Ripping errors on perfectly clean discs

[garym]

Re: Ripping errors on perfectly clean discs

good catch. It needed more time with that size file.

[ferrarabrainpan]

Re: Ripping errors on perfectly clean discs

And to add one last thing to my already excessive verbiage, the reason the CD-R copies ripped error-free whereas the original CDs did not is that the original discs ripped at slow speeds of about x5 and the CD-R copies ripped at twice that speed so the ultra-secure pass was finished before reaching the 10-minute abort point.

[schmidj]

Re: Ripping errors on perfectly clean discs

In my several thousand CDs I've had a small number which have been unable to rip some tracks without error, and a somewhat larger number that have rerips. Most of my Caribbean CDs aren't (well, weren't, now that I've ripped them, they are) in Accuraterip. I use secure ripping with at least one extra secure rip. Any disc ripped with rerips not in Accuraterip is suspect. If you rerip the same thing enough times, it will get a "match", even if it is a wrong match. If you care about that, and you really should, rip the same track again, best in a different make drive. If the checksum comes up the same (green), you are in all likelihood good. If different (red) then one, the other or (often) both rips are bad.

You should really invest in several different make drives, "internal" drives. I have three different makes and may add another. What rips without error in one drive make may not in a different one. Given that the drives typically cost me 10 to 20 dollars each at Micro Center, and the SATA to USB adapters cost something like 20 dollars, hey, if it saves you from buying a half dozen replacement CDs, you are ahead of the game. And setting up a drive is really only a few minutes in most cases.

One trap, DBPA uses the drive letter as a primary method of keeping track of drive offset calibration, and Windows is notorious for swapping drive letters if you move the drive to a different USB port. Also if you plug in a USB hard drive Windows wants to give it a low drive letter and moves all the CD drives higher, messing up the calibration, requiring recalibration, and DBPA doesn't always realize that, resulting in miscalculated checksums.

I've given up on c2, all of my drives supposedly support it, but none actually do reliably.

My first attempt if I have a bad disc (after cleaning it and trying to rip again and trying different drives) is to rip the bad tracks with "burst" and then listen to them. In many cases the errors are inaudible, or camouflaged by the music, or the error artifact is minor enough (a slight click, etc.) that you don't care about it. You can also edit out some errors using audio editing software like Audacity. Then there is always Ebay, and sometimes you'll find someone put the item up on YouTube.

Just two nights ago, I had a disc with two tracks that wouldn't rip in any of my drives without error, and 3 others that had "unstable" (ie, unrepeatable checksum) rerips. Caribbean 1990s, very unlikely to be on Ebay; although I know the producer and might be able to get another copy when next there. I first listened to the tracks with rerips, they all played "clean" to my ear. Then I ripped the two "bad" tracks in burst and listened to the results. There were a few artifacts that may have been playback errors or may have been extraneous noise in the recording session, and one track had a click that pretty certainly was a playback error. Now I could have opened it up in an audio editor and removed the click, but in the end I decided it wasn't worth the time, hey I have plenty of commercial re-releases of old ethnic records that are full of clicks from scratches in the records and no-one wanted to spend the money to "restore" or clean them up.

Now that doesn't mean that every error rip will be like that, I've had ones where there was a drop out for every revolution of the CD in the drive. No Good... But one frame is 1/75 of a second, and errors that short are often not audible, and furthermore most drives try to "interpolate" over the error.

Of course, it is nice to get bit accurate copies of the CD, (and you really have no way of knowing how many bit errors occurred in the recording/editing/burning process) but you shouldn't obsess over it. Listen to the result and decide if it is listenable. How many badly scratched records did you listen to, because you wanted to hear the contents?

My experiences, yours may differ

[ferrarabrainpan]

Re: Ripping errors on perfectly clean discs

Thank you for your long and thoughtful reply. You have clearly put a great deal of time and energy into all of this and I can see the merit of going to great lengths as you have done. But as you say, if the reported errors in the rip are inaudible, as is most often the case, you have to weigh the relative factors and decide how you want to invest your time, money and mental energy. The whole thing about the drive letters is enough to ward me off from trying different drives. When I got dBpoweramp CD Ripper it all sounded like a great improvement over my previous digital music setup, which was ripping everything in iTunes with burst insecure ripping to 320 kbps MP3 files. Since I got a new stereo and began appreciating music with attention to the audio quality my enjoyment has dramatically increased but it is offset by the amount of neurotic worry and obsessing over details I tend to indulge in. In all of those tens of thousands of insecure rips I made in iTunes as MP3s I rarely heard any artifacts such as clicks or dropouts in those rips, and when I did it was typically something that was on the source disc and not a bad rip.

I would really love to get my whole library ripped within the next year or so and if I spend hours laboring over one bad rip this will take years, considering my collection is growing. I spend a lot of time checking and editing correct metadata and ID tags so that adds to the time spent on this project. I will probably buy one extra drive to have handy when I can't get a secure rip and see if it helps. But I get overwhelmed trying to decide which drive to buy after looking at the list of top drives for secure and accurate rips, and many of them are out of production so you have to buy them used and you never know if you're buying a drive that has been worked to death and near the end of its lifespan (I have burned out a drive or two from ripping and burning hundreds of discs in my previous PCs).

[mville]

Re: Ripping errors on perfectly clean discs

I would really love to get my whole library ripped within the next year or so and if I spend hours laboring over one bad rip this will take years, considering my collection is growing.

So don't spend hours over CD rips with errors.

If I find a CD that is not error-free, in 2 different optical drives, I accept that the disc has errors and move on. So far I have attempted over 3300 rips, of which approx. 98% are AccurateRips.

[Oliviander]

Re: Ripping errors on perfectly clean discs

So don't spend hours over CD rips with errors.

If I find a CD that is not error-free, in 2 different optical drives, I accept that the disc has errors and move on. So far I have attempted over 3300 rips, of which approx. 98% are AccurateRips.

I can second that, I once really tried hard to get a error free rip from a CD.
I bought 3 copies - all of them in Mint condition.
This was not easy as it was a classical disc from the 80es that was never rereleased later than the 90s
And even with different covers and labels - but it appeared they were all pressed with exactly the same errors.
It were the same 3 frames an all four discs thath had the errors
So it is even possible there is a damage to the master and every disc has the same Error.

[ferrarabrainpan]

Re: Ripping errors on perfectly clean discs

I can second that, I once really tried hard to get a error free rip from a CD.
I bought 3 copies - all of them in Mint condition.
This was not easy as it was a classical disc from the 80es that was never rereleased later than the 90s
And even with different covers and labels - but it appeared they were all pressed with exactly the same errors.
It were the same 3 frames an all four discs thath had the errors
So it is even possible there is a damage to the master and every disc has the same Error.

Thank you for sharing your experience, that is a clear message that sometimes the perfection I seek is unattainable. I think if I bought a second copy of the same pressing with errors then I would have to give up. Now what I need to do is to buy a second optical drive for those problem discs, once I can decide on which model to buy...

[JamieF]

Re: Ripping errors on perfectly clean discs

Sorry to resurrect a 2 year old thread, but I'd thought I'd share my experience.

I have an aging Memorex external blu ray writer that normally rips without a problem. Today every new disc is giving me errors, I guess pointing to the drive, though I ripped 20 discs 2 weeks ago without an issue. However the temperature is also very hot which maybe has an impact. Fix: after trying to access the discs from a couple of different programs, ejecting a couple of times, they all seem to rip perfectly (Accurate).

So just be careful about blaming (and maybe replacing) the disc, it might be perfectly ok...