Question about Re-Rip Process

[Bespin1138]

Hi

I am currently ripping my audio CDs to FLAC using secure rip with Track and Album ReplayGain settings. Of the roughly 100 CDs that I have ripped so far, I ordered replacement CDs for six of them because I was getting either insecure rips or errors. One of the CDs that I ripped went through a long re-rip process on one of the tracks and I left my computer running overnight to finish the process. After the re-rip process finished, it stated that it got an accurate rip. Would I be correct in understanding that the re-rip process for that CD was able to get an error free rip and that the audio and playback quality for that track would be identical to that of the same track being securely and accurately ripped the normal way without the re-rip process? I wish to avoid wasting money on purchasing replacement CDs if the re-rip process can get an identical secure and accurate rip on the CD when compared to that of a normal secure rip process.

Thanks.

[garym]

Re: Question about Re-Rip Process

Correct. If it eventually got an AccurateRip match, you have a bitperfect rip from the Disk. No need to purchase a replacement disk.

[schmidj]

Re: Question about Re-Rip Process

If the result was an accurate rip, no matter how many frames were re-ripped, the end result is that the checksum was identical to the results other(s) got ripping the same track. The probability of there being a difference in the bits is very low. I'm not sure of the actual number for Accuraterip but it is probably one chance out of millions.

The one caveat: If the results show an accurate rip of (1) and you securely ripped the same track before and (probably automatically) submitted the results to the acuraterip database, you might be comparing your new rip to your previously defective rip. (I think the automatic submission is monthly, so the rip you did five minutes ago isn't in the results yet.) Conversely, if your rip fails to match a single previous submitted checksum (accuraterip of (1)) It might be the previously submitted (by someone else)rip that is really bad and yours might be fine.

Once the accuraterip total is (2) or above, that means multiple copies of the same CD track had the same checksum, the chances of the track being inaccurate become very, very close to zero. (Although I've run into a couple of cases where there were bad pressing masters with errors that were sold to a lot of people. Your accuraterip match says your pressing has the same "built in" error the same as everyone else.

Now regarding the "Secure Warning" and "Insecure" tracks. In my mind, the goal should be that the ripped track sounds good to the listener, not that it has to be "bit perfect". Of course, OK is in the ear and brain of the beholder. Now if it comes up with a good accuraterip checksum you shouldn't worry, it will sound the same as the CD (if played at the same volume on the same reproduction system). But if it fails, it might save you some money and time if you listened to the "Secure Warning" and even "Insecure" tracks to see if you can hear an audible fault, and if that audible fault is bad enough to make you want to buy a replacement.

If you are of any age, you probably listened to a lot of vinyl, and possibly shellac 78's before you bought CDs. Did you rush out and buy another copy of the vinyl because it had another pop in one of the tracks? And all those cassettes with momentary dropouts where they were left parked in the middle in your hot car? Possibly if it developed a "skip", but I'd bet not for even quite a few pops and clicks. So if imperfect vinyl or cassette was OK, why isn't a slight imperfection in a ripped CD OK. Sure, if the track has repeated long dropouts, clicks or gets stuck, you won't want to listen to it, the same as if your vinyl got warped and the needle skips all over. I use dBpoweramp's ripper to find those and keep them out of my library. But, for me, unless it is annoyingly bad, I'd rather spend my money on a different CD, instead of another copy of the one I already have.

I recently acquired (for free, they were aimed for the dumpster) a box of close to 200 CDs, of genres I was interested in, but would be unlikely to buy new (even if they were still available). The only issue, the previous owner didn't take care of them, many had no jewel cases, and most of them were scratched, some badly, like someone had walked on them. (Why anyone would spend all that money to buy the CDs and then treat them like that blows my mind.) Anyway, I attempted to rip them. I set the allowable rerips at (I think ) 200, and turned off the deletion of error rips. I have several different make CD/DVD readers, and I know that one particular make (of which I own two) does much better than the others with scratched CDs, so I used those for the visibly badly scratched ones.

Many of those came up with rerips that resulted in tracks not matching the original checksum. Some had hundreds of reripped frames. Others came up "insecure" with unrecoverable errors. (Note that a track with rerips that doesn't match the original checksum is actually in error because at least one of the rerips falsely thought it was good, not uncommon when you set the allowable rerips high like the 200 I chose. You are playing a statistics "dice" game at that point, you'll eventually get a match of rerips even if it isn't the original bits.)

