CD in perfect mint conditions but CD ripper reports bad frames

[Spoon]

Re: CD in perfect mint conditions but CD ripper reports bad frames

He has the non-reference version of dBpoweramp (previously known as 'Power Pack')

[ferrarabrainpan]

Re: CD in perfect mint conditions but CD ripper reports bad frames

Yeah I went to do another rip of a new clean CD today after changing some metadata settings. The disc ripped perfectly before but I kept getting error messages for the last track after three new attempts. Each time I inspected the disc and made sure it had no prints or dust or marks and cleaned gently with a soft cloth made for cleaning computer screens. Then I gave it a really vigorous scrubbing with the same cloth (no soap or water) and it did the trick (must have been some surface mark that was so fine I couldn't even see it close up with my naked eye). Ripped accurately at last.

One question: what is the toothpaste trick? (I mean I guess it is obvious but please be specific if you mean to use toothpaste on the disc?)

And as a newbie here, what are the catastrophic results of playing and using ripped files that are deemed not secure? I am using ultra-secure settings with all the boxes ticked as appropriate after following the instructions in the online manual). Naturally I would like to do whatever it takes to make sure all my rips are accurate and secure, but if it means replacing discs that are old, and impossible or extremely expensive to replace via the collectors' market, then what should I do? Do you really think it is necessary to go out and buy additional optical drives and go through the trouble of setting the drives up for accurate ripping etc, just to get a rip without errors? Are these errors audible or critical to the functioning of my playback equipment?

[schmidj]

Re: CD in perfect mint conditions but CD ripper reports bad frames

Errors may or may not be audible. Keep in mind that one frame is a 75th of a second, and if your drive interpolates the missing bits, an eror of a few frames is unlikely to be audible. The only way to tell how bad the error is , is to actually listen to the ripped track. If it sounds good (or good enough) to you, then you are all set. If the clicks, pops, bits of silence, etc are annoying to you, then you have a problem.

I will repeat that DVD computer drives are pretty cheap today, particularly if bought at a computer store like Microcenter or on line. I have several makes, I think I paid between $10 and $20 for each. And as many people here will tell you, a disc that rips with errors in one drive will possibly rip without error in a different drive. In the last two days, I've experienced this twice.

There are no "catastrophic" results, you may at worst have a file that plays back with some audio impairment. Unless you listen to your music far too loudly, you won't break anything. The real issue is if the file is bad and you didn't know it until you listen to it months later, you may have a real problem locating the original CD so you can try ripping it again... And if you are like me and listen in the car while driving, you'll never remember which album and track was bad by the time you get home.

Regarding toothpaste (or other lightly abrasive products, if you have a CD with visible scratches that cause the CD to fail, skip, or whatever, you can, with a lot of practice and some luck, polish out the scratch so the CD will play again. I've done it, it takes practice. Don't try it for the first (or 10th) time on a CD that is otherwise irreplaceable, you may well make it worse. Take some junk CD you don't care about and practice until you get the technique down. You Tube is your friend here, there are demo videos. Given that, first, if you value your time at all, you'll try to just buy a replacement CD or borrow a copy from someone else. Also, some of the stores that sell gaming DVDs have machines at the store that will polish the surface of the CD to remove scratches.

Finally, remember the data (pits) on a CD are on the label side, not the side that faces the laser. After the pits are embossed, the surface is aluminised, then the label is printed over the aluminum reflective layer. If the aluminum gets scratched bad enough that the CD won't play properly, you are done, there is no repair.