General Understanding of Samples and Ripping with dBpoweramp

[Z-Lemur]

Hi All,

I am looking to confirm or correct my understanding of sample offsets and lead-in / lead-out with regards to ripping with dBpoweramp.

From what I have researched, a drive with a +6 read offset would be able to read all audio samples from the first track of an album, but be unable to read the final 6 samples from the last track. A drive with a -667 offset would be able to read every sample from the final track, but the first 667 samples of the first track will be missing. This is for drives that do not support overread into the lead-in or lead-out of a disc.

If this is correct, then theoretically with two drives, one with a “+” offset and one with a “-“ offset, could this be used to get every audio sample from the first and last tracks of any album?

Another question, for a final track ripped with a +6 offset, does dBpoweramp pad those samples with null “0” samples, or is the track just missing 6 samples at the end? I understand that a 6 sample loss is only 0.000136 seconds, but I’m curious from a preservation and generational loss perspective. If not, is there a way to implement padding those missing samples with null samples?

Thanks.
Z-Lemur

[Spoon]

Or you can use a plextor drive which can overread.

Generally there is never any data in the disc start / end, it is all silence. I think there was one CD with actual data in existence.

[Z-Lemur]

Hi Spoon, thanks for the response.

So pretty much if I want a rip with 100% of the track data, I would need a drive to overread. Otherwise the smaller the drive offset, the more samples are able to be saved, but those that are lost are so miniscule as to not matter.

Z-Lemur

[garym]

but those that are lost are so miniscule as to not matter.

not just miniscule (small) but actual silence.