Two CDs sound distorted on the B2 (2)

[PMB]

Hi All,

Something strange was going on with the original thread discussing this issue with all new additions were being deleted. So I have started a new one.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Mark Fishman]

Thanks, Paul. I'll just insert here the message you posted previously that never showed up in the original conversation:

  =======================

On Tue, Mar 1, 2022 at 3:50 AM PMB wrote:

Hi All,

As I understand it, investigation and testing are ongoing.

Paul

Brennan Support.

  =======================

and I'm also including a link that JFBUK had posted with a 2-page PDF article from Naim about the possible sources of error in CD ripping:

https://www.naimaudio.com/sites/default/files/products/downloads/files/naimnet-cd-ripping-engine.pdf

Much of what is discussed in that article duplicates the explanations of the work originally done by Andre Wiethoff starting in 1998, to develop Exact Audio Copy. I believe he also licenses his code to some other companies, e.g., the folks who sell dbPoweramp probably use it. You can find some very interesting explanations of how Andre addresses each problem mentioned in the Naim PDF at https://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/

Of course Naim have the option of writing their own drive firmware, which is a luxury that Brennan doesn't have.

-- m.

[Richard Hennessy]

Hi Paul,

It says old conversation is 'Locked'

I have now nearly completed ripping my normal CD collection 775 CDs, only Classical still to do.

So far I have 26 CDs I have had problems with, which 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

Aqualung - Still Life

Television - Marquee Moon

James Taylor - The Best of

Red Hot Chili Peppers - By the way

Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac

Liberia - Liberia

Neil Young - Chrome Dream 11

Neil Young - Freedom

Neil Young - Greendale

Neil Young - On the Beach

New Order - International

New Order -Low Life

The Smiths - The Queen is Dead

Yes - Going for the one.

They all copied fine to my iTunes library.

I have tried deleting some of them and then re ripping, but the result is the same - a completely distorted sound.

Regards

Richard

[JFBUK]

Hi Richard,

If you could post the upc/barcode of some of these troublesome CDs anyone who has the same version could report on whether they have similarly had ripping issues with a particular CD.

Thanks

John

[Daniel Taylor]

I have tried my copy of Led Zeppelin II, and it played fine.  But without knowing the exact version, that doesn't tell us much.

Richard,

Do any of your friends have versions of any of those albums?  Either different or same would give us more information.

[Richard Hennessy]

Daniel, I shall ask around. Richard

[Mark Fishman]

General plea:

PLEASE, everyone, if you're going to provide enormous images, ATTACH them instead of embedding them in the messages! 

Giant images alter the on-screen formatting and require lots of sideways scrolling to read any text. And they get repeated in EVERY followup message unless you deliberately remember to remove them from your replies.

ATTACHMENTS (the little paperclip icon) are much more considerate.

Thank you. -- Mark F.

[Daniel Taylor]

Hi Richard,

I found another album on your list that I have: Television - Marquee Moon.  Would you please tell me the UPC of the one you have so I can check with my copy?

In the previous version of this thread, I think I remember one of the posters saying that the problem discs exhibited the problem no matter whether being played or after being ripped.  Can anyone confirm that?

[Brian R]

These Cds are all produced by Warner Bros, I remember reading about problems with WB products prematurely affected by Disk Rot. Could this be the reason here?

Look for discoloured areas in the shiny silver metallic coating. Disk Rot can be brought on by poor storage conditions.

Brian

[David Kelly]

I just got my B2 in the last 2 weeks and. so far, the following CDs sound distorted when copied to the player

Tori Amos  Tales of A Librarian Atlantic 7567-93223-2

The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin Warner Bros. 9362-47393-2

The Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Warner Bros 9362-48141-2

The Flaming Lips At War With The Mystics Warner Bros 9362-49966-2

Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin Atlantic 7567-82632-2

Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin II Atlantic 7567-82633-2

Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin III Atlantic 7567-82678-2

Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin IV Atlantic 7567-82638-2

Interestingly

Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy Atlantic 7567-82639-2

Sounds fine but it does come up with the title Houses of the Holy (remastered).

