I've been using EAC with a Samsung SH-S223C for perhaps a thousand discs. Lately, it seemed to struggle with the outer tracks of audio books, so I assumed the drive mechanism may be losing precision.
A bit of research, and I installed a Lite-On iHAS124F yesterday. And this is where the frustration kicks in.
First, where the Samsung drive was ripping a disc in about 15mins (speed consistently around 7x to 8x), the new drive is taking 30mins per disc (if it doesn't encounter errors), and the speed is all over the place -- usually 3x to 4x, and rarely close to 7x.
Second, even on clean discs, progress is stuttering. The beginning of every track involves a long pause (5 seconds or so). Then during extraction I'm not seeing the even increase in progress every second or so that I'm used to.
Third, whenever I insert a disc, it doesn't load immediately. There's a pause during which EAC says "Not Responding" that doubles the time from insertion to details display.
Fourth, while the new drive does seem to correct some errors the old drive couldn't, it's still getting a lot of errors near the outside of the disc, even when there's not obvious damage to the disc.
Fifth, during error correction, the drive seems to go into superslow mode every time. On the other drive, this seemed to indicate a particularly damaged disc (sometimes, the drive would lose registration with the OS, requiring a reboot). On this drive, it seems to be completely standard.
I'd like to understand what's going on. And if there's anything I can do to improve things.
All the crazy pauses are particularly worrying. I feel like there may be a misconfiguration issue, though I think I've followed all the instructions.
The outer track issue is also worrying. Is it possible that there's issues with the pressing itself? I actually have two copies of one audio book, and I'm seeing issues on the same tracks (though not exactly the same locations). That's why I thought the old drive mechanism may be struggling to align properly (and, indeed, ripping just the outer tracks often seemed to help). These discs do have some scratches, but none very serious. And the errors being reported are nearly all Suspicious Positions.
As far as changes to settings that may have had an effect, here's what I did with the new drive:
In Drive Options, it came up in Burst Mode initially (not Secure Mode). I assumed this is a per-drive setting that defaults to Burst for a newly-detected drive. But is it possible I was using Burst Mode with the previous drive? Would it make sense to go back to that, if I were?
I detected the drive's features and read mode (and c2 capabilities).
I changed the speed from "Current Speed" (what does that even mean?) to 48x, then back to 24x (the theoretical speed of the drive). Doesn't seem to make a difference -- at least, not a positive one.
I increased the extraction priority from Normal to High.
I may have changed one or two other things, but I wasn't tracking it because I didn't expect such big problems.
So I'm hugely disappointed. And this was meant to be the best drive available, according to AccurateRip. But if it's going to take 17 hours to rip a 34 disc audio book, that's not really going to work.
I could really use people's help and advice on this.
PS: I'm going to try redownloading and installing EAC, since I'm using a version from 2011. But given the old drive (mostly) worked so much better, I don't anticipate much improvement.
There are 2 possibilities:
1) The drive you have is faulty
2) There are software issues with that drive
Checking 1 is not easy as you would have to get a 2nd identical drive, but 2 is easy, try a different software package and see if the speed is correct.
Lite On drives have generally worse quality. Is it possible to get LG, Pioneer or Samsung instead?
Jan
Lite On drives have generally worse quality. Is it possible to get LG, Pioneer or Samsung instead?
Source?
https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?37706-CD-DVD-Drive-Accuracy-List-2016
The No.1 drive iHAS124 is from Lite On. PLDS stands for Philips & Lite-On Digital Solutions Corporation.
I have the exact same drive and it is working fine. For your reference I attached an example log file here. Apart from choosing I prefer accurate results during the setup wizard I didn't change any default settings.
I worked as a network administrator and had worse experience with lite-on drives (many of them were returned). But I admit that it could have been my experience or selective batch problem. The lists supplied by bennetng claim otherwise and since they are based on multiple subimission seem to be more reliable. It would be better to follow them.
I worked as a network administrator and had worse experience with lite-on drives (many of them were returned).
1.
not really interesting without comparing how many was in use.
Having 5 times the return rate on a drive you have 8 times as many drive off is actually a better stats.
That's why anecdotal evidence is so faulty.
Also personal perception bias may play in. Anything without hard numbers can be severely affected by this.
2.
There is a difference between build quality and quality of work.. don't confuse those.
You might have drive that are excellent at doing their job and have perfect accurate rip capabilities with perfect C2 error correction. but breaks easy if the user is rough to the eject tray. And you can have Kid prof.. erm i mean user prof drives that works after being run over by a truck but still have a pisspoor rip quality, and ignores all C2 errors, out of the box.
