrun problems this time, and it allowed me to use a CD-R disc and burn at 4X, thwarting the wishes of the RIAA while speeding up the process immensely.
Easy CD Creator also allows you to copy discs you've previously burned, record music from LPs, and damn near anything else you would want to do with a drive. So finally, after a few days of wrangling, I got what I wanted out of the drive.
It's hard to fault HP for designing a drive that takes copyright protection seriously, but its also hard to accept a drive that cripples its own capabilities with restrictive software. Granted, the workaround is fairly simple -- i.e., buy and install new CD-storage software -- but why should I have to shell out another $50-$100 and install extra software after I already burned $300 on the drive?
I realized that the hoops I had to jump through to get the CD-Writer Music to perform is only a harbinger of hassles to come: As SDMI makes its way into the mainstream next year (or the year after?) hardware manufacturers will be forced to support the specifications or meet the RIAA in court.
I've spent a good chunk of my income throughout my life on music -- from 8-tracks in grade school, to LPs in middle school, to $20 concert T-shirts, and, for some 15 years, $15 CDs -- and I've earned a few liberties when it comes to mixing and matching my music collection. I don't think I need the RIAA policing me in my own home.
My guess is that I'm not alone.
