Taky Cheung asked,
|| Sony MDS-PC3 has an optical output. Can I use it to copy digitally to
|| another MD? or, I need to copy to PC first and then MD?
The Rat replied,
| That depends on the MD source. If it is marked "SCMS Ultimate" then you
| cannot make a digital domain copy from it. Commercial audio CDs are marked
| "SCMS Penultimate", allowing for one digital copy, which is marked
| "Ultimate" and cannot be copied in the digital domain[1].
| [1] Without an SCMS stripper, anyway.
(I don't like to use the word "ultimate" for that because, while it literally
does mean "last" and technically is accurate, it's more frequently used to
mean "last in an ever improving series" and thus "best possible." So rather
than a cultured Latin root I go for a vulgar French one and prefer "final"
for the purpose at hand here.)
Where Rat said that SCMS-penultimate sources allow one digital copy, it means
that they allow one *generation* of digital copying. (Sorry, Rat, I don't
know which pronoun to use for you.) One can replay an SCMS-penultimate
source and copy it digitally again, but every copy will be SCMS-final. It
can have any number of daughters, but it will never be a grandmother (unless
you make an analog transfer or otherwise circumvent SCMS).
It is also possible -- but extremely unlikely -- that the source tracks on CD
or MD will be coded SCMS-unlimited, in which case digitally-transfered copies
should also be SCMS-unlimited and so forth for as many generations as you can
stand before the ATRAC artifacts build up too much.
| But if you make an analog copy of that CD to MD then the MD is marked
| "Penultimate"[2] and one digital copy of it can be made.
| [2] IIRC.
The Rat recalls correctly. When a consumer-grade MD or CDR recorder receives
an analog input signal and uses its own on-board ADC to digitize it, the
recording is coded SCMS-penultimate, and one generation of digital copying
is allowed.
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