You claim seems to be based on build quality not work quality.
Lite-oen drive was in many place the recommended CD-RW drivers due to their mediatek chips. they had accurate audio rip and handle c2 errors pretty well as well as proper EFM coding. something more expensive "quality" drive could not offer
My iHAS124 was purchased last year after I found that the old BenQ behaved strangely (very long reboot time when the drive was connected, freezed Windows explorer etc). I bought the iHAS124 just because it is cheap, without considering its DAE quality. However the new drive still had the same problem as the old BenQ. After some inspections I found that the faulty part was my motherboard's SATA port. I was so regret since I discarded the BenQ already.
After I replaced my motherboard everything is working fine. Really sorry about the discarded BenQ drive.
I worked as a network administrator and had worse experience with lite-on drives (many of them were returned).
1.
not really interesting without comparing how many was in use.
Having 5 times the return rate on a drive you have 8 times as many drive off is actually a better stats.
That's why anecdotal evidence is so faulty.
Also personal perception bias may play in. Anything without hard numbers can be severely affected by this.
2.
There is a difference between build quality and quality of work.. don't confuse those.
You might have drive that are excellent at doing their job and have perfect accurate rip capabilities with perfect C2 error correction. but breaks easy if the user is rough to the eject tray. And you can have Kid prof.. erm i mean user prof drives that works after being run over by a truck but still have a pisspoor rip quality, and ignores all C2 errors, out of the box.
You claim seems to be based on build quality not work quality.
Lite-oen drive was in many place the recommended CD-RW drivers due to their mediatek chips. they had accurate audio rip and handle c2 errors pretty well as well as proper EFM coding. something more expensive "quality" drive could not offer
I agree. That is why I the corrected my first post by recognizing that bennetg's table approach is better.
So I've tried a few things since I initially posted, based on suggestions. I still think there's a problem, but I'm thoroughly confused as to how best to proceed.
I guess there's four things:
1. Are the hardware quirks normal for this drive?
2. Is there something I can change in the EAC settings?
3. Are the discs really damaged or is the drive faulty?
4. What does dbPoweramp actually do?
1. Hardware Quirks
* The drive did speed up a bit after a reboot. I now regularly get 7x speeds on Secure extraction.
* Changing priority to Normal (from High) resulted in steady progress in the absence of errors (rather than random jumps).
* The drive pauses for up to 30 seconds between tracks.
* EAC hangs for about 30 seconds on inserting a new CD (Not Responding).
* Error correction always advances at 2 seconds per square (or slower). My previous drive would zip through a whole row in the same time. (This could be because that drive didn't have audio caching.)
So I'm wondering if other owners of this drive experience the same kinds of hangs and delays?
2. EAC Settings
If there is a software misconfiguration, where can I look? The only setting I can see that might change things is the Read Command, which was auto-detected as MMC 1, which is different from my previous drive. Is that something I can adjust to some benefit?
3. Damaged Discs vs Faulty Drive
The pattern I'm seeing is that the last third of each disc (tracks 11-15 of 15, roughly) frequently have lots of consecutive errors, to the point where they can take hours to rip one track. The possible reasons:
a) The disc is damaged. However, scratches appear to be either absent or evenly distributed across the disc. That is, there's often no visible indication that the outer part of the disc is worse than the inner.
b) The pressing is bad. These are audio books, mostly from the same author, and hence publisher. So it's conceivable they've messed up every pressing somehow.
c) The discs were damaged by a previous borrower (from the library). It's conceivable that a bad drive could subtlely damage every disc in the same section. Note that I changed drives because I felt my existing one was struggling on the outer tracks (option 'e' was definitely at play for that drive).
d) The drive is overheating. I may be imagining things, but ripping discs overnight might be yielding better results.
e) The drive is faulty and has trouble positioning the read mechanism on the outer part of the disc. Again, there is a smidgeon of evidence that reripping just the outer tracks can yield better results. But I don't want to do this wholesale until I've ruled out replacing the drive.
I don't know which of these is more or less likely. And I'm not sure how to test each hypothesis. I am considering plugging my old drive back in (though I'm short on SATA cables). If (d) is the problem, that's not really acceptable quality. If (e) is the problem, I'd like to be more certain than, "Most audio book discs I rip result in errors in the last third of the disc."
