Skip to main content

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks (Read 8908 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Hello...I have generally had good luck ripping my cds with EAC, however, a few of my cds are stubborn and I can't get a couple tracks ripped off of them...is there a setting that may help with getting stubborn tracks ripped?  I generally rip to wavpack, then import to foobar where I convert copies of some tracks to mp3 using lame encoder for ipod use.  thanks for any help!!!



EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #3
I take it you've given the disc a clean?

Can you get your hands on any other cd drives that you could try ripping with. Sometimes using another drive will allow the disc to rip properly.
Who are you and how did you get in here ?
I'm a locksmith, I'm a locksmith.

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #4
101 Error

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #5
I take it you've given the disc a clean?

Can you get your hands on any other cd drives that you could try ripping with. Sometimes using another drive will allow the disc to rip properly.


I don't have any other CD drives unfortunately...in the ridiculous amount of reading I've done on the subject, I just thought I remembered that EAC could lift a lossless copy of a CD even if it was scratched, etc...


I generally rip to wavpack, then import to foobar where I convert copies of some tracks to mp3 using lame encoder for ipod use.

I'm guessing that WavPack, foobar2000, mp3, LAME, and the iPod are not to blame. This time...


Don't think so either, I merely listed the info to be complete.  There's a lot of info out there (much of it outdated I might add) and a lot of variables, etc. to set, so, being somewhat new to this, I welcome all of the useful advice that I can get...

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #6
I don't have any other CD drives unfortunately...in the ridiculous amount of reading I've done on the subject, I just thought I remembered that EAC could lift a lossless copy of a CD even if it was scratched, etc...

Not all errors are recoverable.

Give the disc a clean and try ripping in burst mode (T&C) at a slow speed (EAC allows you to speed lock some drives). Scratches can be polished out but if there is label side damage you'll probably never get the data from the disc.
daefeatures.co.uk

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #7
i've had success ripping cds that caused eac to stall by using foobar2000. more info here.

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #8
For many CDs which can not be ripped in secure mode, the burst mode will help. Of course, it is likely that you can't get an accurate rip on scratched CDs with it (which version of EAC you are using? -> AccurateRip). So only as last resort: better to have a flawed track then no rip at all.

Otherwise - as already mentioned - try it on another drive or get another (scratch-free) copy of the CD.

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #9
I have ripped thousands of CD's using EAC and can attest that there are at least a couple percent of those that had tracks which could not be accurately ripped--even some brand-new CD's.  And I used several different computers/drives in an attempt to get a good rip.  Changing drives/machines worked in very few cases.  Buying another new CD has never worked for me either--I experience the same problems with the same tracks, so manufacturing defects must be to blame.

If you are looking for 100% accuracy of all tracks, my experience is that will seldom happen.  I can count on 2 hands the number of CD's where all tracks ripped with 100% track quality.  Almost all CD's have at least one or two tracks that encounter problems near the very end of the track--usually in the silent lead-out area.  I never worry about those.  I am only concerned with CD's that have tracks that give read or sync errors using EAC and which will not return identical Test and Read CRC checks.

My experience in ripping bad tracks with unsecure burst mode, is that there are always undesirable audio artifacts in those burst-ripped tracks of CD's that will not rip properly in the secure mode.

As far as scratched CD's, I have found that toothpaste is my best friend.  CD's do not have to be shiny or polished to be read accurately.  I have had CD's that looked so cloudy and milky after rubbing with toothpaste, that it is hard to believe anything could be read, but the CD's still ripped perfectly.  Some CD's took more than a half-dozen toothpaste treatments before getting an accurate rip.

There are many recommendations to always rub or wash using an inside to outside motion, but I have gotten better results using circular motions.  I have never seen an explanation as to why the inside to out rubbing is better--maybe in theory, but not in my practice.

Also, I am one of those who has found that as commercial CD's get older, some degrade to the point they can no longer be ripped accurately, when they ripped perfectly in their earlier life.  That may suggest something about how to archive your important CD's.

I have tested other rippers, but many do not indicate when a rip is not good.  EAC's information has always been true for me.

However, there are more CD's with audio anomalies recorded into them than there ever were in the vinyl days.  In vinyl pressing, there were people listening and quality checking the sound of every track at several stages of the mastering process.  That obviously is not going on in digital.  When I run up against some of these 'recorded in' audio defects, I have sometimes had a friend in another country buy the same CD and--so far--every time, the bad artifact is in their copy, too.

And lately, about half the new CD's I purchase are recorded so loudly, that there is definite, observable clipping of the peaks.  Quality control is not at all what it used to be.

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #10
101 Error

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #11
If you are looking for 100% accuracy of all tracks, my experience is that will seldom happen.  I can count on 2 hands the number of CD's where all tracks ripped with 100% track quality.



What do you mean with "track quality"? The information in EAC's rip status dialog after extraction? In this case, track quality can't be equated with accuracy.

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #12
Almost all CD's have at least one or two tracks that encounter problems near the very end of the track--usually in the silent lead-out area.
There's only one lead-out in relation to audio data and it occurs at the end of the last track.