At first I listened to every track with rerips that didn't match the accuraterip checksum. Out of the several hundred I listened to, I never heard an audible error of a track marked secure but still didn't match the checksum. Of the tracks that were "Secure Warning" with rerips that it thought were OK, I think I heard a couple out of the several hundred which -might- have had a minor glitch. (I say "might", because given that these were old analog recordings, the original recordings might have had the same audio I thought was a glitch) Of the tracks that were "Insecure" (these are the ones that would have been automatically deleted if I hadn't shut off the "delete tracks with errors" option.) some, perhaps most of them had momentary audible "hits", mostly very brief dropouts. There were tracks with over 1000 reripped frames that sounded fine, two of the "Insecure" tracks had almost 3000 reripped frames.

This really trashed CD was one I really didn't care about but decided to rip as an experiment despite its condition. It took about 15 hours to get through all the rerips on the whole CD, but in the end all the tracks were listenable. I think three tracks had one or more of the very brief dropouts, the worst one had I think four or five.

There were a couple of CDs that just wouldn't play, one either had some form of copy protection or "bit rot" that gave long repeated dropouts when just playing every cut, and another badly damaged one I wanted that I spent several hours polishing with Brasso and a rag and finally got rid of enough scratches that I recovered all the tracks.

This is not to say that I've never had bad CDs out of the thousands in my collection. I have a large number of Caribbean CDs, many of which were duplicated as CDRs with poor quality control, and I've bought my share of duds, which I'm happy to keep off of my server. DBpoweramp has done a good job of finding those.

In the end I stopped bothering to listen to the "secure" ones on any of the box of scratched CDs, only listening to the "insecure" ones, and even then not finding any tracks that I decided were bad enough to delete.

So the final comment is that you might want to consider just listening to the tracks that fail the accuraterip checksum, you might decide to spend your money on something other than replacements.

[Bespin1138]

Re: Question about Re-Rip Process

If the result was an accurate rip, no matter how many frames were re-ripped, the end result is that the checksum was identical to the results other(s) got ripping the same track. The probability of there being a difference in the bits is very low. I'm not sure of the actual number for Accuraterip but it is probably one chance out of millions.

The one caveat: If the results show an accurate rip of (1) and you securely ripped the same track before and (probably automatically) submitted the results to the acuraterip database, you might be comparing your new rip to your previously defective rip. (I think the automatic submission is monthly, so the rip you did five minutes ago isn't in the results yet.) Conversely, if your rip fails to match a single previous submitted checksum (accuraterip of (1)) It might be the previously submitted (by someone else)rip that is really bad and yours might be fine.

Once the accuraterip total is (2) or above, that means multiple copies of the same CD track had the same checksum, the chances of the track being inaccurate become very, very close to zero. (Although I've run into a couple of cases where there were bad pressing masters with errors that were sold to a lot of people. Your accuraterip match says your pressing has the same "built in" error the same as everyone else.

Now regarding the "Secure Warning" and "Insecure" tracks. In my mind, the goal should be that the ripped track sounds good to the listener, not that it has to be "bit perfect". Of course, OK is in the ear and brain of the beholder. Now if it comes up with a good accuraterip checksum you shouldn't worry, it will sound the same as the CD (if played at the same volume on the same reproduction system). But if it fails, it might save you some money and time if you listened to the "Secure Warning" and even "Insecure" tracks to see if you can hear an audible fault, and if that audible fault is bad enough to make you want to buy a replacement.

If you are of any age, you probably listened to a lot of vinyl, and possibly shellac 78's before you bought CDs. Did you rush out and buy another copy of the vinyl because it had another pop in one of the tracks? And all those cassettes with momentary dropouts where they were left parked in the middle in your hot car? Possibly if it developed a "skip", but I'd bet not for even quite a few pops and clicks. So if imperfect vinyl or cassette was OK, why isn't a slight imperfection in a ripped CD OK. Sure, if the track has repeated long dropouts, clicks or gets stuck, you won't want to listen to it, the same as if your vinyl got warped and the needle skips all over. I use dBpoweramp's ripper to find those and keep them out of my library. But, for me, unless it is annoyingly bad, I'd rather spend my money on a different CD, instead of another copy of the one I already have.

