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This is the longest of long shots.
I'm an avid collector of audio, both music and audiobooks. I like to be able to listen to music and audiobooks in high quality. Therefore I purchase CDs and copy them myself (instead of using Spotify/Audible etc.) My process is always the same for audiobooks: I copy the CDs to 44.1kHz/16-bit .wav files using dBpoweramp. Once all the CDs are copied accurately (more on this shortly) I join the tracks by chapter using a tool called xACT. While doing this task, I also use Ableton Live to cut any "end of disc" announcements. Once the entire audiobook is chapterised I convert it to ALAC using xACT (I would use FLAC, but it doesn't play nicely with my Apple products, and I can always extract back to the WAV files or convert to FLAC later with no loss of quality) and metatag it using Meta. It's a lengthy process, but one I find highly rewarding.
I'm sure everyone on this forum knows my reasons for using dBpoweramp: Accuraterip. I want to make sure that I'm creating an "Exact Audio Copy" (with dBpoweramp however) of my music and audiobooks. It could be argued that as I sometimes cut out end of disc announcements I'm editing the data anyway, but as they're for my own personal collection I'm more concerned about making sure there are no stutters or breaks in the audio that would ruin my enjoyment when I actually come around to listening to the book (this used to happen a lot when I copied CDs with iTunes).
Now, I'll cut to the chase. There are a series of books by J.K. Rowling (written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith) that I enjoy immensely, just as I enjoyed the Harry Potter books as a child (and still do, in complete honesty). I have purchased and (using my "method") copied every Audio CD in the series (read brilliantly by Robert Glenister) The one book I am unable to copy accurately is the 4th in the series: Lethal White. I have purchased no less than 3 copies of this audiobook, as well as a second external disc drive. The first two copies I purchased were secondhand from eBay, I thought they may have been scratched, and I read on the dBpoweramp forum that a second disc drive can sometimes help with recalcitrant discs. I also tried using my stepfathers old windows laptop to copy the discs in case it was some OS issue (a long shot I know). Still, some of the tracks refuse to copy accurately, leading to "re-ripping frames" for sometimes hours. What is strange to me, is that for the tracks that refuse to copy for me, there doesn't seem to be any drop in Accuraterip readings; the last time I checked, every disc had been ripped accurately by 4 other users, meaning the problem is almost certainly on my side somewhere?
So my long shot question becomes: does anyone here own Lethal White on CD? If so, I would be eternally grateful if another kind person would test their CDs with whatever operating system they have, using whatever disc drive they have access to me to aid me in figuring out if the problem is with me, or with the manufacture of this particular audiobook. I have no idea why it's been so difficult, I've never had issues like this with a CD before, including ones that are heavily scratched.
Many thanks for reading this far, and please do chime in with any thoughts!
I'm an avid collector of audio, both music and audiobooks. I like to be able to listen to music and audiobooks in high quality. Therefore I purchase CDs and copy them myself (instead of using Spotify/Audible etc.) My process is always the same for audiobooks: I copy the CDs to 44.1kHz/16-bit .wav files using dBpoweramp. Once all the CDs are copied accurately (more on this shortly) I join the tracks by chapter using a tool called xACT. While doing this task, I also use Ableton Live to cut any "end of disc" announcements. Once the entire audiobook is chapterised I convert it to ALAC using xACT (I would use FLAC, but it doesn't play nicely with my Apple products, and I can always extract back to the WAV files or convert to FLAC later with no loss of quality) and metatag it using Meta. It's a lengthy process, but one I find highly rewarding.
I'm sure everyone on this forum knows my reasons for using dBpoweramp: Accuraterip. I want to make sure that I'm creating an "Exact Audio Copy" (with dBpoweramp however) of my music and audiobooks. It could be argued that as I sometimes cut out end of disc announcements I'm editing the data anyway, but as they're for my own personal collection I'm more concerned about making sure there are no stutters or breaks in the audio that would ruin my enjoyment when I actually come around to listening to the book (this used to happen a lot when I copied CDs with iTunes).
Now, I'll cut to the chase. There are a series of books by J.K. Rowling (written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith) that I enjoy immensely, just as I enjoyed the Harry Potter books as a child (and still do, in complete honesty). I have purchased and (using my "method") copied every Audio CD in the series (read brilliantly by Robert Glenister) The one book I am unable to copy accurately is the 4th in the series: Lethal White. I have purchased no less than 3 copies of this audiobook, as well as a second external disc drive. The first two copies I purchased were secondhand from eBay, I thought they may have been scratched, and I read on the dBpoweramp forum that a second disc drive can sometimes help with recalcitrant discs. I also tried using my stepfathers old windows laptop to copy the discs in case it was some OS issue (a long shot I know). Still, some of the tracks refuse to copy accurately, leading to "re-ripping frames" for sometimes hours. What is strange to me, is that for the tracks that refuse to copy for me, there doesn't seem to be any drop in Accuraterip readings; the last time I checked, every disc had been ripped accurately by 4 other users, meaning the problem is almost certainly on my side somewhere?
So my long shot question becomes: does anyone here own Lethal White on CD? If so, I would be eternally grateful if another kind person would test their CDs with whatever operating system they have, using whatever disc drive they have access to me to aid me in figuring out if the problem is with me, or with the manufacture of this particular audiobook. I have no idea why it's been so difficult, I've never had issues like this with a CD before, including ones that are heavily scratched.
Many thanks for reading this far, and please do chime in with any thoughts!