Some More C2 Error Pointer, AccurateRip, and USB Ripping Questions

[RetroBurner]

Good evening! I have several questions about C2 Error Pointers, AccurateRip, and ripping discs over USB as opposed to SATA.

1) I recently purchased a BD-RE BH14NS48 (supposedly the most reliable drive according to AccurateRip). I loaded a Marker Test CD, a CD with a bunch of scratches, and a regular CD to test C2 Pointer support. All of these discs immediately report that C2 error pointers are supported without spending any time reading the disc. I am assuming that this means that C2 error pointers are NOT actually supported. Is this a correct assumption?

2) If C2 error pointers are not supported by this drive, how important are they for CD ripping? Would I be better off using my ASUS DRW-24B1ST a CD drive instead, which has an identical offset to my "new" drive and DOES support C2 error pointers?

3) Do I need to use 8 KB C2 pointer transfers over USB 3.0? I assume that if they are needed for Firewire connections, they would also be needed for USB 3.0, but would like confirmation.

4) What is the recommended number of Ultra Secure passes for drives with verified C2 pointer support? What about for drives that DO NOT have C2 pointer support?

5) If C2 error pointers are not actually supported by a drive but are turned on in the CD Ripper Options, how would that effect the accuracy of the CD rip? dbPoweramp is telling me that I was able to get accurate rips on my BD-RE BH14NS48, and doing post-ripping AccurateRip testing in PerfectTunes seems to support that assessment, but is this an accurate conclusion?

6) Are there any other pieces of software besides dbPoweramp that can test if C2 error pointers are supported by a given CD/DVD/BD drive?

7) Is there a way to upload my AccurateRip results for the discs that I have ripped after ripping has been completed (i.e. without AccurateRip turned on at the time of digital audio extraction)?

8) I am unable to rip some discs with any of my external CD/DVD/BD drives. They just come up as "Error" in dbPoweramp. However, I have a ASUS DRW-24B1ST inside an older computer with a SATA connection that can rip these discs just fine. Why am I unable to rip these discs over USB? Would it be prudent to always have a machine with SATA connections for ripping instead of relying on computers connected to external disc rippers via USB 3?

Thank you very much in advance for your assistance!

[Spoon]

1. Insert a pristine disc, it should run a long time and not find C2 for a long time, or at all.
2. C2 helps, it is difficult to say how much in comparison without
3. Not normally
4. ultra secure is there to try to find bad rips with tracks which are not in AccurateRip, there is a detection hole, with c2 that hole is smaller, but still there
5. If the test detected C2 but when ripping does not, it suggests it is working.

7. no
8. Perhaps the drive needs a powered USB hub? error means the drive is giving no data at all

[RetroBurner]

1. Insert a pristine disc, it should run a long time and not find C2 for a long time, or at all.

It just instantly says “C2 Support Detected” no matter what disc I put in (pristine or not).

3. Not normally

Does it do any harm to leave the 8KB C2 Error Pointers on over USB 3.0?

5. If the test detected C2 but when ripping does not, it suggests it is working.

Where can I see where the ripper confirms that C2 works? Is it in the post-ripping logs?

8. Perhaps the drive needs a powered USB hub? error means the drive is giving no data at all

The drive is powered via an external AC adapter. I was able to rip many, many discs successfully off of this drive - there’s just 3 discs that won’t rip that generate “Error” results.

[Spoon]

It is unlikely c2 is working then, it should not flag it up when no errors.

I would not leave that 8kb option on.

If you rip in secure and have detailed logs, it will say something like c2 error dropped (24/27) meaning c2 was detected and the frame dropped on 24 re-rips out of 27

[RetroBurner]

It is unlikely c2 is working then, it should not flag it up when no errors.

I would not leave that 8kb option on.

If you rip in secure and have detailed logs, it will say something like c2 error dropped (24/27) meaning c2 was detected and the frame dropped on 24 re-rips out of 27

Ok. Would you recommend that I re-rip everything that I did with the 8 KB option on?

[Spoon]

Not if accuraterip has verified it

[inphobia]

make sure it is a permanent marker. the first few times i thought i could get by with a velt tip pen. made a nice black square. when i took it out the ink was gone. did so once more to make sure, but that drive did not make an issue of it. went straight over.

don't try to cut corners like me either i thought to have found a simple way to hurry the process, scraped of a bunch of the metal in the area indicated. one third of my drives detected this almost as soon as the test started. i also have 2 drives that just start reading full speed & complete the test without issue. very much also not good.

eventually i did find a bitrotted album in my collection. the whole underside has a brownish hue, and darkbrown in a few spots on the last track. if you save a detailed log of the rip they will be shown there:

AccurateRip: Inaccurate (confidence 5) Insecure [Pass 1, Ultra 1 to 1, Re-Rip 33 Frames]
CRC32: 1A47F424 AccurateRip CRC: 1D0DA1DF (CRCv2) [DiscID: 012-0016205b-00cdb894-950b8e0c-12]
** Reached Maximum 2 Unrecoverable Frames For This Track
Re-rip Frame: 212409 (00:02:42,426). Insecure (c2 dropped 10)
Re-rip Frame: 212410 (00:02:42,440). Insecure (c2 dropped 9) [c2 best match]
Re-rip Frame: 212427 (00:02:42,666)

at least i can correct my metadata since i'll be reripping, because of the accurip results. i have a bunch of albums with 2 out of 2 matches on all tracks but one. that in combo with c2 checking which was not correctly tested by me.... even with 1 match it is still very likely to be correct.


they are starting to get hard to find; but an e-sata 5.25" is likely a step up if you worry about data quality since it has almost no abstraction layers. at least in europe a graugear g-5251 which has usb and e-sata. i'm thought it also just switches between connectors. if you plug in esata it completely bypasses the usb controller. they are going up in price however, not

[RetroBurner]

Not if accuraterip has verified it

In the interest of science, I am going to re-rip everything I have ripped thus far with the 8KB setting turned off and will see if there are any demonstrable differences.

[RetroBurner]

make sure it is a permanent marker. the first few times i thought i could get by with a velt tip pen. made a nice black square. when i took it out the ink was gone. did so once more to make sure, but that drive did not make an issue of it. went straight over.

I used a permanent Sharpie marker. That should be sufficient, shouldn’t it?

[RetroBurner]

8. Perhaps the drive needs a powered USB hub? error means the drive is giving no data at all

It turns out that the root cause of this issue was not the USB interface, but is instead due to an issue with FLAC encoding with the Multi-Encoder. Once I removed the FLAC encoder from the multi-encoder, the two discs that were giving me issues were able to rip and encode to Opus and QAAC no problem. And when I did a second pass with just the FLAC encoder, that worked just fine as well.

I also found that turning off 8kb C2 pointers DID improve the quality of re-rips on problematic discs. It did NOT make any difference when dealing with "clean" rips - the checksums of "clean" rips with 8kb pointers on and off over USB 3.0 were identical.

That being said, it seems that the best way to rip problematic tracks with C2 over USB 3.0 is to ONLY rip the problematic tracks one at a time, preferably with Windows reboots in between rips. Otherwise it doesn't seem to be able to rip them properly and ends up with a bunch of re-rips that, while ultimately generating the same file with the same CRC, takes up valuable ripping time.