Hope this helps 

David

[Richard Hennessy]

Sorry Mark, I wasn't aware what was going to happen when I browsed request for photos, Just as well I had reduced size considerably before posting.

regards Richard

[Richard Hennessy]

I have looked at mine and no disc rot. However some other CDs with disc rot seemed to rip fine. Richard

On Thursday, 3 March 2022 at 14:48:19 UTC Brian R wrote:

[Richard Hennessy]

Hi Daniel, My Television -  Marquee Moon.  is numbered 7559-60616-2 

My problem CDs all work fine if played on normal CD player and all ripped into iTunes ok. 

Richard

On Thursday, 3 March 2022 at 12:14:12 UTC Daniel Taylor wrote:

[Richard Hennessy]

David, I have the same number Led Zep II,  III and Houses of Holy which don't rip.

 However my Led Zep IV has no barcode but number 19129-2 Europe: 250 008 WE 835 and that rips fine.

Richard

[Edwyn Corteen]

Has anyone tried ripping these problem CDs on a computer? If you put them in the B2 and play them instead of ripping do they sound OK?

[Daniel Taylor]

My copy of Television - Marquee Moon has a different UPC, so I cannot use that to verify.

However, I do have Led Zeppelin I, UPC: 075678263224.  I am playing it now, and there is no sign of distortion.  Do I need to rip it and play the copy?  I'd rather not, because I already have it on my B2 (but ripped from another version).

[Mark Fishman]

I don't think this can be diagnosed definitively unless you play/rip the SAME physical CD on two different B2 drive units and compare the results. It would also help to move the optical drive from a B2 that exhibits the distorted audio to another that doesn't, and see if the problem moves with the drive.

Yes, I'm dreaming -- but I'm dreaming LOGICALLY. :^)

[Daniel Taylor]

You are so right.  Sounds like a job for the Brennan engineering dept.

I thought that if one of us could reproduce the problem on a different machine with the same CD release, it would show that it's not a problem with one specific machine.  So far, we can't say that.  So, even though it could be a defective disc drive, we can't say that for sure either.

[PMB]

Hi Davidjam...,

Please check your email as I have sent you a message.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[Richard Hennessy]

Hi, I have ripped these problem CDs on a computer when transferring to my iTunes library, they were all fine.

I have now tried your other suggestion and tried playing the CDs on Brennan at normal play speed and not ripping, interestingly the same problem is there, they sound distorted.

[Richard Hennessy]

Hi Daniel,

I have now got from a friend two CDs on my list, they both have the same numbers, although cover is different on one and that works fine on my Brennan when ripping. -the REM Automatic for the People. However the Neil Young - Chrome Dream 11 has same problem with both CDs. So not sure if this helps.

Have found another distorted CD to add to my list making 27 or error rate of 3.4% it is Mike Oldfield - Guitars

I ordered my Brennan on 26th Jan 2022 and it arrived a few days later.

regards

Richard

On Wednesday, 2 March 2022 at 19:15:05 UTC Daniel Taylor wrote:

[Daniel Taylor]

One of the things that I'm aiming at is to decide whether your CD drive is bad.  If we can find a known good unit that can play the problem CDs without a problem, that would tend to point to your specific unit.  But if a known good unit had the same problem, then I'd be more likely to suspect the CDs.  But even that limited logic is not conclusive.

I wonder if Brennan would send you a replacement CD drive to try out, to see if that makes any difference.  Do you happen to have a external USB CD drive that you could plug into the B2 and see how that works?  (Maybe you already posted about that in the earlier version of this thread - but please remind us.)

