Query on lossless binary newsgroups

[Rspaight]

Interesting stuff, thanks. I ripped the same 2 tracks twice and got identical results for each set, so I guess I'm OK. (Even though my drive has a 2MB cache.)

Ryan

[lukpac]

One beef of mine is CD-TEXT in Jam. You can do it two ways:

1) Name regions of an SD II file
2) Name individual files

Either way, you can't change the names in the CD file itself. Plus, both ways seem to have length limitations. Obviously individual files are limited to 32 characters, and SD II regions seem to be as well, at least when read by Jam.

[lukpac]

Interesting stuff, thanks. I ripped the same 2 tracks twice and got identical results for each set, so I guess I'm OK. (Even though my drive has a 2MB cache.)

FYI...I'm pretty sure *all* drives have a cache of some sort. The issue is if it caches on DAE or not. Some drives do, and some don't. The problem is that *if* your drive hits an error (or can't produce an accurate stream), and the software tries to re-read that section, it will just get the cached data, rather than a new copy of it. I think EAC has some way around this, but I guess it isn't pretty.

I know people were pissed when some Plextor drives started doing this. I think one of the firmware upgrades for my 12x drive turned it on, although I haven't used that for a few years.

[Rspaight]

Yeah, you're right, now that I read the hydrogenaudio forums more closely. Foo.

I guess EAC is it for now. I don't have the patience to do two rips and compares every time I rip a disc. I'll keep an eye on that Python project.

Ryan

[Crummy Old Label Avatar]

Yeah, error correction is what makes EAC so special. There is some debate on how effective said correction is, though.

Of course, now that we're talking about this, I've just hit a snag on a disc I was ripping. The last track has unrecoverable errors. Surface is visually pristine. Cleaned it anyway. Still no go. Wonder if EAC could fix it? Damn! This is one of the rare moments that I wish I still had that Windows box.

To be fair, the times I've encountered unrecoverable errors on a disc on cdda2wav, EAC never could fix them either, no matter how long and hard it tried.

THIS is precisely why I'm happy to leave CDs behind. Yes, 99.9% of my discs are error-free, but when you encounter snags like this, it begins to dawn on you that CDs are, in their own way, as fragile as any analog medium. OK, they're more robust than that, but they are still physical media, and, as such, susceptible to the ravages of dirt, dust, and decay.

I'm happier with a secure rip, converted to lossless, and a foolproof checksum file. At least by cloning those files to a few different drives, I figure that the odds are more on my side.

[Xenu]

Less dirt, dust, and decay than radial scratches and oxidization, though. I've seen astoundingly scratched discs produce perfect audio, while my Who Collection 2 *looks* fine, but apparently has all sorts of pressing nastiness going on.

[Rspaight]

I freakin' *refuse* to buy Virtual PC just to run EAC. No way, no how.

Once someone ports wine to OSX86, though, we'll talk...

Ryan

[lukpac]

You guys clearly don't have enough computers.

[Crummy Old Label Avatar]

Only when I got through a small portion of ripping 1000+ CDs did it hit home how many visually "perfect"-looking discs actually are screwed up in some way, pressing-wise or near-microscopic radial scratches (and I am nothing but meticulous in my handling of CDs). Then there's the nasty surprise of British PDO-pressed disc rot.

After suffering through this ordeal, I'll HAPPILY take FLACs w/checksum files over one more shiny disc -- ALWAYS!

[lukpac]

There's a program called "Burrrn" out there that will burn a disc from a non-compliant CUE, and works with drives that EAC doesn't (which seems to be most of 'em). Works like a charm for me.

[scratches head once again]

I just popped the LiteOn into my PC. EAC kind of locked up when trying to detect write features, but after a restart things burned just fine. I don't know if I'm just lucky or what, but so far EAC has worked without issues in a laptop CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, a laptop CD-RW/DVD-RW drive, a standard 48x CD-RW and the LiteOn CD-RW/DVD-RW.

I wonder if it's just something you guys have checked in EAC, since I thought on newer drives write commands were pretty standard.

[Mike Hunte]

The Toshiba burner that I have in the laptop I'm using works with EAC, but gives me a friendly error message at the end of every write. Doesn't seem to be affecting the outcome of anything though.

[lukpac]

The Toshiba burner that I have in the laptop I'm using works with EAC, but gives me a friendly error message at the end of every write. Doesn't seem to be affecting the outcome of anything though.

Look at the burning options. I *think* EAC defaults to pulling the tray back in after writing. On a laptop drive it can't do that, so it produces an error message. I think mine was doing that a few years ago.

[Crummy Old Label Avatar]

You guys clearly don't have enough computers.

I have 4 Macs --- and EAC won't run on a single one of them.

The ONLY thing I used the Wintel box for was to run EAC on that cursed OS.

After a while it just seemed a bit, well, decadent to keep that WRETCHED OS around just for EAC.

[Mike Hunte]

Look at the burning options. I *think* EAC defaults to pulling the tray back in after writing. On a laptop drive it can't do that, so it produces an error message. I think mine was doing that a few years ago.

It does eject after write, so that must be the culprit.

[Rspaight]

There's a new version of Max out that implements a cache-clearing comparison ripper. It's still in shakedown mode, and there's no attempt at error *correction*, but looks like a big step forward for OS X ripping.

http://sbooth.org/Max/

Ryan