Last Track Inaccurate

[Enjolras]

Hi.

Today was my first day using dbPowerAmp and CD Ripper. I'm ripping using two different Plextor PX-880SA drives (simultaneously running two separate instances of CD Ripper), 64-bit Windows 7, 8 megs of RAM. I'm ripping to Apple Lossless.

I have set the Secure settings exactly as suggested in the "CD Ripper Secure Ripping Setup Guide" guide. C2 Error Pointers is on, I am Ejecting After Rip (with all the default sub-options; sample offset is set to +6 as recommended for this drive), and Read into Lead-in or Lead-out is checked.

I also have 4 DSP's running: Replay Gain, Audio CD - Hidden Track Silence Removal, Audio CD - Silence Track Deletion, and Move Destination File on Error.

The problem I'm running into: in about half of the CD's I've run so far, the last track is "AccurateRip: Inaccurate" though a Secure read happens. So I'll get:

10 Tracks Ripped: 9 Accurate, 1 Secure
11 Tracks Ripped: 10 Accurate, 1 Secure
19 Tracks Ripped: 18 Accurate, 1 Secure (Warning)
5 Tracks Ripped: 4 Accurate, 1 Secure (Warning)

The 1 track that isn't accurate is always the last one.

Any suggestions on what might be causing it, and therefore what I should go do?

Thanks for the help,

Peter (Enjolras)

[Spoon]

Re: Last Track Regularly Inaccurate

Try a different drive?

[Enjolras]

Re: Last Track Inaccurate

After a bit of trial and error, the fix seems to be to uncheck "Read into Lead-in or Lead-out".

Still a bit more validation to do, but that looks like it. If I find it's something else, I'll re-post.

Peter (Enjolras)

[MnM]

Re: Last Track Inaccurate

I have also noticed a tendency for the last track not to be found in AR. Rare, but seems to be several times more frequent than any other single track missing from AR. I did try try a different drive (my machine has a Philips DVD-ROM and a TSST DVD RW) and saw the same result in both:

First 8 tracks found in AR, confidence 2
9th and final track not found in AR, confidence 12, secure rip

So I reckon I have a less popular pressing - no prob - but why the failure to match on the last track?

Hmmm - the CRCs for the track given by each of my drives match, with the read into lead-in/out box both checked and unchecked (don't think my drives support it). Nevertheless this post rang a bell when I read it. I'm stretching my recall a little but the last track mismatches seem to happen when the confidence level is very low for the rest of the CD. I wonder if there's a tendency for worse scratches to occur on the very outside of discs, so final tracks are marginally less well represented in AR?

Peter, would be interesting to know the confidence level for the tracks located in AR on the CDs you mentioned. I realise you've fixed it since - do you get different CRCs for the last track with read into lead-in/out checked?

No biggy, just curious.

Cheers,
Matt

[Enjolras]

Re: Last Track Inaccurate

Hi Matt.

Here's where I am...

I added another drive -- this one a Sony Optiarc AD-7241S.

I still often have the last track not match in AR, but rip securely. I find, however, that if I switch drives (sometimes even between the two Plextors) and re-rip that last track it will then match in AR.

Having now ripped close to 200 CD's, I've been able to get every track to match in AR except for 2. It's a bit annoying due to the extra time it takes to re-rip, but I get there in the end.

Weird.

Peter

P.S. I also have a hypothesis that this occurs much more frequently when I'm running multiple instances of CD Ripper to rip multiple CD's at once. I haven't fully tested this out, though -- it's just a sense I get.

[MnM]

Re: Last Track Inaccurate

Nice one Peter.

I almost always have 2 instances running simultaneously at the moment, as I'm doing my initial rips (also around 200 so far). I find most of the last track action that I get is on the Philips drive, though that one works at least twice as fast so sees more CDs. So can't help you on your multiple instance theory I'm afraid, I'll try using the slower drive by itself when it comes to re-ripping the bad tracks though, will update.

But there seem to be many times when the later tracks, often the last track, go into ultra secure ripping before finally getting an AR match, so I still wonder about damage being more prevalent on the outer disc.

Conclusion is not to lose sleep, I think! But if you can be bothered, I'd like to know what AR confidence level you get on the inner tracks for the 2 CDs with the unmatched final tracks.

[Enjolras]

Re: Last Track Inaccurate

Hi Matt.

