Bored ripping CDs with errors

The old-fashioned solution may be worth a shot - I'm going to stick it in the Oppo and see if it plays!

On the rare occasions when a CD won’t rip on my Unitiserve, I use iTunes, which seems to rip anything you throw at it. That may mean that it’s less fussy it it detects any errors, but the rips it produces seem fine. 

While ripping my CD collection I had a few ones that took ages. XLD gave reading speeds below 1, meaning slower than actual playback.

My solution was to stop the ripping process, eject the disc and wipe it with antistatisc plastic cleaner (Antistatischer Kunststoff Reiniger & Pfleger from Burnus). That usually did the trick.

ChrisSU posted:

On the rare occasions when a CD won’t rip on my Unitiserve, I use iTunes, which seems to rip anything you throw at it. That may mean that it’s less fussy it it detects any errors, but the rips it produces seem fine. 

That’s because iTunes just carries on without reporting errors - they’re still there in your rip but the error is probably not severe enough to be all that audiable on anything other than an a-b comparison with “a good one”.

The dBpoweramp forums suggest a specific Lite-On drive as best able to deal with faults - since I got one dBpa has sailed through most things I’ve thrown at it, and mostly succeeds when it goes to the re-rip frames process. It’s only £12 but is an internal drive - one of the best £12 I’ve ever spent !  I bought a second and an external casing - so I could use it with a laptop, or carry forward to a new PC (as they seem to be fitted with slimline drives, if any nowadays). £12 for the drive and £50 for the casing !

The other thing to try is Brasso - rub centre to edge with a cotton cloth until you’ve got any visible marks out or all the Brasso is “worked in”, clean the disk with a clean cloth (centre to edge again), then finally do a clean with your favourite disc cleaner with yet another clean cloth.  You used to be able to buy tubes of mobile phone screen scratch remover which is less messy than Brasso, but not seen it around recently - that also works. The third choice is toothpaste which is apparently a good substitute for Brasso. I’ve not tried toothpaste, but the screen cleaner and Brasso have worked for me. 

+1 for Brasso for cleaning up scratched CD's.

Yup, Brasso has worked a treat for me in the past as well.

I bought a second CD read/writer and now swap between an ancient LaCie D2, and a newish Samsung, ripping via DBPoweramp. If one unit can’t read a disc then the other usually can, unless the disc is a badly marked charity shop CD, or a disc in poor shape from MusicMagpie that just refuses to rip. Then I use car polish on a polishing pad to remove any light surface marks. This certainly helps and rescued a secondhand Pixies CD only the other day. 

I am re ripping all my CDs from scratch. I originally ripped them using a UnitiServe, but that particular black box has gone to heaven!

In dbpoweramp, before you rip...go to 'Cd Ripper Options', I think by default it rips in 'Secure, (Recover Errors)' mode. Change it to 'Burst, Fastest ripping, No Error recovery'.

That should rip your CD. Not 100% 'Accurate', but 'Inacurate'. The human ear will not notice the difference. 

Basically, all the rips that ripped ok, I selected 'Secure ripping', the ones that showed Error, I changed to 'Burst, Fastest ripping, No Error recovery'.

Cheers

Supprising you have problems with musicmagpie discs..they are usually all repolished on their machine like new..but I guess some must slip through the net

The few CD's I have that rip with errors I use EAC (exact audio copy) and do them on my laptop, the software is free. Apparently they check your copy against others that have ripped without error and try to correct any errors. I then copy to Core Downloads folder. Rich 

If it happens a lot it could be an indication that your CD drive is not the best anymore. A relatively easy and affordable solution is to buy a separate CD drive. You will see that most of the CD's will be ok again.

Japtimscarlet posted:

Supprising you have problems with musicmagpie discs..they are usually all repolished on their machine like new..but I guess some must slip through the net

I probably receive at least one in fifteen / twenty Musicmagpie secondhand discs in poor condition, scratched, foil damage or pitted - even a cracked CD on one occasion, but this could have happened in the post. My orders are perhaps a little more susceptible to quality control as I tend to buy when there's an offer on and they are clearing stock.

If (home) polishing does not work, then I drop them a line. And to be fair to Musicmagpie, their customer service is very good indeed, either supplying a replacement disc or a refund if the CD has sold out. They are still my number one source of buying secondhand CDs and heartily recommend them.

ChrisSU posted:

On the rare occasions when a CD won’t rip on my Unitiserve, I use iTunes, which seems to rip anything you throw at it. That may mean that it’s less fussy it it detects any errors, but the rips it produces seem fine. 