4. dbPoweramp
I tried this, as suggested, and I'm confused. Basically, it doesn't seem to do what EAC does.
I can't find settings for Secure ripping, and without it the disc I tried ripped at more than 22x, but with errors in the last two tracks, yet no apparent attempt at error recovery. This feels like Burst Mode.
I also noticed the metadata is more limited than EAC (by default). For example, I've been using the Performer field for the people actually reading the audio book. There's no preset option for this field. And there's only one genre field, where freedb uses two. What I'd like to have is the same fields as EAC uses, as well as the option of choosing from a number of sets of meta-data, when they're in the database.
Am I missing something?
Thanks in advance to any responders. This whole saga is driving me crazy through all the uncertainty.
4. dbPoweramp
I tried this, as suggested, and I'm confused. Basically, it doesn't seem to do what EAC does.
I can't find settings for Secure ripping, and without it the disc I tried ripped at more than 22x, but with errors in the last two tracks, yet no apparent attempt at error recovery. This feels like Burst Mode.
I also noticed the metadata is more limited than EAC (by default). For example, I've been using the Performer field for the people actually reading the audio book. There's no preset option for this field. And there's only one genre field, where freedb uses two. What I'd like to have is the same fields as EAC uses, as well as the option of choosing from a number of sets of meta-data, when they're in the database.
Am I missing something?
Yes, you're missing a number of setting options in dbpa which will do all the things you mention. Go into "CD RIPPER OPTIONS" Select Secure ripping, then click on "secure settings" and select ultra secure and set things up to suit you. Regarding metadata, click on the menu option, then "active providers" then tick the ones you want. There are four in total: Discogs, GD3, musicbrainz, freedb. There are also settings for having virtually any metadata field (performer, etc.) setup to be filled in by default. Bottom line, if you want to use dbpa, you need to explore the many settings and options to setup the way you want. Everything you're asking about is there.
I'm sorry, but there are no "CD Ripper Options," at least not in the Trial Version I was told to try. Makes it hard to see if this is a good replacement for EAC.
I'd still like to hear if anyone who uses this drive (iHAS124) has the same issues with slow error correction under EAC. Is 2 seconds per error square normal?
If you have R16 you click the Green icon on tool bar and select 'CD Ripper Options'
So apparently, the Options button on the toolbar (not green, but an image of yellow and red plugs) does something different if you click the button as opposed to clicking the drop-down arrow attached to it.
A well-designed interface would include the button's own functionality on the drop-down, or else move the drop-down so it's not attached to the button.
Clicking the Options button gets me a CD Ripper Options dialogue box, but I cannot select Secure mode (it's greyed out).
I also noticed that when I started the program two days ago, a message came up on start-up that my Trial had Expired. That message is no longer visible anywhere. More seriously, I scanned the terms and conditions when I installed the program, specifically looking for the length of a Trial Period, but found nothing. So the software appears to be enforcing a Trial Period it didn't tell me about, I didn't agree to, and it didn't describe (ie: what won't work after the Trial Period ends). That might be argued to fall into the domain of deceptive licensing practices.
On the whole, then, I am severely unimpressed with dbPoweramp. The interface is pretty but unintuitive. It's difficult to do anything beyond very basic functions. And the functionality conflicts with the metadata providers I've used in the past. The only positive is that drive configuration appears to be automatic.
I'm going back to Exact Audio Copy. It's a much more solid program, despite its complexity. I doubt I'll be coming back to dbPoweramp. No thanks to those who recommended it. I realise you were probably just trying to help, but you've been trying to help me with the wrong problem (see next post).
Yesterday, I bought a new SATA cable and put my old TSSTcorp SH-S223C drive back into my computer, to compare with the new iHAS124F drive.
I ripped the same disc with both drives. The error-free tracks averaged 1:07 each on the S223C, 2:01 on the iHAS124. The iHAS124 found errors on one track, which took it 4 hours 9 minutes to resolve on Low error correction. The S223C on Medium error correction ripped the same track in 1 minute 6 seconds.
The iHAS124 is going back.
I'm actually pretty disappointed that no-one was able to help me resolve the hardware error. I'm not an expert on CD drives and DAE, but they must be out there somewhere. And I thought that might be here, of all places. Even if other owners of the same drive had shared their experiences, that could have helped a lot.
