I’ve always ripped my CDs with Exact Audio CD, it has always worked flawlessly. However I’ve been facing problems with an album I bought, Pat Metheny - Dream Box: the disc seems to spin at lower rpm with sonorous clacks. The process always takes ages and the result is uncertain. Some tracks have been ripped correctly, others not. When I tried the process again I managed to finally rip some but still not all of them.
So I wonder, what would you do to solve this kind of issue? I wonder if it’s the album to be faulty and need to ask the shop for a change. I tried it with other players and the problem seems to happen again. Fun fact: I managed to rips some tracks by tilting the laptop (rpms increased and clacks mostly disappeared).
I’m curious to hear your point of view. Thank you very much in advance!
I use a Mac mini with external drive and xld ripping software, whenever I have slow rpm with lots of disc access leading to difficulty getting correct rips, it is always the cd.
Have you tried ripping with iTunes ? if EAC would not rip the CD, try iTunes, never had a failure ever using that route, admitted its normal CD quality.
I also use EAC to rip my CDs. To back up what others have said whenever I get the slow RPM or read errors it has always been the CD. Usually cleaning the CD clears the issue but once I had a copy of Kate Bush’s Aerial that could not be read and had to be returned.
When there is a problem reading the CD EAC shows the retries on a red panel which lights up to show the progress of the retries with the variable settings tried by EAC.
@kend the CD is brand new, perfectly clean and has no scratches. I think today I finally managed to fully rip it with EAC after the 7-8th time, still I’ll ask for a change even though I only stream locally. Unluckily I can’t check if it would play on a normal CD player, I’d be curious at this point.
@Cmax nope, thanks for your suggestion. I’ll consider it if my latest rip is faulty. I’ll check later! I almost never had such problems, maybe once but on a very small scale. This CD instead has been a complete disaster, really. I also wonder if it might have anything to do with the copyright protection.
@LutherP during my very latest rip I’ve turned upside down the external disc reader I have and I’ve also activated the secure ripping mode on EAC. No errors appeared this time, I wonder if it was only luck for once. I’m curious to listen to the whole album to see if it worked as intended. Fingers crossed!
I used EAC to rip my CD collection to hard disk. The clicking you describe sounds like a disc I had where the hole was not punched through cleanly and there was a small fraze on one side of the hole causing it to wobble when spun up. If it was a new disc I would return it. If it’s an old one then trying cleaning off the fraze with a nail file or similar. I also had a warped disc that would not rip, again it wobbled when spun up and you could hear it ticking / rubbing against the interior of the drive. That one went in the bin. Just to add I never encountered a problem with copy protection using EAC
Yesterday I finally checked the ripped files; luckily no errors at last! However I’ll ask to change the CD, it’s clearly faulty considering what happened.
I rip with dBpoweramp but use iTunes when that fails, I have only had one disc (in about 1000) that I never successfully ripped and that also happened to be a Pat Metheny album. I suspect the issue was some sort of copy protection, as even when it seemed to have been successful what I heard was a horrible scratchy sound rather than music.
I checked the final rip and thankfully it sounds fine (meanwhile I asked a replacement for the CD). I suspect it might have been the copy protection but I’m not entirely sure as the disc seemed unbalanced when spinning. No idea!
Thanks, Mike, but I did try that, and a host of other possibilities I found online. It was a fussy disc, which played OK on my CD5XS but not on the built-in drive on my computer. In the end I got a streamer that supported Qobuz and it was simpler to just stream the album.
Thanks @AndyP, that might also be the issue. I’m not sure whether it’s the protection or the disc itself. I’m curious to see how things will go with the replacement.