[John AK]

I am sure that I recall a long time ago experiencing distortion on a ripped CD. I deleted the CD and ripped it again on the B2 with the same distortion result. Eventually I recall runing the Cleanup in the maintenance menu followed by Scan Disk  in Settings to remove all traces of the probematic recording. I then repeated the rip and the distortion was gone. Why it occured in the first place I never found out.

[Jamie Parker]

I've been watching this conversation with interest as a friend and I both purchased Brennan B2s at the end of January. He has the 480G and I have the 2T. He first experienced this issue when ripping to FLAC and I advised him to delete the rip and try again. No change. He then noticed that the sound was distorted on playing too, whereas the CD had been fine on his previous CD player. I borrowed three discs from him so I could try on mine, and had exactly the same results. I then ripped his CDs to FLAC on my PC using dBpoweramp. Two of them ripped fine (both Red Hot Chilli Peppers CDs) and one had the same distortion strangely (The Webb Brothers - Maroon). I then ripped that one to mp3 and it was fine. All three CDs were 'Warners' by the way.

I haven't seen too many issues myself as my extensive library (around 700 GB) was copied across rather than ripped, but he is experiencing a regular failure rate of around 3% on ripping. All the failures seem to be 'Warners'. I will try the external CD drive solution that has been mentioned previously with the same 3 CDs and will continuw to watch this conversation with interest. 

[Mark Fishman]

Hmmm. A quick search on the string

Warner CDs rip distorted sound

turns up:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/cds-sound-is-distorted-when-played-back-and-ripped/06c46c0a-3780-4635-b842-b8cc485b73b3

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6045447

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/crackling-audio-on-playback-and-rip-of-certain-cds/6c76e085-8055-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5

https://www.dell.com/community/Storage-Drives-Media/TSST-CORP-CD-DVD-DRIVES-AND-AUDIO-DISTORTION-WHEN-PLAYING-WARNER/td-p/3628452

https://www.avforums.com/threads/audio-cd-distorted-when-played-on-a-pc-copy-protection.1713521/

and so on.

This problem is not limited to (a) Brennan devices, (b) one brand of optical drive, (c) one brand of ripping software, (d) one brand of playing software. It does appear to be limited to CDs from labels owned by Warner (who currently own not only the old Warner-Elktra-Atlantic group but also one of the largest catalogs of classical asnd pop music in the world, EMI).

Some people have suggested that either using quite old drives (pre-2010?) or updated drive firmware (e.g., TSSTcorp drives) might fix the problem.

[Mark Fishman]

Looking at some drives I have lying around: TSST stands for "Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology". The two internal desktop (IDE) drives I have say "Made in Philippines". The one Dell laptop (internal) drive I was able to look at and identify as a TSST drive also said it was made in the Philippines. But I have mostly OLD equipment (manufacture dates pre-2007).  I think newer stock was probably manufactured in China, but keep in mind that if the staticky playback/ripping problem can be addressed in at least some cases simply by changing the firmware, then it's probably not the hardware that's at fault.

[Daniel Taylor]

That's an accurate point about it probably not being the hardware.  But I doubt that most folks draw a line in their mind between the hardware and the firmware within it.  That attitude is reflected by those who opt for ordering a new SD card vs reflashing their existing card (although that's not exactly the same thing.)  How often is it even an option to update the firmware within a CD drive?  I don't know.

[Mark Fishman]

On a general-purpose computer, if the ffirmware is available, it's relatively easy to flash. Some manufacturers provide updated firmware on their websites. (Sometimes you want to downgrade instead of upgrade -- firmware can take features away as well as fix bugs.) But you're right, most users won't think about it, or if they think about it they won't try it. And often there's no updated firmware available to try.

[Jamie Parker]

Following on from my earlier post, I've now tried ripping one of the RHCP CDs to FLAC with an external CD/DVD drive (Dell DW514). It worked fine, no distortion on playing the ripped copy. I tried paying the CD on the Brennan prior to this and it had the distortion issue.

This seems to be a good 'work-around' whilst Brennan look for a solution (hopefully!). Let's hope its a firmware update rather than a replacement programme, for their and our sakes.

