What's Muzak's CD Protection!?

i somehow googled for "cd-bgm" and ended up finding this site:

http://www.icdia.org/


on it i found this:

"What is CD-BGM?
CD-BGM or CD-BackGround Music is a type of CD defined by Philips, Sanyo and Shinano-Kenshi in the mid 80s. Sometimes the system is being refered to as BMS (Background Music System). CD-BGM is used to store up to 10 hours of audio to use a background music in stores, shopping malls, etc. CD-BGM uses ADPCM level B mono audio to accomplish this. The music was stored in 8 tracks, all of which were devided in titles. Usually there were about 15 titles per track, resulting in about 120 songs per disc (about 8 hours). Although dedicated professional CD-BGM players were made available to play the discs (of which the Philips BMS 3000 was the most well-known), every CD-BGM disc also needs to include a CD-i application to allow for playback on a CD-i player.

It is not defined what features this application should include, as long it allows for the music to be reproduced on a CD-i player. This is why the early CD-BGM discs from Sanyo showed a screen devided in two halfs, with the upper half displaying 'start', and the lower half displaying 'stop'! Actually, these discs were the first commercially released discs for CD-i ever. Fortunately, Philips put some more attention to its CD-i application for CD-BGM. It show a list of all tracks that are available on the disc, which can then be selected for playback. Several hundreds of CD-BGM titles were made by Philips alone. Note: you cannot buy CD-BGM discs, they could only be 'rented' by professional users from selected Philips partners."


cd-i discs can't be used on a pc because its written using a differnt filesystem.

(for the computer geniuses: in personal computing the iso-9660 format and its joliet-variant are the most well known and widely used systems, but cd-i discs use the filesystem format that is based on cd-i's operating systems os-9... it allows for 28 character filenames)

if you just want to check out the contents of a disc, you can use the cd-i filesystem driver for win 95/98/me written by vahur sinijarv from estonia. cd-i discs can be accessed in a similar way as a cd-rom disc, using win explorer. basically.. you can still only view filenames. windows nt, 2000, and xp can use iso buster to extract audio and from a cd-i disc.

you'll get something similar to sergeville's post


lastly, i found a page of cd-i authoring software:

http://www.icdia.org/sw_pc/authoringtools.html

"...you will find some utilities and applications to author your own CD-i titles on a PC. These tools are especially designed for CD-i developers. Note that some of these tools are 16-bit Windows 3.x applications which will sometimes work fine in Windows 95/98/NT/2000, but lack the use of long file names."

of the authoring tools at the above link.. if i'm right, only HAL90 1.5.2 can create music cd-i's or cd-bgm's as used by the cd-i standalone players....

anybody here know how to use hal90? or feel like looking into using it?

.:: {H} {E} {L} {F} {R} {I} {Z} {Z} {L} {E} ::.

Right guys, from what i've read about the whole muzak / CDi / CD-BGM specs, i'm now gonna attempt to write a CDi using some weird old tools from the CDi specification website. the software is on their website to download for free. bit fiddly to use but after about half an hours worth of fiddling it seems to show vague progress. I'll burn a trial cd tonight and take it into work tomorrow to test on the muzak player. If it works or shows anything positive i'll post again tomorrow evening with a step by step guide to how i got the damn thing working.
Fingers crossed

Joll

Any success on the mastering? I'd love to see a tool that just takes a pile of wav files and squishes 'em into a cd-bgm image file. I bet if someone had an image of an existing bgm disc, the format could easily be replicated. I'm picturing a pile of Perl... heheh.

thank goodness I stimbled on this thread. Just in time too. I am going ot try out the dip switch methods described tomorrow night, and see how they work.

Has anyone used the HAL90 download to create a "muzak" cd? Also, will the muzak player play MP3 cd's with the dip switches in the right position or only regular 80 minute audio cd's???

To all of those dealing with those Muzak blues, I might just have the cure for you Ok what you need to do is turn the muzak palyer around so that you can see the back of it. Now looking at the back you will see on the right hand side a switch pannel its very small. You will notice that they are all numbered and that #'s 1 and 2 should be flipped up, what you want to do is flip #4 up and volla, You can now play normal cd's in your muzak player. This little feature saved many employee's at my company I hope it can do the same for you.

Hey, interesting thing about the muzak players is that they definitely play regular cd's, but the DIP switches in the back have to be set correctly. I'm a manager at a resteraunt that uses muzak, and my boss told me that the switches all have to be lined together in a straight row, but he's not sure if it's up or down. I'm not sure if he's right or not? haha, but i'm weary to try it, because my friend told me that muzak cd's use a different frequency laser, and that when you flip the switches, it changes how the cd is read... so I'm kind of hesitant to just start flipping switches.

anybody that knows what there doing cause i don't check out this link it may help to copy or create cds that are playable on systemsn without the dipswitches. http://www.icdia.org/sw_pc/index.html

I think the info bellow is the final piece to the puzzle!