Because no iHAS124 owners responded, I don't know if I have a bad drive or if the model is just badly suited to DAE. I did get good results with one or two tracks that had failed with the S223C, but I suspect simply retrying on a different day might have worked with the old drive (it probably is getting old, but it still works heaps better than the new drive). I certainly can't recommend the iHAS124F on the basis of my experience. Though if I had to guess, I'd say the fact it tries to cache digital audio may be a factor -- it's the one feature that differs between the two drives.
I hope my experience may help other people, and that theirs is better than mine. I'll report back on the replacement drive.
I also noticed that when I started the program two days ago, a message came up on start-up that my Trial had Expired. That message is no longer visible anywhere. More seriously, I scanned the terms and conditions when I installed the program, specifically looking for the length of a Trial Period, but found nothing. So the software appears to be enforcing a Trial Period it didn't tell me about, I didn't agree to, and it didn't describe (ie: what won't work after the Trial Period ends). That might be argued to fall into the domain of deceptive licensing practices.
The length of the dBpoweramp trial (which is 21 days) can be found right beside the button to download it on this page https://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm and was even on the download button itself with earlier versions of the page. There is also a link to the differences under the button that directs to this page https://www.dbpoweramp.com/db-versions.htm
I have Asus DRW-24B3ST drive cross flashed to iHAS124 (same HW in both). This if much slower ripper than previous Samsung SH-S223Q i had, IIRC Samsung was better in everything.
I have an Apple SuperDrive, and it contains an HL-DT-ST DVDRW GX50N, which has an offset of +6. It rips at 5x to 8x when using XLD's secure ripper without C2 pointers enabled. I would enable C2, but some people have tried to scare me away from "unnecessary gains", especially if I cannot "guarantee" that the drive will rip any CD perfectly.
I rarely ever trust some people.
Now I can't speak about XLD C2 but I'm sure it can't be any more "dangerous" than EAC which is just fine when combined with Accuraterip/CTDB or T&C. Just use burst mode if your drive caches, regardless of C2. There's a good chance CTDB will be able to correct any ripping errors, unless the disc is so bad that no amount of redundant DAE voodoo is going to help.
Thing is, I often end up ripping discs that just plain aren't in the AccurateRip database. For instance, I have two albums released by The Lindy Sisters, a trio who are self-published by a state local talent agency. One of the albums isn't even available for purchase outside from any stock they may have on hand at their live performances: Sing it & Swing it.
Burst T&C or C2 T&C is just as good as anything else done with one program, one drive and one disc.
I use secure non-C2 T&C. It takes about 15 minutes to rip a single disc.
I have a hole in my gas line but my mileage is just fine. :D
T&C with a mode that already double-rips arguably does nothing more than give you a false sense of security. Cases concerning inconsistent checksums will go any which way the wind blows, just as cases where consistent errors will give you the same (wrong) checksum. T&C isn't going to save you.
I have reasons for using T&C. If I did not have those reasons, I would simply use normal secure copy with C2 pointers, and only worry if any errors show up during the rip. Which they usually don't, since the few discs I buy or rip end up being "normal" media, in near-mint to mint condition.
Thanks for the replies, everyone! Much appreciated.
Re: dbPoweramp. The download link I saw didn't have the trial period listed next to it -- sadly. I probably just got unlucky on this. As a software Engineer, I still think the program could use some tidying up. The EAC philosophy seems to suit me better, for now. :)
Re: Ripping securely. I did discover Burst Mode a couple of months ago, and I now use it as a back-up for difficult discs. But my Samsung/TSST drive handles a lot of errors quickly enough in Secure mode that I might as well use that. It's actually done very well since I reinstalled it, so maybe my problems were indeed with a batch of discs -- it's always so hard to isolate the cause of such problems.
That said, there is an argument (particularly on a slower error-correcting drive) to use Burst mode initially and let AccurateRip identify errors, which you can then retry.
Even though the old drive is serving well at the moment, I figure having a second drive would give me confidence (and a second opinion) on troublesome discs. For example, I have a copy of Madonna's "You Can Dance" EP that looks pristine but has multiple errors on every track. Needless to say, the iHAS124 didn't help: 15 hours just to Test track 1!
BTW: What is T&C? I thought it was just Secure mode with C2, but now I'm not so sure.
Test and copy in order to compare checksums between two separate extractions to see if they were consistent. Inconsistent checksums indicate that at least one extraction contains errors. Consistent checksums are meant to provide warm fuzzy feelings.
Thanks. I sometimes find the checksums don't match but the final copy still matches AccurateRip. I presume the Test phase is less picky on the error-correction front.
