Up to now I have ripped about 1700 discs to a Melco N1A with perhaps a dozen that would not and a dozen where there have been clicks and pops. I have managed to solve this using the PC and Windows Media Player.
In the recent Poundland/charity shop marathon I now have half a dozen that I cannot use.
I downloaded Exact Audio Copy and have come unstuck with the calibration. The majority of my CDs are in storage, even so, out of the list of reference discs I have about fifteen. Luckily those are in the house. BUT, every one is rejected as it is not the same pressing as the reference.
Apart from starting a search to find exact discs, any suggestions or alternatives please?
dBpoweramp would be my recommendation for ripping any discs, it will also check with AccurateRip to ensure a perfect copy. Does the Melco check with AccurateRip?
The difficult discs you have may have copy protection on them. dBpoweramp should be able to deal with them.
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I find iTunes to be the least fussy ripper, and if I can’t rip a disc because it’s faulty or has DRM, my fallback is to use an iMac with iTunes. It also seems to have the most reliable metadata lookup, using Gracenote.
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Another vote for dBPoweramp: it has extreme ripping modes that will do multiple slow reads to try to get the best possible from a damaged disk. On disks it does manage to rip in the most intensive mode Which can take a long time), confirming success with AccurateRip, I suspect it does better than iTunes which I don’t think checks with AR. But maybe when the errors are so bad that dBP fails to rip at all, iTunes might give you something playable rather than silence (I don’g know, not having tried).
If all tracks are unrippable it might be a copy-protected CD - not having had one I don’t know how dBP copes.
The very small number of albums I have ripped with iTunes sounded perfectly good. I think it’s all too easy to get wrapped up in the theory that you need confirmation that a rip is bit perfect, must be verified by Accurate Rip, etc. Life’s too short.
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Indeed, sounding good is the important requirement! And of course not all CDs are in the AccurateRip database - when what is wanted is the most confidence in the rip, but without ridiculous effort.
What I do is very simple: rip with dBP on its normal setting, then in the (quire rare) event of a problem, I re-rip putting it on most intense setting, but leaving till last if I have others to do, then simply leaving it running while I do something else so the time is not an issue, and accepting whatever that has achieved. More often than not that has confirmed successful rip (including AR confirmation where available), with only a handful of tracks across my entire collection with errors, and nothing stopping enjoyment of play.
It is fair to say that I am prejudiced against iTunes, as my experience getting music onto iPhones/iPad led me to hate it with a vengeance, so nothing makes me want to use it!
It is exactly the same system as in the Exact Audio Copy.
As far as I can work out, at present Melco use Gracenote.
The “problem” I have is that EAC verifies using Accurate RIP and that process when I tried yesterday uses key discs. Despite the number of discs I own, my musical tastes are at odds with those in the list given on the EAC website. I have just fifteen of them and every one is a different catalogue number to those shown so gets rejected in the verification/calibration process.
So, if dBP also uses Accurate RIP, as ChrisSU says life is too short and it is probably better to search for other copies of the discs that will not rip.
What is frustrating, is that I have used the Poundland marathon to try out previously unheard bands and it is those I want. I have tried simple washing with detergent, using Russ Andrew’s Reveel and Releese. No effect. One disc shows no sign of damage, another minor scuffs plays ok in the car. Careful use of Cape Cod cloth has worked more than once. The only disc that went to the bin showed pinholes in the reflective layer when held up to strong light.
In EAC you can skip the Accurate Rip process with database verification, simply type the disk data yourself if it is not in the database, and, once ripped, it will automatically add it to the database.
The checking tracks and treating damage process is independent of the Accurate Rip, and will do so in any case as long as you have scheduled it; now, it can take hours and days to escape the damage, and some may be unrecoverable.
Personally, in my collection of more than 2000 I have only had problems with three, which I do not know if I could have recovered or not, but I preferred to lose some tracks than to have the computer, and the floppy disk, running for days.
I hope it will serve you.
With both EAC and dBpoweramp it’s possible to turn off all the software enhanced error correction and leave just the disk drive’s hardware based error correction. This won’t correct as many errors in the disk read but will give the greatest chance of getting a physically playable rip from a badly damaged disk. If the disk is significantly damaged, the resultant rip is likely to have artefacts such as sections which soun more like MP3, clicks, pops and short bits of silence, but should still be playable.
This is the same as the mode in which iTunes rips a disk.
[Incidentally if the disk is perfect, this ripping mode will still give a perfect rip of the disk and the rip will then pass the AccuRip test; and (unless the player is affect by differences in the metadata) the rip will sound the exactly same no matter which ripper was used to generate the file.]
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