EAC C2 error correction, Use it or not? Options

[RiskyP]

My drive supports C2 error correction and I have been using it always since it gives the fastest rips for me, while still no errors are reported and all track qualities are above 99.5%. Using this option, I get rip speeds of 18x and I was wondering whether C2 error correction is really that reliable? I mean, I never get error messages, the track quality is always reported to be over 99.5% and I cannot hear any audible difference. Is there any incentive NOT to rip at 18x under these conditions?! Btw, my drive is a LiteOn 48x CDRW (I can't remember the model name off the top of my head)

[atici]

@liekloo : I think you're too much of a stickler for * ripping guide Sometimes you sound like that guide could not include some information that is not completely valid. However, I think those rules should be reviewed in the light of reasoning. Sorry, maybe I interpreted incorrectly. But the kind of approach I see too often these days, i.e. regarding * guide as some kind of bible and any other rips other than * ones as inferior, is pissing me off. Maybe I started to project that to everyone whose signature involves *

@Pio2001 : Thanks. That was one of the most fruitful EAC discussions I had.

I trust "No C2" because (implicitly assuming "an error, in most of the cases, do not occur the same way, and is random by nature") my CRCs are reproducable. Wheras on the tracks I have a mismatch with the CRC of "C2 on" and "C2 off", the "C2 on" could not produce the same CRC repeatedly. And considering in 99.9% of the tracks the CRCs of "C2 on" and "C2 off" coincide and "C2 on" mode produced the same CRC with "C2 off" in the problematic tracks in some of the rips makes me think that the most accurate rip is attained with "No C2". However, it might have been the case that "a byte altered state permanently" which leaves me no option but to read that byte in the altered state.

However I wonder what kind of errors C2 report. Or what exactly C2 system is. How does a drive realize it made a mistake if there's no error detection mechanism in audio CDs? I think in the mass production phase some CDs are produced with flaws. I have a couple of them: very rarely used, no scratches but I get many C2 errors (no copy protection). In the same manner I'm sure there're other errors in some of my CDs, which C2 system could not realize because there's no indication that the byte has a flaw and the byte in question returns the same value consistently (but possibly with a glitch in the waveform). For those, I have no option but to have an inaccurate rip.

But if there were a real time deglitch system built in EAC, maybe we could correct those errors. Was the experimental switch related to "C2 error correction" that is removed from newest prebetas coded for that purpose?


MOD:* No links to or names of ripping groups please.

This post has been edited by Jan S.: Apr 18 2004, 15:22