Ripping and standard playback speed for damaged discs

[James O]

Not sure this feature can be added, but occasionally I round across CD's that are scratched and damaged that will play fine, however, when you attempt to Rip them the disc is either rejected at unreadable or will Rip some tracks then stop once bad tracks are attempted to be Ripped.

It there a way a user option could be added that would allow a disc to be Ripped at standard (X1) speed? I assume this would be a setting that could or should default back to the standard Ripping speed after this feature would be selected??

Again, not sure how much control is available to Ripping speed. 

I do have a decent motorize CD restorer/polisher that works pretty well, I have been able to clean up the scratches and scuffs on a number of discs and have luck Ripping them, but there are a handful of disc that are still problems even once they are cleaned up with the CD restorer/polisher.

Thanks in advance for considering this feature if it can be added.

James

[Daniel Taylor]

I am under the impression that the CD drive slows down automatically as needed to read troublesome discs.  If anyone knows for sure, either way, it'd be nice to know.

Many of us rip the problem discs on our computer.  Then Import them onto the B2 from a FAT32 formatted USB disk.

[Iain]

If I, as an owner of a JB7 since 2010, and of 2 B2s since 2015 and 2019, may chip in here.

To be fair I have had very little difficulty with several thousand CD ripping operations on the Brennans.

I can only vividly remember 2 or 3 CDs that caused a problem and they were not from my own collection.  I told the wonderful Magpie about them and they, by return sent flawless replacements.  I did not even have to return the budget-priced albums to them and they were binned by me.

When ripping CDs, I mostly (but not always) took the opportunity to glance at them (or even wipe them - less than thoroughly - on my cardigan!) before feeding them to the Brennans.

My players come from 12 years, 7 years and about 3 years ago, respectively.

Perhaps the problem nowadays is due to different standard quality of components?

Personally, I have been shocked at some of the quotes about sub-standard or counterfeit hitech parts on this forum.

Iain  

[Mark Fishman]

Yes, the manufactured quality of computer parts -- especially optical drives -- has declined. Of course, so has the selling price. I'm staring at an internal PlexWriter that I bought abut 20 years ago for well over US$100 -- it works fine. The last drive I bought was a USB BluRay burner that sold for about US$30 on Amazon: it can be a little finicky, feels considerably shoddier, and will probably not last 20 years.

Try selling a sturdy, precision mechnism that costs a few dollars more these days: most people understand price far better than they understand quality. It's been called "the Walmart effect", in which everything is sacrificed to make the cheapest product. Sometimes it's not worth counterfeiting when the real thing is already nearly free: you won't find (m)any counterfeit 16GB thumb drives, for example.

[James O]

Optical drives do change speed during Ripping, not sure what all the factors are, but it may be due to the disc quality.

I always inspect the CD's before RIpping, usually clean them as needed, but the problem CD's I have are not dirty, the polycarbonate is scratched to the point you can feel the imperfections with your finger tips and finger nails. 

The issue is not with a cheap, subpar or defective CD, it has to do with CD's that are SEVERELY scratched and damage. These are not defective discs, they are abused discs. Cleaning will not change or improve this problem. I have a lot of used CD's that I pick up and yard sales and thrift stores. Some are given to me, for example I have a friend that gave me a complete bag of about 40 CD's that have no cases and have been sliding around in a car for years. 

I use an AC/Mains powered CD refinisher on many of the severely damaged CD's and have success, but occasionally there a few discs that end up with a number of skips when Ripping, but will typically play fine at standard X1 speed, sure the quality of the CD drive could be a contributor, but again the drive will often play these damaged disc without a problem, only have skipping issues when Ripping.  This CD Refinisher actually has an abrasive set of wheels that will actually remove part of the polycarbonate on the surface that the laser looks at, then there is a wheel that will buff the plastic with a polishing compound and can finish with a liquid cleaner. 

[Daniel Taylor]

With badly scratched discs such as you describe, even my computer has a tough time reading them without errors.  I have a JFJ EasyPro repair machine, and even with that some discs cannot be repaired well enough to get a good rip.  That is frustrating because many of those same problem discs can be played without a hearing any problems using a stand-alone audio CD player.  dBpoweramp has a setting called Defective By Design.  This allows the program to read the CD the same way a stand-alone CD player would, using the error correction built in to the CD.  The resulting rip is not error free, but often, you can't here the errors on playback.  This capability is beyond the B2, and I think understandably so.   But it is an option for anyone who wants to buy the dBpoweramp program - about $50 or £30.

[John Johnstone]

One solution to rip the scratched cd at x1 speed could be by using Audacity and capturing the sound from the PCs sound card whilst playing the cd. The captured sound file could then be split up in Audacity into the individual tracks and then exported as FLAC etc.. Obviously, the quality of sound captured is dependant on the specification of the PCs sound card but it's better than not having the rip at all.

[Mark Fishman]

Item 1:

"Playing" a CD is not the same as "ripping" the data from it.

In addition to the error-correction that is built-in to the audio data on the disc -- which is much less than the error-correction that is on data CDs -- the playing process uses the firmware in the DRIVE to create interpolated samples to CONCEAL the existence of errors thatr cannot be corrected. Corrected errors produce correct data; concealed errors produce fake data. When the data coming off the disc cannot be corrected, there's a dropout in the stream, and the PLAYING process interpolates some samples to fill the gap, in a way that is relatively bening, especially as it should be short.

   Obviously you would not want interpolated samples when reading a data CD: you want the files back exactly as they were written. There's more error-correction overhead on a data CD for that reason. Audio CDs actually hold more "user data" than data CDs because they have less error-correction overhead, and they get away with it most of the time because listening to a stream is a human-brain process that is more tolerant of fleeting errors than a computer would be.

   RIPPING pretends the disc holds data, not audio, and does not invoke the error-concealment code in the drive firmware. If the drive can't correct an error, it probably fills the gap with zeros, and you hear a click (if it's short) or a dropout (if it's long enough to hear).

   Ripping at 1x is still ripping, not playing. Computer drive mechanisms will often spin the disc faster than 1x even when playing, and they buffer or cache the audio samples so the computer is free to do other stuff. It also helps if the drive is moved, as in a laptop, and has to re-position the laser and re-read part of the disc. Whether the drive is ripping or playing is not just a matter of rotation speed.

Item 2:

If you rip on a computer and get a file with errors in it, it's often (not always -- it depends on the errors) possible to reconstruct a "correct" copy of the audio using a program and online database called (collectively) CUETOOLS. It has a learning curve, and thankfully I have not had to climb it yet. But I know people who have used it successfully to re-create correct rips of damaged discs in their collections.

   If you have bags of abused CDs, it's porbably worth reading up on CUETOOLS.

Item 3:

Sometimes, if a CD has a deep scratch that hasn't quite reached the reflective layer (you should be able to see that by holding the disc up to a light), after you clean and polish it you could try applying a tiny bit of car wax -- NOT POLISH, that scratches, just WAX -- to fill the scratch with something that dries clear. The acrylic coating has a different refractive index from air, and the edges of the scratch could be bending the laser beam enough to misread the disc. Filling the scratch with clear wax can reduce this effect. It might be enough to get a good read.

TMI, I know. Sorry. -- m.