The latest for me: with my 3 drives running, about 80% of the time the 3rd drive (a Sony Optiarc AD-7241S) will have its last track rip Securely but not Accurately (even though the entire rest of the CD rips Accurately).

The AR confidence level has no impact on this whatsoever -- I've done lots of discs, everything from AR 2 to 200.

What I'm doing is removing the CD and putting it into another drive, then re-ripping that one song. That song always rips Accurately.

I hope this helps... and Spoon if you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them! :smile2:

Peter

[Spoon]

Re: Last Track Inaccurate

Personally I do not rate the optiarc drives...

[Enjolras]

Re: Last Track Inaccurate

Hi Spoon.

I don't think it's the drive itself, as if you look back at the first post of this thread, I was having this problem when I only had the 2 Plextor drives. The second drive would have the last track rip Securely but not Accurately.

As soon as I added the 3rd drive (the Sony), all of a sudden the "problem" with the second Plextor drive went away, and moved to the Sony.

So I think it has something to do with the "last" drive in my system. Maybe something in the BIOS or motherboard drivers... or maybe an oddity in Win 7 or 64-bit...

Weird, I know.

Peter

[MnM]

Re: Last Track Inaccurate

Peter, that is bizarro-land indeed.

This won't solve your issue, but looking at my accurate rip results for successfully ripped/matched CDs, Blur and Blondie are vaguely interesting:

Blondie - Parallel Lines: Max confidence 95 (track 9), Min 82 (final track). Next Min is 85. Quite a lot of variation on that CD.
Blur - Blur: Max confidence 200, on all tracks apart from track 4 (198) and final track (way down on 191)
Blur - Leisure: Max 118, Min 113 (final track)
Blur - Modern Life is rubbish: Max 49, Min 45 (final track)
Blur - Parklife: Max 184, Min 177 (track 9), next Min 179 (track 12 and final track)
Blur - The great Escape - Max 13, Min 11. Most tracks including final have 12.

Clearly some tracks are better represented where they have been released as singles, but there do seem to be a number of cases where the last track is less well represented, although this is by no means the case for all CDs. Odd that it seems to happen only for some CDs, and that when it does happen, confidence is only marginally less - I'd have thought it would be much less, if there is a lot of variability on reading the final track. Perhaps the sample isn't representative, or perhaps the issue is there, and AR2 will help to sort it.

Anyway, it's a minor issue (perplexing though), but the only way to go further is to get some stats across AR as a whole, so if it's of any interest to the main man, hope these examples are useful.

[Enjolras]

Re: Last Track Inaccurate

Bizarro-land update: the last track issue on the Sony drive seems to be fixed. I've had to connect an external hard drive to the computer over the last few days, so I wonder if that did something. But honestly, who knows.

As for the last track usually having a lower AccurateRip score than the others, I agree that this seems to be a trend. As an example, the CD's I ripped as I wrote this have:

Range of 81-84 for the first 10 tracks, but a 79 for the last.
Range of 68-71 for the first 15 tracks (most 70 or 71), but 64 for the last.
Range of 23-26 for the first 20 tracks -- and 26 for the last.

So it happens frequently, but not all the time.

Regards,

{eter

[pjc2]

Re: Last Track Inaccurate

Is there a difference between the CRC that dbPoweramp displays and the AccurateRip CRC?

I ask because I'm trying to rip a disc that's not in the AR database, and I'm trying to interpret the results.

All but the last track rip consistently with identical CRCs between two different machines and drives, so I'm pretty confident of those rips.

But the last track varies. I've gotten 4 different results consistently:

1) Drive A with lead-in/out
2) Drive A without lead-in/out
3) Drive B with lead-in/out
4) Drive B without lead-in/out

Each of those 4 consistently produces the exact same CRC multiple times, but all 4 CRCs are different.

I presume this is due to varying amounts of silence at the end of the track, but how do I tell? How does AR deal with this kind of variation?

[Spoon]

Re: Last Track Inaccurate

>Is there a difference between the CRC that dbPoweramp displays and the AccurateRip CRC?

Yes, AccurateRip CRC is designed to be last/first track consistent across drives.

[pjc2]

Re: Last Track Inaccurate

>Is there a difference between the CRC that dbPoweramp displays and the AccurateRip CRC?

Yes, AccurateRip CRC is designed to be last/first track consistent across drives.

Great -- where do I look to find the AccurateRip CRC for the last track?

[Spoon]

Re: Last Track Inaccurate

If you enable log writing it will be written to the log.