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Topic: Having C2 disabled in EAC results in noticably more audio glitches than with C2? (Read 2382 times) previous topic - next topic
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Having C2 disabled in EAC results in noticably more audio glitches than with C2?

The "EAC Lossless Backup" article on the Hydrogenaudio wiki cautions against using C2 under the premise that many drives fail to report all errors so, while I was ripping some CDs, I came across one that was pretty problematic and figured it'd be a good test-case.

With C2 enabled it took about 2.5 hours to rip while, with C2 disabled, it took around 7.5 hours to rip (not a typo); to be clear, a pristine disc was able to rip in maybe like 5 to 10 minutes.

However, what really surprised me was that around 2 minutes into the third from last song, the rip with C2 disabled had noticable audio glitches that even show up visibly in the waveform almost looking like waveform clipping while the version with C2 enabled didn't seem to have any audible glitches at all in the very same part of the song nor the visual anomalies in the waveform that looked like waveform clipping despite the EAC log still reporting a multitude of "suspicious positions".  I even did the two rips back-to-back without removing the disc at all or even rebooting the PC - the only thing I changed is whether C2 was enabled or not (I did technically close and re-open EAC though between rips).

Nevertheless, I originally just thought that, at best, having C2 enabled would only make rips go faster on a drive that has a good C2 implementation and, at worst, return rips that are more likely to have audio glitches on a drive that has a sub-par C2 implementation.

I don't suppose this all means that the drive I'm using does in fact have a good C2 implementation?  Amusingly it's just what I would think is an inexpensive DVD-R USB drive (Polaroid DR110)...

Re: Having C2 disabled in EAC results in noticably more audio glitches than with C2?

Reply #1 –
Quote from: Nintendo Maniac 64 on
The "EAC Lossless Backup" article on the Hydrogenaudio wiki cautions against using C2 under the premise that many drives fail to report all errors
A word of caution is in place that selecting C2 error pointers in EAC doesn't guarantee that the drive will report them to EAC nor behave well in any particular manner. The wiki article doesn't recommend it to be off as a first choice: [if this and that fails,] try ripping again with this setting disabled. If CRCs match as a result of disabling this setting or tracks are more consistently verified with AccurateRip, then leave it disabled.]

dBpoweramp - from the creator of AccurateRip - does a burst rip first and accepts it if it matches AccurateRip. Philosophy: C2 error pointers tell you something about what went wrong, and when you already know it is good - you don't need that.

Quote from: Nintendo Maniac 64 on
I don't suppose this all means that the drive I'm using does in fact have a good C2 implementation?
Could very well be it is good, or at least "not shitty". Being cheap doesn't guarantee that the firmware is horrible. There was a time when all CD drives were expensive, and between then and now there was a time that having C2 transferred over USB was hit or miss, and often miss.

Re: Having C2 disabled in EAC results in noticably more audio glitches than with C2?

Reply #3 –
Quote from: Porcus on
dBpoweramp - from the creator of AccurateRip - does a burst rip first and accepts it if it matches AccurateRip. Philosophy: C2 error pointers tell you something about what went wrong, and when you already know it is good - you don't need that.

The issue is that the problematic disc in question is a home-made mix CD that my father made like 2 decades ago if not more, so AccurateRip by definition isn't able to identify the disc.

Now obviously for preservation you'd want to rip the originals, but the problem is that my mother had a habit of wanting to re-arrange the songs on an album so that all of the songs that she liked were at the beginning because a lot of times we'd not actually finish a CD (they were commonly played when driving to visit family which is only around 45 minutes away).  Therefore, even if I were to re-create a given mix CD from the originals, I need to rip the mix CD itself in order to just find out the order of the songs...which is how I discovered the C2 situation described in my opening post.

That being said, I do have at least one known commercial redbook audio disc that is quite scratched up - a used copy of the PlayStation game disc Wipeout XL (I know, I'm not living up to my username! for shame).  I've only tried ripping it with C2 not enabled and it was taking long enough that I had to cancel it, but presumably it'd be substantially faster with C2 enabled and the whole point of the test would be to rip using C2 anyway.

(for reference, this Wipeout XL disc is my go-to for EAC's "Examine C2 Feature..." test)

Re: Having C2 disabled in EAC results in noticably more audio glitches than with C2?

Reply #4 –
Can't you just play the CD and write down the song titles as you go? Even if the CD is badly damaged, you should be able to figure out which song is which, unless the skipping is so bad it moves randomly from track to track. At that point, you can rip the original CDs and put the tracks into the custom order again.
 

Re: Having C2 disabled in EAC results in noticably more audio glitches than with C2?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Aleron Ives on
Can't you just play the CD and write down the song titles as you go? Even if the CD is badly damaged, you should be able to figure out which song is which, unless the skipping is so bad it moves randomly from track to track. At that point, you can rip the original CDs and put the tracks into the custom order again.
I didn't know the CD was going to be an issue until it was already part-way through the ripping process since, not only was the first half fine, but the previous CDs I had ripped took only a few minutes and, at that point, I figured it'd be a good test candidate for testing the C2 setting (the previous CDs I had ripped with C2 unchecked) without being a disc that takes forever like my Wipeout XL disc which then resulted in the discovery that I presented in the first post.

But nevertheless, the recreation of the mix CD isn't an issue - I just ended up finding it to be a good test disc since I'd rather figure out whether it's better to have C2 enabled or disabled before I possibly get to a disc that has scratches that isn't a mix disc and is itself an original disc.

Fun fact: I've been ripping my Wipeout XL disc with C2 enabled for the last... uh, EAC reports it's been going for 2hr 32min and it's only 37.5% done.


EDIT: ...and I just realized the fallacy in my logic - if I were to come across an original disc with scratches and stuff, then I would be able to actually use AccurateRip to help with the process of figuring out whether I should have C2 enabled or not.  Whoops.  Well, I've already got my Wipeout XL CD ripping anyway - it's now at 42.3% after 2hr 48min and, considering that video game preservation on the internet is taken to possibly even greater OCD levels than music preservation, comparing to a pristine copy should be easy.