Two CDs sound distorted on B2

[Phillip Alcock]

Recently bought a Brennan B2 and have been ripping my CDs.  All going well except for two particular ones so far. Both sound distorted if I play them on the B2, but both sound fine on another player.  The ripped versions also sound distorted on the B2.  Any ideas? 

FYI the CDs are “Clapton chronicles” (Eric Clapton) and “Swinging the Blues, Dancing the Ska” (Jools Holland and his band)

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Are they simple Music CDs or are they recorded to a higher bit rate?

Fred

[JFBUK]

Hi,

I have posted this previously about rip versus play

Its possible that a CD will seemingly play OK but not rip OK.

The underlying algorithms differ including how they attempt to error correct.

If its an option for you I would try ripping the troublesome CDs on a computer and then uploading the ripped tracks to your B2.

Other ripping software  can allow you more control of the rip process including the speed at which it attempts to rip. Slower rip speeds can often times get over errors more successfully

John

[Christian Sunderland]

Hi Phillip,

When you say 'play' do you mean play direct un-ripped from the Brennan (ie you've stuck the CDs into the Brennan and playing from the CD option)?

Also check that the Equaliser setting is turned off (this only works properly, if playing direct to speakers and not via an external amp, otherwise it processes the pre-amplified signal and distorts).  

Other-than-that, I can only suggest deleting and re-ripping...

Christian

On Tuesday, 15 February 2022 at 13:34:16 UTC phillipj...@gmail.com wrote:

[Phillip Alcock]

To clarify in answer to your points

1. These are standard, off the shelf, recorded CDs

2. The B2 does not play them correctly as CDs, I.e. putting them in the slot and playing, whereas other players are ok

3. I did try ripping one of them again - same result - distorted.

4. EQ disabled

5. Playing direct to speakers

Currently need to buy external drive to rip to another device

Did take a copy off the B2 via USB and loaded it on laptop and looked at it using Audacity. Was a very high recording level, I,e. Clipping all the time.  Clearly not the case when playing on other player.

Phil

[PMB]

Hi Phil,

Is this the one - link - 

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Phillip Alcock]

A solution! Maybe someone can explain why!   Went out and bought and external DVD/CD drive.  Thought I’d experiment by plugging into the B2 (as per instructions) and trying it, with little hope of seeing a difference.  But there is.  Both CDs ripped and playing fine, without having to rip to laptop, etc.  Happy but puzzled.

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi Phillip

As your machine is newish, it could be that it was made using one of the bad batch of CD players that Brennan was supplied with (from China I believe) during Covid - (the CD players Brennan use are off the shelf PC units). Brennan  have told us that this batch (unknown to them) was not up to quality, and we have seen a number of issues relating to them on the forum - (not working, swallowing CDs and not giving them back etc).

We have not seen an issue like yours before but I would be willing to bet that this is probably the problem as you have proved that an external CD unit works OK.

I expect Paul from Brenan may want to follow this up with you when he next monitors the forum.

Fred

[PMB]

Hi All,

Martin B is looking at this problem. He has a B2 exhibiting the fault and some example CDs to work on.

I'll let him know about the external drive working OK.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Richard Hennessy]

I have also recently got a Brennan B2, spent first week just ripping CDs from my original collection, around 600 so far. Have now connected to my hi fi and am playing as random only to find every so often a completed distorted sound. Have checked and it applies to all the songs on that ripped CD. The CD play fine when played through my normal CD player.

Have now played and found at least 6 corrupted CDs at least a 1% error rate. Will now start playing back more ripped CDs to work out extent of problem. 

What action is Brennan recommending?

[PMB]

Hi All,

Martin is investigating a problem with some CDs. It appears that the 'Warner' label CDs, in particular, have some sort of copy protection built-in and this appears to cause the distortion problem.

The interim solution is to rip those particular CDs using an external CD Drive. I use the ASUS SDRW08D2S-U, for example.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Daniel Taylor]

I went looking for a copy of Clapton Chronicles to buy so I can test for this problem.  However, there are quite a number of different releases of that title on different labels, and in different coutries.  Phillip, would you please provide the UPC of the version you have that has the problem?

[Richard Hennessy]

Hi Paul,

The 11 CDs I have had problems with so far are:-

Kathryn Williams - Old low light 

Led Zeppelin -II

Led Zeppelin - III

Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells III

Mike Oldfield - Millennium Bell

Mike Oldfield - Tres Lunas

James Blunt - Back to Bedlam

REM - Out of Time

REM - Automatic for the people

Aqualung - Aqualung

These seem a mix of Atlantic and Warner Bros

They all copied fine to my iTunes library.

Regards

Richard

[Mark Fishman]

I find it highly questionable that an external drive would be better at copying a copy-protected CD than the internal drive if both drives are operating correctly: both are almost certainly computer drives, with firmware intedned to read data discs, and only incidentally capable of playing -- or reading raw streams from -- audio CDs. The ripping software in the B2 is the same code for either drive, no?

In other words, I'm more inclined to believe that there's something wrong with the internal drive, than that there are mysterious copy-protection tricks on specific CDs, producing distortion only when ripped on the internal drive.

Most copy-protection attempts on audio CDs have been discredited as either unworkable or likely to produce audible errors even when played on an audio-only (not computer) drive. Finding out whether a specific disc has such deliberate deviation from the CD-DA standard should be fairly easy these days.

[fred.w....@gmail.com]

Hi Mark,

I am NOT very knowledgeable on this area at all, but my instincts would be to agree with you - why should the B2 software decode the output of an attached USB CD reader in a different manner than an internal (essentially USB) CD reader. The data flow coming into the Pi inside the B2 should be the same for the same disk. 

Much more likely is that the recent quality degradation experienced with the current batch of B2 CD Readers is the problem. 

Looking at the data I have from the problem albums AND RIPPED ON MY 2016 B" with the latest (non test) B2B software, 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and or

Do not have any distortion and play fine.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thus the empirical data backed evidence would seem to support my contention that "CDs, in particular, have some sort of copy protection built-in and this appears to cause the distortion problem." is, with all du respects to Martin Brennan

a red herring.

Fred