I recently acquired (for free, they were aimed for the dumpster) a box of close to 200 CDs, of genres I was interested in, but would be unlikely to buy new (even if they were still available). The only issue, the previous owner didn't take care of them, many had no jewel cases, and most of them were scratched, some badly, like someone had walked on them. (Why anyone would spend all that money to buy the CDs and then treat them like that blows my mind.) Anyway, I attempted to rip them. I set the allowable rerips at (I think ) 200, and turned off the deletion of error rips. I have several different make CD/DVD readers, and I know that one particular make (of which I own two) does much better than the others with scratched CDs, so I used those for the visibly badly scratched ones.

Many of those came up with rerips that resulted in tracks not matching the original checksum. Some had hundreds of reripped frames. Others came up "insecure" with unrecoverable errors. (Note that a track with rerips that doesn't match the original checksum is actually in error because at least one of the rerips falsely thought it was good, not uncommon when you set the allowable rerips high like the 200 I chose. You are playing a statistics "dice" game at that point, you'll eventually get a match of rerips even if it isn't the original bits.)

At first I listened to every track with rerips that didn't match the accuraterip checksum. Out of the several hundred I listened to, I never heard an audible error of a track marked secure but still didn't match the checksum. Of the tracks that were "Secure Warning" with rerips that it thought were OK, I think I heard a couple out of the several hundred which -might- have had a minor glitch. (I say "might", because given that these were old analog recordings, the original recordings might have had the same audio I thought was a glitch) Of the tracks that were "Insecure" (these are the ones that would have been automatically deleted if I hadn't shut off the "delete tracks with errors" option.) some, perhaps most of them had momentary audible "hits", mostly very brief dropouts. There were tracks with over 1000 reripped frames that sounded fine, two of the "Insecure" tracks had almost 3000 reripped frames.

This really trashed CD was one I really didn't care about but decided to rip as an experiment despite its condition. It took about 15 hours to get through all the rerips on the whole CD, but in the end all the tracks were listenable. I think three tracks had one or more of the very brief dropouts, the worst one had I think four or five.

There were a couple of CDs that just wouldn't play, one either had some form of copy protection or "bit rot" that gave long repeated dropouts when just playing every cut, and another badly damaged one I wanted that I spent several hours polishing with Brasso and a rag and finally got rid of enough scratches that I recovered all the tracks.

This is not to say that I've never had bad CDs out of the thousands in my collection. I have a large number of Caribbean CDs, many of which were duplicated as CDRs with poor quality control, and I've bought my share of duds, which I'm happy to keep off of my server. DBpoweramp has done a good job of finding those.

In the end I stopped bothering to listen to the "secure" ones on any of the box of scratched CDs, only listening to the "insecure" ones, and even then not finding any tracks that I decided were bad enough to delete.

So the final comment is that you might want to consider just listening to the tracks that fail the accuraterip checksum, you might decide to spend your money on something other than replacements.

Thanks for the information. I have two other questions since there is mention of using at least two different CD/DVD/Blu Ray drives to rip CDs. My first question is if I added a second CD/DVD/Blu Ray drive to my computer (either internal or external), would my custom settings on DBpoweramp such as the Secure Rip options, Profile, Path, and Rip To remain the same if I changed drives on the CD Drive option or would I have to manually re-enter those custom settings when I switch between drives?

Second, can DBpoweramp handle the process of ripping CDs from multiple drives at the same time? If so, how many CD rips can it handle at the same time? My computer uses an Intel i5-7600K quad core CPU. Would that impact how many CDs I could rip at the same time?

Thanks again.

[garym]

Re: Question about Re-Rip Process

Thanks for the information. I have two other questions since there is mention of using at least two different CD/DVD/Blu Ray drives to rip CDs. My first question is if I added a second CD/DVD/Blu Ray drive to my computer (either internal or external), would my custom settings on DBpoweramp such as the Secure Rip options, Profile, Path, and Rip To remain the same if I changed drives on the CD Drive option or would I have to manually re-enter those custom settings when I switch between drives?

Second, can DBpoweramp handle the process of ripping CDs from multiple drives at the same time? If so, how many CD rips can it handle at the same time? My computer uses an Intel i5-7600K quad core CPU. Would that impact how many CDs I could rip at the same time?


Thanks again.

Most of the settings will apply to either drive on the same computer, but the drives themselves will need to go through the setup process (for determining AccurateRip, offset, etc.). And you can start two instances of dbpa running on your machine and rip with both drives at the same time. There's also a batch ripper program, but this tends to be used with robot rippers with many drives.

