Cannot Duplicate a CD

Question

Hi Folks,
I'm trying to duplicate a (audio) CD using the Disk Utility. I put the source CD into the optical drive and followed these instructions:
1. Insert the CD or DVD disc in your computer's optical drive and select it in the list of disks and volumes.
(OK. So good so far. Btw, I chose the entire disk - not just the disk session, although I tried both eventually)
2. Choose File > New > "Disk Image from (name of disc)."
Here's my problem, right there. The "Disk Image from (name of disc)." option is grayed out, thus I cannot choose it. Where's the problem??
And for what it's worth, I tried it with different source CDs.
Thanks for listening. I hope someone can help.

Answer 1

Your problems are not due to Disk Utility bugs, copy protection, or industry plots to stop Apple from making this easy.
All the disk utility programs such as dd and Disk Utility are designed for data disks. Data CDs are recorded with 2048 bytes of data (plus some error detecting and recovery bits) per sector and have a directory (e.g. HFS, ISO, FAT) showing file names and what sectors contain the files' data. The Finder can read the CD's directory and access the files from the CD. When files from a data CD are copied to a hard drive, each 2048 byte sector is copied to four 512 byte sectors on the hard drive. If it is copied via the Finder, the file names are put in the hard drive directory, and the files are accessed like any other files on the hard drive. When Disk Utility is used to make a disk image from a data CD, the entire CD (directory, files, and unused sectors) is copied to one file on the hard drive. When this file is mounted (by double-clicking, or via Disk Utility) the computer treats it as a disk drive with its own directory.
Audio CDs are different. Each sector contains 2352 bytes of data plus error detecting and recovery bits. There are fewer error correcting bits, to make up for the extra data, so the total sector size is the same as a data CD's. (Fewer error recovery bits mean more uncorrectable errors from a bad disk, but for audio, the player can blank out, or fill in for bad spots, so it won't sound too bad.) There are no file names or directories on an audio CD. There is an index that contains the starting end ending times for each track, and some other recording information. The rest of the disk is just one long series of sectors containing the audio data(and maybe CD-Text or sub-code data). Disk utilities cannot handle an audio CD. The sectors can not be divided into 512 byte pieces, there is no directory, and there are no file names.
iTunes can handle audio CDs. It looks in a data base on the internet to try and find file names for the tracks, it can do extra error correcting, and converts the audio to standard disk file formats. The finder will show .aiff files that correspond to the tracks on an audio CD, but this information is made up by the Finder, it is not on the CD. Because the audio CD format is so different from a data disk, Finder and Disk Utility cannot copy these CDs. iTunes, with the error correction enabled, and a lossless (AIFF, WAV, Apple lossless) importing format selected, does a good job of copying CDs, but the copies will not be identical because iTunes does not save the gap lengths, or recording information from the original CD. The actual audio will be identical. To get a better copy you need special software. I think Toast from:
<http://www.roxio.com/en/products/toast/index.jhtml> can do it.