Good idea, we probably get hung up on perfect rips, just because software can access a database to confirm your matches other discs.  If we never had this we'd be ripping merrily with errors that may be inaudible.

Mulberry posted:

While ripping my CD collection I had a few ones that took ages. XLD gave reading speeds below 1, meaning slower than actual playback.

My solution was to stop the ripping process, eject the disc and wipe it with antistatisc plastic cleaner (Antistatischer Kunststoff Reiniger & Pfleger from Burnus). That usually did the trick.

Oddly I think XLD was doing this for me yesterday before I switched to dbPowerAmp.

TallGuy posted:

ChrisSU posted:

On the rare occasions when a CD won’t rip on my Unitiserve, I use iTunes, which seems to rip anything you throw at it. That may mean that it’s less fussy it it detects any errors, but the rips it produces seem fine. 

That’s because iTunes just carries on without reporting errors - they’re still there in your rip but the error is probably not severe enough to be all that audiable on anything other than an a-b comparison with “a good one”.

The dBpoweramp forums suggest a specific Lite-On drive as best able to deal with faults - since I got one dBpa has sailed through most things I’ve thrown at it, and mostly succeeds when it goes to the re-rip frames process. It’s only £12 but is an internal drive - one of the best £12 I’ve ever spent !  I bought a second and an external casing - so I could use it with a laptop, or carry forward to a new PC (as they seem to be fitted with slimline drives, if any nowadays). £12 for the drive and £50 for the casing !

The other thing to try is Brasso - rub centre to edge with a cotton cloth until you’ve got any visible marks out or all the Brasso is “worked in”, clean the disk with a clean cloth (centre to edge again), then finally do a clean with your favourite disc cleaner with yet another clean cloth.  You used to be able to buy tubes of mobile phone screen scratch remover which is less messy than Brasso, but not seen it around recently - that also works. The third choice is toothpaste which is apparently a good substitute for Brasso. I’ve not tried toothpaste, but the screen cleaner and Brasso have worked for me. 

Interesting cleaning tips!

Incredible you can pick up CD/DVD writers for under a tenner!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/LiteO...AS%2B324-14&th=1

Yetizone posted:

I bought a second CD read/writer and now swap between an ancient LaCie D2, and a newish Samsung, ripping via DBPoweramp. If one unit can’t read a disc then the other usually can, unless the disc is a badly marked charity shop CD, or a disc in poor shape from MusicMagpie that just refuses to rip. Then I use car polish on a polishing pad to remove any light surface marks. This certainly helps and rescued a secondhand Pixies CD only the other day. 

I have a few other drives I can try too.

Need to find an old Plextor CD writer I have somewhere which was always superb ripping discs years ago, though back then I generally saved them as high quality AAC as storage was more expensive.

Bert Schurink posted:

If it happens a lot it could be an indication that your CD drive is not the best anymore. A relatively easy and affordable solution is to buy a separate CD drive. You will see that most of the CD's will be ok again.

It's quite a new Pioneer BluRay drive.  I might be better off with a non BluRay drive for audio rips I suspect.

Rich 1 posted:

The few CD's I have that rip with errors I use EAC (exact audio copy) and do them on my laptop, the software is free. Apparently they check your copy against others that have ripped without error and try to correct any errors. I then copy to Core Downloads folder. Rich 

I've used EAC long ago, but don't currently have a PC - I don't think they do a Mac version.

TallGuy posted:

The dBpoweramp forums suggest a specific Lite-On drive as best able to deal with faults - since I got one dBpa has sailed through most things I’ve thrown at it, and mostly succeeds when it goes to the re-rip frames process. It’s only £12 but is an internal drive - one of the best £12 I’ve ever spent !  I bought a second and an external casing - so I could use it with a laptop, or carry forward to a new PC (as they seem to be fitted with slimline drives, if any nowadays). £12 for the drive and £50 for the casing !

Oddly external cases for desktop internal drives seem few and far between these days, suspect most people just use the slimline externals powered by USB.

I got my current Pioneer BluRay drive a few weeks ago, and got an Icy Dock enclosure which was £50 or so,  has mixed reviews but seems fine, it just looks a bit pimped up and naff with blue LEDs around the case (which I believe I can disconnect internally).

No so long ago I could just nip out and pick up something like this in Maplin, they had some genuinely useful stuff in the stores which I'd now have to buy online.

Meerkat posted:

I am re ripping all my CDs from scratch. I originally ripped them using a UnitiServe, but that particular black box has gone to heaven!

In dbpoweramp, before you rip...go to 'Cd Ripper Options', I think by default it rips in 'Secure, (Recover Errors)' mode. Change it to 'Burst, Fastest ripping, No Error recovery'.

