Quote Originally Posted by AndrewFG View Post
My guess is that your pop is actually an ID3v2 metadata tag at the end of your file. And that your player is wrongly trying to play that tag as if it was music. This normally sounds like a pop or a blip of static. The exact sound of the tag depends on what is actually in the tag. So for example two instances of the same track with identical perfect accurate rip music content might have different meta data tags (e.g. different album art images) and so they might pop differently. Solution is to change your player..
Hi AndrewFG, thanks for your input. I appreciate it. I actually thought this could be the case and I almost posted asking if this might be the cause. The only problem is that the sounds for each track are the same regardless of which player I used (and I tried a few different ones.) Furthermore, when I played the CD (not the rip) that was the source CD of the 2nd Rip, I heard the same sound as the corresponding rip. And I played the CD both in my computer as well as a stand alone CD player.

I'm inclined to think now that the reason for the different sounding clicks/pops is due to different offsets. All experiments suggest that, but I'm still not 100% sure. Maybe 98% sure since I am still a novice at this and don't understand all the technical aspects.

As an aside, I had a rip of Goodbye yellow Brick Road, but I found that one track was corrupt. So I obtained another copy of that CD and when I played Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting, I noticed the track began with the last fraction of a second of the previous song, which my original CD Rip did not do. I remember being very confused at the time and just figured it was something in the pressing. So when I recently did a PerfectTUNES check on the 2nd rip of Goodbye, I saw an offset of -1441! That's the equivalent of about 2-3 100ths of a second, which jibes with what I hear in the rip.