Now here's a funny thing. While 'killing time' before last night hugely enjoyable Sarah Nicholls concert at The (packed out) Warehouse, I browsed around in the HMVs in Oxford Street. Among the reduced price discs there was double album of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and its companion Lélio, conducted by Martinon. I added it to the stack of discs I was carrying, took it to the counter and paid for them. Only later did I notice that it was not a pair of CDs, (as claimed on the case and Track listing, but an pseudo-CD which included the "COPY CONTROLLED" software. Since I wanted to make mp3s of the disc, to play on a portable player, I was a tad miffed. However, on bunging the first disc in this laptop's DVD drive and starting up EAC (Exact Audio Copy), 6 'tracks' were reported, 5 standard audio tracks and an extra one with a reported size of 173.17MB. Lo and behold, the 5 audio tracks of Symphony Fantastique ripped perfectly normally, with no obvious distortion. Now what sort of copy protection is that!? Admittedly the ripping process was very much slower than is usual.

Oh this is crazy. I have just tried the Lélio in a free-standing DVD/DVD Audio/CD player. It took ages to load and plays with occasional clicks. Looks like I will have to rips both pseudo-CDs' audio tracks and burn reliably playable ones. :-(