Two CD/DVD Readers are better than one!

hi all,

This may be of help to anyone embarking on ripping CD’s with dBpoweramp for the first time.

I had a few CD’s that looked superficially in very good condition (with no severe visible defects) but were still throwing up read errors via my portable Samsung SE-208 USB reader. Roughly 50 discs with problems.

From a well known auction site I bought a 2nd hand external LaCie D2 DVD/CD reader (circa late1990’s with internal reader model: NEC ND-3500AG), which incidentally has tank like build quality compared to my Samsung. Commenced re ripping the 'defective’ discs with the LaCie / NEC unit, this time reducing the count down to just 9 discs with errors in total. Upon closer inspection it looks like rot has set in on some of these discs, with tiny spider webbing in small areas under the surface, plus dots of light passing through the discs. Interestingly, the CD's affected are all from the early nineties. These simply refuse to rip cleanly and are destined to be replaced with either new discs or high-res equivalents if available. 

So well worth seeking out an alternative CD reader for a second pass of dodgy discs as it were. In my case, for just around £14 in total it saved some 40 CD’s.