Personally, I like the extra assurance (hence leave it on, with the old drive), but only if it doesn't take forever (hence despise it with the new drive).
The only difference between test and copy is that no file is written during the test pass.
I'm not sure what assurance you're talking about. Matching checksums is an assurance that test and copy passes delivered the same result. There is no assurance the result was error-free, regardless of the ripping mode.
Quick note on Test & Copy.
I have a feeling the read speed is adjusted during the Test phase, resulting in (sometimes) more accurate results in the Copy phase.
Also, the value of T&C is that a CRC match indicates read consistency, which will not occur with some types of error. So if you're not getting an AccurateRip match but your CRCs match... 1) If you're not seeing any rereads at all, then you definitely have an error-free disc that is a different pressing from AccurateRip. 2) If you are seeing rereads but the errors are recovered without an error warning, then you can at least be sure that you have the best read possible with that disc and drive combination -- and quite likely the errors are being correctly recovered.
In contrast, if your Test and Copy CRCs don't match, then you know the read is marginal, even if it does match AccurateRip.
All that said, at least with common CDs, there's a strong argument for turning off the Test rip initially and just using Burst Mode, and only reinstating Test and Secure Modes for tracks that don't match AccurateRip.
I promised to come back with some final results, and here they are.
I took the iHAS124F back, and they suggested trying a different model, so I bought an Asus DRW-24D5MT. This drive doesn't appear in the 2016 accuracy rankings, but the Asus drives that do appear (DRW-24*) are all in the 98% block. That said, given how close the accuracies are between the top and median values, I think we need to know more about what precisely is being measured before using these rankings to inform purchase decisions (eg: does a track with errors count, or is it only error-free tracks?).
The Asus drive is faster than the iHAS124F, but still slower than my original TSST drive. I suspect this is because the TSST drive doesn't cache. The Asus drive is also slower on error recovery, but still two orders of magnitude faster than the iHAS124F! So that's a win. The new drive is more accurate on difficult tracks (as measured by matches to AccurateRip), in that I can often get an exact match on the Asus when the TSST has managed to correct errors but doesn't match AccurateRip. But it can take a while to get that improved rip. Interestingly, I quite often get an unrecovered error on the Test rip but no errors and an AccurateRip match on the Copy rip.
So here's my process, now:
1) Secure rip with T&C and Medium error recovery using the TSST drive.
2) Switch to Burst mode on the TSST drive for any tracks that don't match AccurateRip.
3) Follow up with a Secure rip, T&C, Medium error recovery on the Asus drive for tracks that still don't match.
4) One final try on Burst mode with the Asus drive.
5) If errors are indicated, try High error recovery on the TSST drive (usually after step 2).
This process seems to get me AccurateRip matches on roughly every track but one per 30 discs, and at a rate of roughly 30 discs per day.
However, there is one caveat. I've noticed that sometimes an entire disc (or occasionally just one track) consistently disagrees with AccurateRip. Given that the library has multiple copies of some audio books, I've taken to simply borrowing every copy, and using the second (or third) copy of a problematic disc to fix errors and retry AccurateRip mismatches. As a result, I've ripped some discs 8 times (2 different discs, twice each on two different drives) with identical, error-free results that refuse to match a unanimous AccurateRip verdict. What I find most puzzling about this is that every other disc for that audio book generally *does* match. I guess that's something we just have to live with (and my results, when submitted, will help future users).
Hope that's useful to someone.
Have you tried CUERipper, included with CUETools (http://cue.tools/wiki/CUETools_Download)? It provides EAC-formatted style logs with AccurateRip results, different modes (burst mode + AccurateRip verify set to default) but with an actually decent UI, metadata addition from three different sources (with previewing and editing), among a variety of good features.
EAC killed my last drive so CUERipper is what I now use.
EAC killed it, or did you kill it because of the way you configured EAC?
There are far too many people in the world who think it's a gook idea to configure EAC to be as inefficient as possible. I'm surprised there aren't many people advocating Paranoid mode.
EAC killed it, or did you kill it because of the way you configured EAC?
There are far too many people in the world who think it's a gook idea to configure EAC to be as inefficient as possible. I'm surprised there aren't many people advocating Paranoid mode.
I was using the 'recommended' (EAC's words) Secure mode. Failed to work on two different drives and caused one drive to become literally unusable (haven't tried the second drive since so unsure if that was affected). CUERipper provides many of the same features and a much better tagging and general UI. Surprised it doesn't have more users. Needless to say the burst mode is all I'll be using.