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Topic: Noise While Playing CDs + Their Rips (Read 2032 times) previous topic - next topic
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Noise While Playing CDs + Their Rips

Hi folks!

I've been experiencing a peculiar issue for quite some time now. Whenever I play certain CDs on my PC, there's always a harsh noise or distortion accompanying the playback. This also affects any rips I've created, whether in MP3 or FLAC format. I've owned these CDs for years, even decades, and have played them many times on my PC with the same drive. However, this problem wasn't always present. The drive itself, which I believe is the culprit, is an ASUS DRW-24D5MT, bought new and being in use since 2019. I've ripped about 1,000 CDs with it over the years, most of them with EAC.

The strangest part is that this issue only occurs with CDs manufactured by Warner Music. Here's the list so far:

- Manowar - The Triumph of Steel
- Dream Theater - Images and Words
- Orgy - Candyass
- R.E.M. - Monster

This noise only appears when using this particular drive. I've tested the CDs in question with several other CD players, including a PlayStation from 1995, and everything sounds as it should. So, it's clear that the drive is the issue, and I plan to replace it in a couple of days. However, I'm still curious about the exact nature of the problem.

Has anyone experienced this themselves or can offer an explanation?

By the way, I've uploaded three songs to my Google Drive. It might be easier to understand if you can actually hear what I'm talking about.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1vJ0NLPWz_UV7mEi1MKfMUZ6LF2wVHCN_


All the best,
Mike

Re: Noise While Playing CDs + Their Rips

Reply #1 –
There are a lot of flat places in the waveform (see attached pic).
Maybe the drive can't read this disc properly, and is interpolating very poorly?

Re: Noise While Playing CDs + Their Rips

Reply #2 –
Quote from: lvqcl on
There are a lot of flat places in the waveform (see attached pic).
Maybe the drive can't read this disc properly, and is interpolating very poorly?
I don't know. The drive worked properly for years.

Re: Noise While Playing CDs + Their Rips

Reply #3 –
Quote
most of them with EAC.
I assume you have not enabled AccurateRip?

Quote
I plan to replace it in a couple of days.  However, I'm still curious about the exact nature of the problem
Some drives are better than others with damaged/defective/marginal discs.   CD Drive Accuracy Database.

Players and player software also seem to be better at error-correction/error-hiding than ripping software.

Re: Noise While Playing CDs + Their Rips

Reply #4 –
Quote from: DVDdoug on
Quote
most of them with EAC.
I assume you have not enabled AccurateRip?
Not anymore, since I started using the "Delete leading and trailing silent blocks" option. But what does this have to do with anything if the distortion appears during normal playback with Foobar or other players?

Re: Noise While Playing CDs + Their Rips

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Mike_de on
Whenever I play certain CDs on my PC, there's always a harsh noise or distortion accompanying the playback.
What happens when you play these CDs on a proper CD player rather than a data drive?
It's your privilege to disagree, but that doesn't make you right and me wrong.

Re: Noise While Playing CDs + Their Rips

Reply #7 –
I assumed these discs would be infected with Cactus Data Shield copy protection, but they seem to be released before that insanity was invented. There seems to be a long thread about this problem with Warner discs on another forum.

Some posts on the other thread seem to claim their drive managed to rip things when using another OS or ripping program, but most posts seem to suggest that it's a hardware problem and can't be worked around.
I didn't notice anyone mention if they tried ripping with adjusted drive speed. Perhaps that's something you could try. Try ripping a track with drive configured to different speed and see if that affects things.

Re: Noise While Playing CDs + Their Rips

Reply #8 –
Quote from: Case on
I assumed these discs would be infected with Cactus Data Shield copy protection, but they seem to be released before that insanity was invented. There seems to be a long thread about this problem with Warner discs on another forum.

Some posts on the other thread seem to claim their drive managed to rip things when using another OS or ripping program, but most posts seem to suggest that it's a hardware problem and can't be worked around.
I didn't notice anyone mention if they tried ripping with adjusted drive speed. Perhaps that's something you could try. Try ripping a track with drive configured to different speed and see if that affects things.
*sigh*
Is it really that hard to read properly? I clearly, unmistakenly, and without any room for misinterpretation wrote in my initial post that this noise occurs in both normal playback and ripping said CDs. None of those CDs contain any form of copy protection. In fact, I've never seen copy protection on any Warner CD at all.

Re: Noise While Playing CDs + Their Rips

Reply #9 –
You nicely ignored the important part, testing ripping with different drive reading speeds.

Re: Noise While Playing CDs + Their Rips

Reply #10 –
Quote from: Mike_de on
Did you even read the initial post? It says it right there.
Considering you are (supposedly) trying to engage people's enthusiasm to help you, you are very touchy.  No, it doesn't actually, only hints that you might have done:
Quote from: Mike_de on
This noise only appears when using this particular drive. I've tested the CDs in question with several other CD players, including a PlayStation from 1995, and everything sounds as it should. So, it's clear that the drive is the issue, and I plan to replace it in a couple of days. However, I'm still curious about the exact nature of the problem.
My point is that even a PlayStation is a data drive, whereas stand-alone audio CD players are reading the CD at 1x and doing all the Red Book error correction in hardware.  If the CD plays OK on an audio-only player but doesn't rip OK, doesn't necessarily mean the hardware is faulty.

Quote from: Mike_de on
So, it's clear that the drive is the issue, and I plan to replace it in a couple of days.
Unless you categorically pin down the problem as a faulty drive, there are no guarantees replacing the drive will cure the problem.  At the moment, you're just guessing.

Quote from: Mike_de on
All the best,
Considering your reaction to people trying to help, this seems disingenuous.
It's your privilege to disagree, but that doesn't make you right and me wrong.

Re: Noise While Playing CDs + Their Rips

Reply #11 –
Coming in late here, but addressing the question directly: I have an ASUS DRW-24F1ST (mfd. May 2018) and the kinds of dropouts shown in lvqcl's image above are consistent with what I see on my own rips when that drive has trouble reading a disc (see attachment, which is from a disc with physical damage to the reflective layer). Read errors also cause that drive to drop samples completely sometimes. Just crappy firmware. Ironically at a dBPA rating of 98.5092 % it's the "highest-quality" drive I own, lol.

In re: this being manufacturer-specific, it's not something I've noticed for Specialty/WEA Mfg. PDO Blackburn, Disque Americ/Americ Disc and Music City Optical are the plants I seem to have regular problems with.

No doubt you've already replaced the drive, but do yourself a favor and enable external checks like AccurateRip/CTDB/etc. regardless of the rest of your workflow. Much better to spot problems immediately than after you've run up a stack of bad rips.