Guide to Copy Protect your Audio CD

Many of you already has a CD Writer to burn your audio files and give / share it with your friend. But did you know that you can also protect those Audio CD so your friend can't distribute / sell it to other (at least for the not tech savvy user) ? Well .. if that’s what you can try using a free Audio CD Copy Protection software available on the internet. The exact method to burn it is rather confusing especially for those who’s not familiar to image creating from CD. But if you already knew how to burn an audio cd and creating iso image from cd / dvd, you can read this guide on how to copy protect your audio cd

The first step is you must already have this program available / installed on your beloved Windows computer :

• CloneCD : It’s a shareware program from Elby.de (at first) and now it’s a Slysoft Products .. as a side note i was using the original CloneCD from Elby.de when i'm using this copy protection but i think the SlySoft CloneCD will works too (just let me know if it's doesn't work for you ..it's doesn't.hurt to try something new, right ?)
• CAP : You can download it from here directly because i don't know where’s the author site (actually this is an old program and i'm using it since 2002)
• and of course the last program is your favorite CD Burning Program, for example Nero Burning ROM or other CD Burning program
• Optional : If you don’t want to waste your Blank CD, i suggest you download Daemon Tools too .. and another copy protection software at the bottom of this guide if you’re already familiar with copy protection / cd stuff ;)

Note: You must have the CloneCD and CAP first before continue because it's not going to work without those programs. And just like i said before you must already know how to burn an audio cd using your program and create image files using CloneCD

• The first step is Create a compilation of your audio cd (yes, this is important because what are you going to protect if you don't burn it first). But don’t forget to give a small space to insert the copy protection into the cd

Note: If you are using Nero and has Daemon Tools or Nero Image Drive, choose to save it as Image instead of burning it directly into a blank cd .. so you don't waste your precious blank cd. And you can do it by choosing Image Recorder as the Recorder in the Nero Recorder Dialogue and after Nero finished create the CD Audio Image, mount it using Daemon Tools or Nero Image Drive

• After mounting the cd audio image into the virtual drive, run CloneCD and choose to create a CD Image from the mounted audio cd image
• Wait until CloneCD finished creating the CD Image in CCD format, and then run CAP and open the created CCD image using CAP and choose the appropiate time (i'm usually using 30 Seconds at the end of the Audio CD) but that’s depend on the free space given when you’re creating your audio cd at the first step .. and don't forget to press PROTECT (just in case you didn't / forget to press that important button) :P
• After another waiting time, it’s time to run the CloneCD again and this time you’re going to burn it into a blank cd directly unlike before … and wait untill the burn process complete .. and you’re finished creating a homemade audio cd copy protection

And another note :

Dont forget to test your copy protected audio cd first using a CD Player before distributing it (just in case you want to sell it) .. and if you’re already familiar with the above steps you can try using CCD-Lock to protect your audio cd too .. and actually this CCD Lock is my favorite program because you can do another neat thing :)

Here’s the download link for CCD Lock (as i can't find the original author site, i put it in my webhost here).. and yet another note (well i think you’ve already seen at my blogs description / tagline that my blogs is all about Daily Notes of a computer freak not a geek) :P

Hopefully this guide can be usefull for those who want to copy protect their cd :)