[Richard Hennessy]

Interesting on ripping 800 CDs I have a failure rate of 3.4%

[Christian Sunderland]

It maybe that I have later non-copy-protected editions but there are several CD's that are being listed (Led Zeppelin, R.E.M. and Mike Oldfield, in particular) that I have ripped straight on my Brennan B2 without incident.

Is it possible that certain batches of internal Brennan B2 CD drives may still not like copy-protected discs?  

Christian

[Mark Fishman]

If you read about this problem on the web, it's not clear that it's any known form of copy-protection. For one thing, it seems as if it's limited to discs coming out of one pressing plant, or a small group -- the discs mostly seem to have been pressed in a facility in Germany. And they're all from labels affiliated with the Warner Music Group. They all still seem to display the official CD Audio logo -- which is actually illegal if the disc doesn't comply with the Red Book specification, and there's no provision for any kind of copy-protection in Red Book. Other labels that have used copy-protection in the past have been taken to court for displaying the logo on copy-protected discs, and had to provide replacement discs.

The problem also seems to occur more often on some brands or models of drive than on others, and in some cases has been corrected with a firmware update to the drive. Copy-protection methods developed in the past have all exploited the fact that ripping doesn't conceal uncorrectable errors, or that computers can read multi-session discs (which have more than one ToC), whereas playing audio does conceal uncorrectable errors, and audio players will read only the first session on a disc. This issue sort-of behaves like that, but tools that look for known copy-protection methods don't find any on these discs.

If Warner had a method that worked, however unreliably, there'd be some report of it somewhere, because it would be a selling point (not to us, but to their artists and to other recording companies). See my earlier message in this thread for some URLs of discussion on the web.

[Brian R]

This problem seems to have reared its head fairly recently . Christian may have a point in that it may be limited to a particular batch of CD drives. We know there have been other issues with a recent batch. A rough idea of the age of the Brennans showing this behaviour could help in proving if this is the case.

Brian

[Mark Fishman]

It's not a recent problem, except possibly on the B2. The links I posted report this exact problem, on Warner CDs, including explicitly some of the artists and titles mentioned here, from 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2014. I'll include the links again, for ease of reading. This is not specifically a problem for the B2.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/cds-sound-is-distorted-when-played-back-and-ripped/06c46c0a-3780-4635-b842-b8cc485b73b3

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6045447

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/crackling-audio-on-playback-and-rip-of-certain-cds/6c76e085-8055-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5

https://www.dell.com/community/Storage-Drives-Media/TSST-CORP-CD-DVD-DRIVES-AND-AUDIO-DISTORTION-WHEN-PLAYING-WARNER/td-p/3628452

https://www.avforums.com/threads/audio-cd-distorted-when-played-on-a-pc-copy-protection.1713521/

[Brian R]

Hi Mark

Sorry if I didn't make my post clear. I should have said  'This problem seems to have reared its head fairly recently on the B2'

Brian

[Daniel Taylor]

I like Christian's and Brian's idea.  Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part.  It'd be nice if the problem could be fixed by just swapping out the CD drive.  That batch had problems anyway.

[PMB]

Hi All,

I know Martin is working on this issue. Meantime it appears ripping those particular CDs using an external CD Drive works OK and can be used as a temporary work around - you do only have to rip a CD once...

Paul

Brennan Support.

[RandyT]

I've been following along half heartedly until Mark mentioned Warner CDs. I have had my B2 for a year now and have around 1000 CDs loaded up. You hit an issue here and there but work it out. 

Very recently I picked up a Warner CD (Bela Fleck and the Flecktones) that has driven me crazy. My B2 will recognize it, try to rip it, then nothing. No evidence of that CD on my be B2 anyplace. Not even when I look at the files via my computer. Yes, I've run scan disc multiple times along with reboots. Nothing.

