I know that CTDB does not start at the very beginning of the 1st track, nor go to the very end of the last track. I have always avoided using it to repair either of these tracks. What do others do? Am I being overly paranoid?
Just replace any nulled samples in the "fixed" track with those from the original rip if you feel so compelled.
Whats the easiest way to do that w/ free software?
Also, whats the easiest way to confirm that they are null samples?
I've always used a wave editor with good zoom and invert-mix-paste functionality.
Am I being overly paranoid?
If you still have the original files, you haven't lost anything in the effort. The repair ignores the first 10 sectors of the first track and last 10 sectors in the last track, so if you have damage in those sectors that damage doesn't get repaired. Because AccurateRip only ignores the first 5 sectors of the first track and last 5 sectors of the last track, this may result in the CTDB result showing the track as good after repair while AccurateRip
still shows the track as not accurate.
The repair does not replace the first 10 sectors and last 10 sectors with nulls [Edit:] that I'm aware of.