[schmidj]

Re: Question about Re-Rip Process

Hi,

As Gary stated, the custom settings are accessed by all the multiple instances of dBpoweramp. There is a catch, if you have several profiles stored with let us say one as secure ripping and one as burst,and you try to run the different instances with those different profiles, all the instances will adopt the settings of the last profile used. The same thing happens if you change the security settings of one of the instances, they all change, and there is no notice of this with the other instances. When I inquired about this, Spoon's response was that dBpoweramp wasn't designed for multiple instances. Although the matter of running multiple instances has come up in this forum before without that reply.

I will add, with multiple instances, often when one or more instances are ripping, and you insert a CD into a drive attached to a different instance, you'll see some or all of the other instances pause while the instance with the new CD is trying to read the CD TOC and access the metadata providers. As soon as the metadata displays (or the lack of metadata displays), everything else starts up again without intervention.

The batch ripper does handle multiple individual manual drives as well as robots, I tried it. But I do a lot of metadata entry and intervention, and it isn't as well set up for that as the main program, so I continue to use my multiple instances and just don't try to use them with different profiles. Also you have to pay for metadata lookups in the batch ripper with one of the providers, and since many of my Caribbean CDs have no metadata there, I'm afraid I'd be paying for no results or totally wrong results.

I routinely run five (or sometimes six) instances, each pointing to one of my drives. I have three monitors connected to my eight year old fairly fast (8 cores) machine, with two instances on top of each other displayed on each monitor. Running Windows 7 Pro, 64 bit. I took Windows bait and switched to W10, but had motherboard issues as I couldn't find drivers that worked properly with one chip on the board so switched back. I'll probably build another machine in the next year as this one is getting long of tooth. The multiple instances of dBpoweramp continued to work fine in the brief period I used W10 pro.

You do have to keep your wits about you when running five or 6 instances, I've accidentally ejected the wrong CD I can't tell you how many times!!

As I said above, I've got 6 drives. They are all "internal" SATA drives, three in the tower connected to SATA ports on the motherboard, three piled on top of the case, connected with SATA to USB adapters. As I mentioned in another post, I've used several different adapters, the manufacturers keep changing models. Best to look for one that specifically says it works with removable media devices as well as hard drives. I've had a couple adapters just die over the years, and I broke one by knocking the drive onto the floor off the top of the tower case, klutz that I am, broke the SATA connector... I've played with native USB external drives, I have found every one to be inferior to the worst internal drive. Slow and not good reading damaged discs. The built in slim drive in this laptop is equally bad. If I think I'll be ripping or burning CDs when I travel, I take one of the internal drives and an adapter with me.

Normally I don't see any real issues performance wise running multiple instances on this machine. I have real issues with my (almost 10 year old) QNAP NAS when it decides to run a chron job, like a backup or antivirus scan, everything grinds to a near halt. But that happens even with one instance. I need to purchase a NAS with a more powerful processor. On occasion, I've had everything slow down apparently due to some background task running on the PC (take a look at the task scheduler to see how many things various software has your computer doing without your knowledge!). Again, no different with just one instance.

I do notice the USB drives are a little slower to respond to commands, much more noticeable when I'm using all the drives as a duplicator for some of the recordings I've produced. But they rip (or burn) just as fast and accurately. In fact my two "best" drives with scratched discs are both connected with adapters to USB ports. (and USB2 ports are fine for this, the data rate from a CD/DVD isn't that high.)

I've purchased new DVD drives (from Micro Center) but they are getting harder to find as CD/DVD use goes down. They used to be between $10 and $15 each but the price is now higher and the selection much less. I know Gary tends to use old recycled drives, nothing wrong with that, but you may want to learn how to open the case so you can clean the lens (carefully), re-lubricate the rails and clean out the amazing amount of crud that some used drives have acquired.

As an incidental item, I recently had a CD explode in a drive! The CD had a slight crack leading to the center hole, it wouldn't read the TOC. I tried a different drive and BANG! pieces of CD plastic and silver plating leaking out the door of the drive! I don't think I'll ever get all the debris out of the drive, even with a mini vacuum and a can of compressed air. The unlaminated silver plating sticks to everything.

Anyway, yes, I've had little difficulty with running even five or six instances, with the caveats above. If your source CDs are in accuraterip and have online metadata that takes little editing, running the multiple instances really speeds things up.

Good Luck