Secure rip settings question

[b8375629]

I'm interested in what happy medium I can set these to. I want something close to 90 - 99% in accuracy for damaged CDs, but I don't want my DVD player/ripper to stay on for days at a time eventually shortening the life of it by burning the thing out. Replacing them can get expensive and I don't think any CD is worth that much.

Any suggestions on how you all have it set up?

[garym]

Re: Secure rip settings question

I'm interested in what happy medium I can set these to. I want something close to 90 - 99% in accuracy for damaged CDs, but I don't want my DVD player/ripper to stay on for days at a time eventually shortening the life of it by burning the thing out. Replacing them can get expensive and I don't think any CD is worth that much.

Any suggestions on how you all have it set up?

In the ultrasecure rip settings, one can put a limit on how many frames to retry and/or how much time to spend before stopping rip attempt.

[b8375629]

Re: Secure rip settings question

In the ultrasecure rip settings, one can put a limit on how many frames to retry and/or how much time to spend before stopping rip attempt.

What do you have yours set at?

[b8375629]

Re: Secure rip settings question

No suggestions?

[garym]

Re: Secure rip settings question

No suggestions?

When I return home from travels and look at my computer. Post again if I don't post by Sunday.

[garym]

Re: Secure rip settings question

What do you have yours set at?

minimum ultra 2
maximum ultra 4
end after clean passes 2


individual bad frames: maximum rereads 34
drive speed < maximum>

Secure rip abort:
after unrecoverable frame < no abort>
when have to rerip <no abort>
After ripping a track for <60 minutes>

[b8375629]

Re: Secure rip settings question

minimum ultra 2
maximum ultra 4
end after clean passes 2


individual bad frames: maximum rereads 34
drive speed < maximum>

Secure rip abort:
after unrecoverable frame < no abort>
when have to rerip <no abort>
After ripping a track for <60 minutes>

Yeah, those settings are different from the default.

So you limit Secure Rip to 60 minutes? Those have given you the best results for damaged CDs in the past?

[garym]

Re: Secure rip settings question

Yeah, those settings are different from the default.

So you limit Secure Rip to 60 minutes? Those have given you the best results for damaged CDs in the past?

the 60 minute limit doesn't make damaged disks rip better. The 60 minutes is just to make the attempt end. Frankly, I rarely let a track rip attempt go on for 60 minutes (but if I started a rip then went to bed, I wouldn't want it going on ripping all night long!). I'd probably stop most after 20 minutes if I was sitting in front of the computer. The best approach to ripping a hard to rip disk for me is to (1) clean the disk and if that doesn't work then (2) try with another drive. I have 4 different drives I can use. Sometimes a CD is a problem with one drive but rips perfectly with AR match on another drive. These drives are not anything special. Just random cheap drives. I doubt any of them cost more than $25 new and a couple were just salvaged from old PCs that were going to the trash heap.

[schmidj]

Re: Secure rip settings question

Most of my Caribbean music isn't (wasn't until I ripped it) in Accuraterip. I have discovered that stuff that rips with rerips usually actually is not ripped bit accurate, if I rip it again (often in a different drive) the checksum comes up different. Frankly, if it is only a few frames, I usually can't hear the error, but if it is many, the rip will be bad, Yes, I have several drives and many discs that are bad in one drive rip fine in a different drive.

Setting the number of rereads high almost guarantees getting a false "secure" rip, it keeps trying until it gets the same random result enough times in a row and thinks its good. It usually isn't. When I have a bad disc, I usually abort the rip, clean the disc, try a couple of other drives and then look for a cheap copy of the disc on Ebay to replace the bad one.

If the disc is scratched and unreplaceable, you can try polishing it with Brasso to buff the scratch out. I've had some luck with that but it is time consuming.