That should rip your CD. Not 100% 'Accurate', but 'Inacurate'. The human ear will not notice the difference. 

Basically, all the rips that ripped ok, I selected 'Secure ripping', the ones that showed Error, I changed to 'Burst, Fastest ripping, No Error recovery'.

Cheers

Good idea Meerkat!

Yetizone posted:

I bought a second CD read/writer and now swap between an ancient LaCie D2, and a newish Samsung, ripping via DBPoweramp. If one unit can’t read a disc then the other usually can, unless the disc is a badly marked charity shop CD, or a disc in poor shape from MusicMagpie that just refuses to rip. Then I use car polish on a polishing pad to remove any light surface marks. This certainly helps and rescued a secondhand Pixies CD only the other day. 

Yes, I must try some other external drives (I have a slimline Samsung USB Blu Rya drive which is getting on) or one of my other Macs with internal optical drives (yes it's old)!

Alley Cat posted:

TallGuy posted:

ChrisSU posted:

On the rare occasions when a CD won’t rip on my Unitiserve, I use iTunes, which seems to rip anything you throw at it. That may mean that it’s less fussy it it detects any errors, but the rips it produces seem fine. 

That’s because iTunes just carries on without reporting errors - they’re still there in your rip but the error is probably not severe enough to be all that audiable on anything other than an a-b comparison with “a good one”.

The dBpoweramp forums suggest a specific Lite-On drive as best able to deal with faults - since I got one dBpa has sailed through most things I’ve thrown at it, and mostly succeeds when it goes to the re-rip frames process. It’s only £12 but is an internal drive - one of the best £12 I’ve ever spent !  I bought a second and an external casing - so I could use it with a laptop, or carry forward to a new PC (as they seem to be fitted with slimline drives, if any nowadays). £12 for the drive and £50 for the casing !

The other thing to try is Brasso - rub centre to edge with a cotton cloth until you’ve got any visible marks out or all the Brasso is “worked in”, clean the disk with a clean cloth (centre to edge again), then finally do a clean with your favourite disc cleaner with yet another clean cloth.  You used to be able to buy tubes of mobile phone screen scratch remover which is less messy than Brasso, but not seen it around recently - that also works. The third choice is toothpaste which is apparently a good substitute for Brasso. I’ve not tried toothpaste, but the screen cleaner and Brasso have worked for me. 

Interesting cleaning tips!

Incredible you can pick up CD/DVD writers for under a tenner!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/LiteO...AS%2B324-14&th=1

I've been done - that's the one that cost me £12 !!!!

Seriously, it is very good with less than perfect disks (at least with dBpoweramp - not tried anything else). When I got it I went back to all those disks that had previously produced errors and re-ripped the bad tracks (no need to do the whole disk) and it did them all faultlessly. I've only had two disks it couldn't rip - one a bootleg so we won't go into that and the other a second hand Beach Boys hits disk that was severely scratched  in the direction of travel - looked as though the laser head had been hitting it - Brasso came to the rescue on that !

If you have a PC that has a free 5.25 inch bay and SATA interface this is an excellent buy.If not, you'll need a case to use it as an external device, or to use a different device altogether.

I’ll just stick into the Icy Dock enclosure to try it.

An ugly solution - there are quite a few USB to IDE/SATA interface cables you can get for less than many enclosures but one I got refused to work with Optical drives - worked fine for SATA hard drives so I kept it. I’m not too worried about how the stuff looks so long as it works.

Yetizone posted:

Japtimscarlet posted:

Supprising you have problems with musicmagpie discs..they are usually all repolished on their machine like new..but I guess some must slip through the net

I probably receive at least one in fifteen / twenty Musicmagpie secondhand discs in poor condition, scratched, foil damage or pitted - even a cracked CD on one occasion, but this could have happened in the post. My orders are perhaps a little more susceptible to quality control as I tend to buy when there's an offer on and they are clearing stock.

If (home) polishing does not work, then I drop them a line. And to be fair to Musicmagpie, their customer service is very good indeed, either supplying a replacement disc or a refund if the CD has sold out. They are still my number one source of buying secondhand CDs and heartily recommend them.

Never really looks at Music Magpie but they do seem to have 'cheap' used CDs assuming they have what you want.

I downloaded their App and it's frightening scanning a few barcodes how much your CDs are worth - 20p or so for most of mine 

Aside from "unknown" when ripping, I often get another album and artist being tagged up.  Must be from fulfilling similar data lookup of the number and time of tracks. Etc.

Some have had an uncanny resemblance.