My understanding is that the PS1 copy protection encoded the first pits and peaks in a way that a normal CD drive’s error correction logic would tolerate, but i

My understanding is that the PS1 copy protection encoded the first pits and peaks in a way that a normal CD drive’s error correction logic would tolerate, but in such a way that the special firmware on the PS1 could detect the profile of the “errors” and ensure they matched expectations. Consumer CD Burners didn’t have firmware (or maybe even the physical capability) to reproduce these “errors”. Imagine a vinyl record where the start of the track has a groove that isn’t perfectly tracing the perimeter, but is actually a low amplitude sine wave of a certain frequency, waving in to the center and out to the perimeter. Any record player could trace the groove correctly, despite the fact that there is a low amplitude sine wave, and you’d hear the audio correctly (error correction). But a special record player could even detect the sine wave and reject records that don’t have it. I’m hand-waving away the fact that you’d get a little bit of wow and flutter from the sine wave, but you get the idea.