[b8375629]

Re: Secure rip settings question

Most of my Caribbean music isn't (wasn't until I ripped it) in Accuraterip. I have discovered that stuff that rips with rerips usually actually is not ripped bit accurate, if I rip it again (often in a different drive) the checksum comes up different. Frankly, if it is only a few frames, I usually can't hear the error, but if it is many, the rip will be bad, Yes, I have several drives and many discs that are bad in one drive rip fine in a different drive.

I have two drives I can use and yes, neither one of them reads the same.

I'm also getting different checksums using EAC on the same drives

Setting the number of rereads high almost guarantees getting a false "secure" rip, it keeps trying until it gets the same random result enough times in a row and thinks its good. It usually isn't. When I have a bad disc, I usually abort the rip, clean the disc, try a couple of other drives and then look for a cheap copy of the disc on Ebay to replace the bad one.

Good point. I've found out some people don't even enable Ultra Secure and rely on just standard AccurateRip only.

What are the best all around settings that you use? By default?

If the disc is scratched and unreplaceable, you can try polishing it with Brasso to buff the scratch out. I've had some luck with that but it is time consuming.

Isn't Brasso a metal cleaner? Do they have a plastic cleaner as well?

[schmidj]

Re: Secure rip settings question

If there are no rerips. I consistently get the same (green) checksums if I rip the album again on different or the same drives (usually because I notice a stupid error in the metadata as its ripping, I'll abort the rip, fix the metadata and start the rip again). The one time I was not getting the same results, I found one drive had lost its "calibration" in dBPoweramp and consistently gave different checksums (some of which unfortunately ended up in the Accuraterip database...) I recalibrated the drive with a known CD, that solved that issue. Sometimes CD's with rerips get the same checksums in different drives, in fact that is a fairly good way to verify that a CD track with rerips is in fact accurate.

None of this is 100 percent foolproof. I have a CD that the last few tracks are unlistenable, breakup, skips, etc. Ripped "secure" on one drive. Not any rerips. Submitted to Accuraterip. Subsequently listened to it, realized quickly it was a bad rip. Ripped again, months later, in a different drive. Came up as accurate, confidence 1 (matched my bad rip previously submitted) Still unlistenable. Now the bad rip has a confidence of 2 in accuraterip. Then remembered that I had problems with the CD when I got it (pre Accurate rip) found one player that played it almost OK, fixed it in an audio editor and saved the .wav files, so I converted the .wav files and saved the results replacing the bad rip. So nothing is foolproof. But dBPoweramp is far better than unverified ripping, even when a CD isn't in the database if you have your "secure" settings reasonable.

I have mine set (as I recall), pass 1 accuraterip verified, pass 2 with no limit on drive speed, ultrasecure minimum 1 maximum 4, end after two clean passes, vary drive speed each pass (I think this is important to find bad rips, but some drives, like the one in this laptop, don't actually vary the drive speed even though told to do so.) This is not the computer I usually use for ripping (only when I travel, as it is a laptop) so I'm not exactly sure about what my current settings are, but I think around 25 rerip attempts, max drive speed around 20X Abort the rip after 45 minutes? (have changed that from time to time) Interpolate Unrecoverable frames is ticked. I also write the log file to the same folder the album is in, and display it on the screen at the end of the rip, and look at it for rerips, particularly if I wasn't watching closely while the rip was going on..

In fact, if I see a insecure rip with re-ripped frames, I'll usually abort the rip, clean the CD (fingerprints can be killers), try a different drive (which often works if it is only a few bad frames, and sometimes works even with hundreds or thousands of bad frames). If still bad, I'll let it rip as best it can (sometimes with no time limit), listen to the results, and if it is bad enough to make it "unlistenable", (varies depending on the material and my mood), I'll delete that track from the files. I'll then put the CD in my pile of bad CD's. From time to time I search EBay for replacements, if the original is anything I care about, somewhat dependent on the cost of the replacement. Often rips of CD's with rerips, even unrecoverable frames, sound fine. Sometimes there area few pops, which I'll usually live with until/unless I find a replacement.