CDRWIN: Supports the recording of AUDIO, CDROM (Mode1), CDROM-XA (Mode2), CD-I, Mixed-Mode, and Multisession discs. Unique CUE SHEET scripting language gives you 100% custom control over the disc layout. No two second gaps between tracks like other software! Powerful disc backup utility that preserves the exact layout of the original disc including all subcode information. ISO9660 disc mastering (with Joliet long filename support for Windows 95/98/NT). Supports Karaoke CD+G discs (on compatible equipment). Automatic MP3 file decoding... MP3 files can be recorded to an audio disc without converting them to WAV files first. Supports CD-TEXT discs (on compatible equipment) and includes a graphical text editor. Bootable CDROM support. Only disc-at-once software that supports all CDROM types on the Philips/Kodak/HP family of CD recorders. Supports disc UPC and track ISRC numbers (on most recorders). Supports disc transporters/duplicators from Kodak and Discmatic for fast and unattended disc replication.

Find Soft @ http://phazeddl.com/sdgfh98.php?q=CDRWIN

Hopefully this helps!

Has anyone managed to create their own functional CD-I disk yet?

Listen, I have a DMX ProDISC (ProFusion X) player at work. Flipping the 1st dip-switch "up" will allow it to play normal CDs. But this is not what I seek. I, too, would like to be able to extract the music data and burn my own playable CD-i s using their encryption/encoding methedologies. It seems as if Muzak and DMX use similar coventions. It also seems as if the older(?) ProFusion D and/or ProFusionXL CDs can be read directly from your CDROM drive and use a sort of Linux Loader (LILO) and therefor must be self booting. Each track (song) is clearly visible but obviously compressed and/or encrypted. There is no header information as to allude to which procedures were employed. They also seem to have been created with mkisofs, whereas the ProDiscs are strictly CD-i s and are only visible using IsoBuster or the sort. It would be great if someone could crack this dilemma.

haha, copying the copy protection.

LOL

ROFLMAO

Has anyone yet deciphered the music data on these CD-BGM CDs? I can post on from the self-booting CDs. But the CD-i s are the ones I'd like to see cracked. The normal extension on this file is ".PFC" it is from a DMX ProFusionD disc.-erhaps cracking this might lead som insight into the 500meg "music" file on the DMX ProDISC dscs

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Last edited by pete914; 17-04-2006 at 14:49.

"crack*" is not an appropriate word for using in this forum. IMHO.

Thanks for the advi.

What I would really like to do....

Take some of the ENCOMPASS XD discs we have piled up here, rip & burn my "own" mix. I would be happy with any format that could be played on the player during off hours. Not all their music is that bad... sort of a, "Best of MUZAK".

Will their discs play on any CD-I player?

Has anyone figured out how to extract the .MPA files into some playable format... like .MP3?

-Thanks!

What ".mpa files"???

Usually this is just standard WAVE/AIFF audio, CDDA standard 44.1 khz 16-bit stereo.

sometimes you crack me up chief!!
you go from mod to person in a heartbeat!!
its like that mpa threw u for a loop!!
haaaaaa
thanks

Eh???

Ah, wait. From a commercial cd this mpa files would be standard mpeg1 layer 2 files, mostly 192 or 160 kbit, stereo, 44.1khz.

Anyone had any luck getting their own CD's onto the system that can be read by the ProfusionX? Or anyone managed to get any audio from the box in a readable format?

Also has anyone got any CD's full of audio that work on the machines, that are sent to the relevant shops each month etc, that they are willing to sell?

Cheers.

Muzak no longer uses the CD-I format. All currect CDI clients are being converted to the XD format. I'm confused as to why your employer, Surgeville, opted for only 118 titles. The XD format holds up to 1500 titles [MPA format].

The vaa.txt file is used for the lcd display. It shows the current title and artist while the song is played.

I've been one of those service techs for Muzak since 1989. When I began employment, there were only 3 selections. Adult contemporary, elevator music, and even crappier elevator music. They have come a long way in the past 17 yrs. Any song you can think of is "Muzak" now. It is up to YOUR EMPLOYER to determine which genre and songs THEY want your clients to listen to while dining or shopping.

A tip, if your employer uses an XD player, never power it off. Otherwise, you WILL hear the same 8 hours of music everyday as the playlist starts over when powered back up.

Good luck on your "ripping"

Great. I am SURE that the whole "play any cd on a DMX player has been replied to 50 times here!!! SO, on with everyone elses question!
HOW DO WE GET MUSIC OFF OFF A DMX/MUZAK DISC!!!!
I work for a certin somewhere that gets new discs every month. Some of the music is good and I want it, but these mixes are IMPOSSIBLE to get unless you know how to "make a backup" of the original cd.
I have found a way to record it from the DMX player, but I am not so sure my managers would like me messing with the back of it.....
Any thoughts?

Working on it. ISObuster can extract the data. I'm searching for a player for it.

the CD-i association has moved to the UK:
http://www.icdia.co.uk

more cd-i info.
http://www.ee.washington.edu/conselec/W94/shou/shou.htm

If interested I found “CD-i Burning Guide” that details how to use CDRWin, ISOBuster, DiscJuggler and/or CloneCD to burn and extract CD-i images.

http://home.arcor.de/blurb68/cd-i.burning.guide.new.pdf

As jpagac states above the trick now is to find a CD-i software player for CD-i Audio.

BeLooken

dip switch breakdown:
1: autoplay
2: autorepeat
3: shuffle
4: enable regular music cds
5-8: ??

and so far no luck on cracking the music from muzak. All music convertors and players failed to create anything musical. According to the muzak forums, they used a 'custom program' to encode the stuff.