It gets stranger than that though. When I try to load this into iTunes, it RIPs TWO IDENTICAL COPIES of the CD. I've done this several times on the computer after deleting both copies each time. It's not a one time glitch.  I've no idea what's going on but it seems to be that Warner CD. Looks like more investigation is warranted. Maybe I'll throw it into Audacity and see what happens.

[Mark Fishman]

Randy, are you using a Windows box or a Mac (when you rip to iTunes)? If it's a Windows box, try this:

before you load the CD into the drive, hold down the LEFT SHIFT key, and keep it down until after the CD has loaded and Windows recognizes it. Then see what happens as you try to rip it.

Holding down the left shift key as you load a CD (or connect a USB disk) is supposed to prevent any attempt to autoplay or run any autorun file that might be on the disk. Some of the older copy-protection schemes relied on a computer reading a second session on the disc that was actually a data session with autorun commands. If you can suppress any attempt by your computer at doing so, maybe the results would be different -- and maybe that would help explain why the B2 doesn't like the disk.

Macs aren't supposed to do any kind of autorun, but I know they can recognize DVDs (and automatically start the DVDplayer application), and I think the left-shift trick doesn't help there.

-- m.

[Daniel Taylor]

Randy,

Please tell me which Bela Fleck/Flectones disc and the UPC.  Ii would like to try it on my B2 and computer to see if I can duplicate your results.

[RandyT]

Of course I'm in the U.S. and at work. CD's at home and I can't remember the title right off. I'll post that tonight if I remember. 
Mark, I'm on a MAC and have been most of my life. It's pretty bizarre the way this is working. I've been meaning to take a closer look but haven't gotten to it.

[Richard Hennessy]

Hi Paul, Unfortunately I don't have an external CD drive and it hardly seems worthwhile buying one to only rip my 26 problem CDs. As these CDs are all on my ipod my next port of call is to see if I can download them from that. The instructions seem to indicate that is possible.

regards Richard

[Richard Hennessy]

Earlier I was asked to list the  CD Numbers of those distorted CDs, but now I'm not sure if that will help. I borrowed the same REM CD from a friend to compare with mine. His worked fine - playing and ripping, whilst mine was distorted. However they had the same numbers on them even though physically they must have been different print runs, see photos, case colour different and printed insert had different border dimensions.

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

Given what you have posted above, have you considered that one of these may be a fake product, the rear, right hand cover looks to be much inferior!

Fred

[Daniel Taylor]

That's interesting.  There must have been some reason they changed things and did a new run of discs.  Maybe the discs were defective.

[Mark Fishman]

Or maybe the earlier run wasn't defective, so they did a new run that was -- intentionally. Do we have any way to find out which CD is newer? There are usually some numbers or letters molded or etched on the inner ring of the label, or in the plastic around the hole. Maybe those reference the pressing run.

[Richard Hennessy]

That might be because photo taken through plastic casing which was more worn, the inserts looked pretty identical in quality, otherwise not sure how to tell a fake other than it works compared to original.

[Richard Hennessy]

I'll have to borrow friends CD back again to compare, but looking at my defective one, the numbers on the inner ring correspond with the numbers by the bar code. 

I have located another friend with some more of my defective CDs so will do some more comparisons.

[RandyT]

Okay, as much as I hate to, I have to eat my words. God only knows what I was thinking with the doubled up files in iTunes. Let's forget my previous post about this. I may still have an iTunes issue and I MAY come back to that.

BUT . . . I did discover something very interesting in this process. There is an issue with the B2 regarding NAS files AND BELA FLECK CDs. Sort of. It turns out that the name Bela is spelled with and ACCENTED 'E". This was keeping ANY CD with an 'accented' Bela in the artist name or title from appearing in my NAS files. Remember I'm on a MAC, may be different for a PC.

So I tried re-ripping that 'new' Bela Fleck CD (Three Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, 1993) on my B2. It ripped fine. Forced it to compress to FLAC. Ran scan disc. Rebooted my B2..... Nothing. No CD visible. So I searched for specific song titles. There they were. Searched for CD name. Bingo! Edit out the accented E and all is fine.