I am only concerned with CD's that have tracks that give read or sync errors using EAC and which will not return identical Test and Read CRC checks.
I'd be concerned with errors that cause re-reads which result in tracks with different but recurring CRCs as well.  Matching CRCs are never proof of an accurate rip.

Changing drives/machines worked in very few cases.
Of the tracks I've seen that can't be ripped accurately, changing drives has often helped.  It depends on the defect, but yes, it's pretty easy to have situations where data cannot be recovered.

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #13
I thought I defined what lead in and lead out are for my contribution:  it is the silence before and after each track.  I am talking about no other lead in or out.  It is in this area that 99.9% of errors in my rips occur, and the errors usually cause only one or two minimal error compensation interpolations by EAC.

One can be overly concerned about accuracy, IMO.  Silence is silence, and as long as silence is what I hear after checking these areas, I am satisfied.  My efforts are used for radio broadcasts, so believe me we are *very* concerned about even the smallest *audible* problems.

Likewise, I am only looking for *indications* that there is trouble in viewing the CRC checks, not a definitive mathematical proof they are absolutely identical.  Usually, when they don't match, I hear problems; when they do match, I hear nothing unusual.

As I mentioned previously, of more concern to me are track defects that are recorded in, and then perfectly ripped with no indication that there are actually problems with audio in the track.

But the whole point of my post was that there is no magic or mantra that will allow ripping of certain bad tracks.  Some tracks just cannot be properly ripped, probably for a variety of reasons--not just scratches,--and no amount of effort will get them to rip accurately.  My experience has been that burst ripping of those tracks also produces noticeable audio anomalies.

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #14
I thought I defined what lead in and lead out are for my contribution:  it is the silence before and after each track.  I am talking about no other lead in or out.  It is in this area that 99.9% of errors in my rips occur, and the errors usually cause only one or two minimal error compensation interpolations by EAC.
The problem is that you're making things up.  Lead-in and lead-out have specific meanings, and now you've given us another one: minimal error compensation interpolations.  EAC does not perform interpolation.

Silence is silence, and as long as silence is what I hear after checking these areas, I am satisfied.  My efforts are used for radio broadcasts, so believe me we are *very* concerned about even the smallest *audible* problems.
One set of re-reads at the very very end of a track or range just before it finishes is no indication that there was a problem with the result.  This is normal for EAC.

Likewise, I am only looking for *indications* that there is trouble in viewing the CRC checks, not a definitive mathematical proof they are absolutely identical.
Are you talking about CRC collisions or something else?  I'm talking about consistent errors (which can be audible), not collisions.

As I mentioned previously, of more concern to me are track defects that are recorded in, and then perfectly ripped with no indication that there are actually problems with audio in the track.
Although this certainly happens, it's off-topic to this discussion.

My experience has been that burst ripping of those tracks also produces noticeable audio anomalies.
I don't think anyone is disputing this (the bolding in your statement is mine).

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #15
There is a type of EAC error I've been wondering about for some time. Perhaps some kind of copy protection is involved, but it seems quite senseless from that viewpoint.

Every now and then I extract an audio book from a set of CDs. My daughter buys cassettes whenever possible, but more and more often the books only come on CD. She strongly prefers listening to cassettes, so I extract, massage, and record onto cassettes for her. I've seen the following symptoms on quite a few ‘books' in the last year or two.

Normally I extract with EAC in burst mode using test and copy. I've yet to have any problem when EAC says the two match. As far as ‘problems' are concerned, I couldn't care less if some bits might be different from the CD, I only care that everything sounds alright.

There are always some tracks where the checksums do not match. By listening to them, I found that many of those tracks do have audio problems. My next step was to switch to secure mode, that has worked well for most damaged music CDs.

On these CDs, secure mode runs very slowly but finally finishes and says everything is great, no errors. That is only partly true, however. The extraction always stops part way through, somewhere around 1/2 the track is now on my hard drive and EAC never noticed.

Testing a fair number of these troublesome CDs with KProbe2, I've found the same basic pattern with all. The first half of the disk has very few errors, the second half has one, two, or three clumps of very many errors, with few errors in between. The high concentrations of errors on the KProbe2 graphs correspond to the problems tracks, as far as I can tell. I remember some of the statistics from the last CD I did this way: there were almost 10,000 C1 errors and more than 35,000 C2 errors.

All of these have come in sealed boxes purchased from retailers. There are no big defects to correspond to those clumps of errors that I can see. I've never gotten such patterns of errors from any CD-Rs I wrote, nor from any commercial music CDs I've tested, so I don't think I'm seeing a testing or CD-ROM drive artifact. It seems very strange both from a copy protection and from a quality control viewpoint.

Most of these troublesome tracks extracted without any audible errors using the Plextor Audio Capture 2000 utility. A very few have required playback from a real CD player, recording via S/PDIF. It is because of those few that I don't just use the Plextor utility to begin with; it does not provide any feedback about the quality of the extraction.

 

EAC having trouble ripping stubborn tracks

Reply #16
Thanks for the corrections greynol.  You are a hard task master for someone who has done a lot of ripping and was trying to be helpful.  I will think long and hard before making another entry, though.