Brasso (yes, the stuff for polishing brass) is a moderately fine abrasive, can be used (wet) to polish visible scratches out of CD's or DVD's, if that's why they don't play. It is rather time consuming. I've salvaged a couple of badly damaged CDs and DVD's that were, in places, totally unplayable. Google "scratched CD or DVD repair" for the technique. I'm told that some toothpaste works also.

[schmidj]

Re: Secure rip settings question

I meant to add, the settings are a tradeoff of bad rip detection/recovery versus ripping time, particularly for stuff not in Accuraterp, like most of my Caribbean Soca/Calypso/Steelband collection. Stuff in Accuraterip typically rips in three to 5 minutes for me, stuff with the above settings takes about 15 minutes or so for a 60 or so minute CD. (some of that is encoding time, I'm double ripping FLAC/m4a to an NAS, so that slows down the encoding somewhat).

I have 5 or 6 DVD drives attached to my ripping machine, all full size "internal" drives. 3 actually in the computer (SATA connected), 2 or 3 sitting separately on top (SATA drives connected to USB 2 ports with Sabrent SATA to USB adapters) I have 3 (old size 3X4 aspect ratio LCD) monitors connected. I typically run 3 to 5 simultaneous instances of the ripper. If I don't have to do too much metadata entry/correction or art scanning (my scanner is next to the computer, if the ripper doesn't find the correct artwork, I usually scan without even bothering to search the web, its faster and of better quality), I can easily keep all the drives ripping most of the time, greatly increasing the throughput. If I have to enter complete metadata, then some of the other drives will finish before I finish entering the metadata. This system greatly increases my throughput, however. You do have to keep your wits to remember which drive is which instance of the ripper, lest you open the wrong drive, or worse yet, in the absence of any on-line metadata, type the metadata from one jewel box into the ripper instance for a different CD...

The drives with the Sabrent converters seem to work just as fast/well as the SATA direct connected ones. In fact I use Nero to burn multiple simultaneous CD copies of my location recording sessions for customers from disc images, with verification, and the USB connected drives work fine in parallel with the direct SATA drives in Nero, somewhat to my surprise. Really speeds things up when I need to burn 25 copies of one of my recordings.

[garym]

Re: Secure rip settings question

Good point. I've found out some people don't even enable Ultra Secure and rely on just standard AccurateRip only.

I recommend always using ULTRASECURE. If your rip initially gets an AccurateRip match, it will stop after that step and not bother with the rest of the ultrasecure steps. That in fact is the beauty of dbpa as a both efficient and secure ripper. Only when there is no AR match will it then do the other ripping steps.

[b8375629]

Re: Secure rip settings question

Good information from schmidj and garym, thanks

Brasso (yes, the stuff for polishing brass) is a moderately fine abrasive, can be used (wet) to polish visible scratches out of CD's or DVD's, if that's why they don't play. It is rather time consuming. I've salvaged a couple of badly damaged CDs and DVD's that were, in places, totally unplayable. Google "scratched CD or DVD repair" for the technique. I'm told that some toothpaste works also.

I think this will be my next step. What specific Brasso product would you use? A liquid? A wax?

I've heard about the toothpaste thing too, although I'm skeptical...

[Porcus]

Re: Secure rip settings question

Aborting on time: I initially had that set at half an hour, and that actually was too short on a few tracks that were longer than an hour and anyway had to run a few re-reads. (I also chose the option to vary speed.)

But I would not let troublemakers rip for long on first attempt - try a different drive instead. Then maybe leave it overnight. I've had a track with over ten thousand frames re-rip, that turned out Accurate in the end, but I cannot imagine those errors were scratches - they must have been manufactoring errors or something like that.

Ripped again, months later, in a different drive. Came up as accurate, confidence 1 (matched my bad rip previously submitted) Still unlistenable.

Of course it is still unlistenable This is a problem with using more than one computer, I think. I made the same "mistake" myself - my main ripping engine was a laptop, and I later migrated the setup to a desktop computer, and got confidence = 1 on some troublemakers that should have started re-ripping.