Any way to play damaged/scratched CD like w/ a normal CD player?

2012-11-04 16:24:05

Hello Folks,

I own a few old and unfortunately heavily scratched CDs, with so large and deep damages, that sometimes also the standard/normal CD player cannot play those.

However, my Philips CD player can read and play almost all tracks, while my PC DVD/CD player with Foobar cannot.

I mean, with my PC DVD/CD player with Foobar it seems that it can read CDs only in the full-digital and CRC corrected mode, while my legacy Philips CD player just read-out what it can then correct all at its best.

Any way to have Foobar instruct the PC DVD/CD player to work in that "analog-like" mode?

Thanks and regards,
Andrea

Any way to play damaged/scratched CD like w/ a normal CD player?

Reply #1 – 2012-11-04 18:42:28

I've heard toothpaste works.  It cleared up the headlights on my car rather nicely.  Smooths things out.

Regards,

Tom C

Any way to play damaged/scratched CD like w/ a normal CD player?

Reply #2 – 2012-11-04 23:27:22

Use the digital SPDIF out from the Philips CD player to your PC sound card to capture the audio. The Philips CD players were the most robust vs scratches back in the day.

Any way to play damaged/scratched CD like w/ a normal CD player?

Reply #3 – 2012-11-06 04:59:49

This may not be the kind of 'solution' you're looking for but...
use EAC to get the best results possible rips from your damaged discs and then burn new discs? EAC can work in an error-correcting mode or in a "analog-like" mode which it calls burst mode.

Any way to play damaged/scratched CD like w/ a normal CD player?

Reply #4 – 2012-11-06 17:43:07

Thank you ALL for your kind suggestions!
Regards,
Andrea

Any way to play damaged/scratched CD like w/ a normal CD player?

Reply #5 – 2012-11-06 19:54:18

The error correcting modes of "secure" rippers like EAC are just re-reading strategies to try to get consistent data (and defeat any caching that might be going on). If the damage is minor, you can usually get the same data from 2 out of 32 or fewer reads. It's also possible to get consistent errors. So yes, that is one option.

It sounds like what you want is interpolation; that's probably what your CD player does. There is one ripper (PerfectRip) which produces a C2 report of suspicious samples. You can feed this report along with the audio image file into a companion program, InterPol, to produce a new image with the bad samples replaced with linear-interpolated samples. The downside of this is that PerfectRip does not re-read, so bad samples which could've been fixed by re-reading will have to be interpolated instead.

Another option is to use CUETools to attempt a Repair action... if someone has made an error-free rip of the same disc with CUERipper or with EAC and the CTDB plugin, then there should be a recovery record in CTDB. CUETools can use this record to correct a modest amount of bad samples in your rip. The correction won't be made based on interpolation; it will be making the data exactly what it would've been if your disc was undamaged. If there are too many errors, though, the disc won't be repairable (CUETools won't even try).

Any way to play damaged/scratched CD like w/ a normal CD player?

Reply #6 – 2012-11-06 20:52:47

Sorry if this is a little off-topic, but I'm interested in getting a normal CD player which is good at playing damaged CDs.

I had wondered if the Sony DVD players with 'Precision Drive' would be the best choice (this moves the lens instead of the optical block to improve reading of damaged DVDs).

Is there a particular model or generation of Philips Cd players which are known to be good?

Any way to play damaged/scratched CD like w/ a normal CD player?

Reply #7 – 2012-11-06 22:54:58

I own an old CD player, based on CDM4 mechanism, model CD618, which plays fine many relatively damaged discs.

The very best solution is resurface those CDs to get a flawless rip. That's possible as long as label side isn't damaged.