So I edited the accented E out of my Bela Fleck files (via B2 web interface) and they then appeared in my NAS files. What was also interesting was that when editing, I'd place the cursor between the E and the L and hit the backspace key one time, all that did was remove the ACCENT mark and leave an unaccented letter E in the name Bela.

So now all is right with the world. At least my B2 world.

[Daniel Taylor]

More strangeness to report.  I just loaded and ripped the Béla Fleck & the Flecktones - Three Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  I have not compressed it yet. But at this stage, the Artist name with "Béla" and the accent acute is displayed without problem and the music is playing from the ripped copy.  After waiting for the NAS listing to populate, I see the full name displayed for the Artist folder and all the songs are there in the Album folder.  Now, I have no idea what has gone wrong with Randy's B2.

[Daniel Taylor]

When I first ripped that disc, I turned off alphabetical sorting so that I could find it at the end of the list.  I just found out that with alphabetical sorting enabled, Béla does not fall where Bela would.  Rather it is at the end of the B's, right after Byrds.  I wonder if that might be why Randy couldn't find it.  However, in NAS (on Windows 7), it does appear where you'd hope to find it, between Beethoven and Benson.  (I normally put last name first so as to alphabetize by last name.)

[Christian Sunderland]

Hi Daniel,

I think Béla is being listed after Byrds, as the ASCII code value for an 'é' may be higher than the value for 'y'?

Possibly??

Christian 

[Mark Fishman]

There is no ASCII code for 'é'  -- ASCII doesn't have any accented characters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII

That's why it works on all operating systems and displays the same in all applications.

[Daniel Taylor]

Of course, Mark is correct.  But Christian has the right idea.

If we remove the word ASCII, then Christian is correct.  The code for é is 0x82, which is greater than the code for z which is 0x7A.

[Mark Fishman]

On a Mac, 0x82 is an uppercase c with a cedilla, not a lowercase e with an acute accent (that's 0x8E).

https://www.barcodefaq.com/knowledge-base/mac-extended-ascii-character-chart/

Perhaps that's why Bela Fleck doesn't show up using NAS from a Mac, or perhaps is somewhere else entirely.

I have no idea what code is being used in the version(s) of Linux on a B2, or what code might have been uploaded to an online database by some unknown user on an arbitrary computer platform. ASCII is the same everywhere, which is why I restrict myself to that 7-bit character set for things that have to be displayed on more than my own computer-of-the-moment, or printed to paper.

[Daniel Taylor]

Ha!  I guess Mark gets the last word.  ;o)

So just when I thought it was safe to allow characters like é, I now see that I'm better off to just keep limiting things to the ASCII character set.

[RandyT]

I think what happened on my end is that when BELA wasn't in the alphabetical list, I started using the search function. Searching for BELA (with the accent) returned no results. That's when searching for song title or album name DID give results. I think my issue was again that accented letter E.

[Richard Hennessy]

Dear All,

I have found some interesting information on CDs. If you look up Discogs.com you can find all sorts of information about music, in the case of my REM CD that doesn't work and that of my friends that does you can look up REM and then CDs. It seems there are 10 different pressings of this CD. My friends was in a yellow jewel case and had WME after the number on the centre of the silver side of the CD, in very small letters/numbers. That shows his is the first pressing. Whilst mine has 05/00 after the number which means it is a 2000 repressing.

Look at this link to see   https://www.discogs.com/master/57830-REM-Automatic-For-The-People

The other CD he had which like mine didn't work was Neil Youngs Chrome Dreams II, they both had identical pressing numbers and it seems there are 20 different pressings https://www.discogs.com/master/38451-Neil-Young-Chrome-Dreams-II?format=CD.

I will look at my other CDs with problems and it could be that the issue relates to a year or factory maybe?

Richard