OK. Here’s the dilemma. I just found one of my favorite CDs (Pearl Jam – Live on Two Legs) under the sofa. I remember lending to a friend, which is why it was skipped when I archived everything to MPC. I have no idea how it got there. But after I was able to calm myself down, I wiped it clean and sat down to rip it.

I have 2 CDROM drives: a Liteon and a Samsung. I tried extracting using EAC secure mode and Cdex full paranoia using both drives. There were errors no matter what combination of drive and ripper I used.

Using the Liteon with EAC (EAC says the drive has accurate stream, it caches audio data and it is C2 capable. I disabled the cache and turned off the C2), the extraction took forever. I canceled.

With Cdex, there were jitter errors in 2 songs. However there were audible clicks and pops in both songs.

Using the Samsung (EAC says the drive has accurate stream, it DOES NOT cache audio data and it is C2 capable. I turned off the C2. Again only track 9 and 10 had errors. Track quality was 96.3% and 93.8%. Listening to the rips thrice, I couldn’t hear anything wrong.

With Cdex, there were also errors. I couldn’t hear anything wrong with its rips too.

I don’t trust my hearing though on this CD. It’s live and there may be some clicks and pops I’m dismissing as applause or other noise.

If I didn’t love this CD so much, I wouldn’t bother not getting the best rip possible.

As a last resort, I extracted using Nero ver. 5.5.10.9. With both drives the rips sounded fine. Any experiences or opinions on Nero digital extraction would be very much appreciated.

Nero DAE is nothing special. It rips in burst mode like any other ripper.

You have to Extract twice with every program and compare WAVs (EAC -> Tools -> Compare WAVs).
Compare 1 Nero rip with the other Nero rip.
And compare 1 EAC rip with the other EAC rip.

You'll probably find that EAC and CDEx rips contains half the errors than Nero.

This is my experience, not with Nero but Feurio which is another burst ripper that doesn't repeat readings when it finds errors.

But it all depends on hardware: with severely scractched CDs sometimes burst mode works better than EAC, maybe not the number of errors, but the severity of errors.
You have to rip and compare: with your ear and the number of errors with EAC tools.

Well, in my experience, Nero DAE has always performed extremely well. As for error correction (reading scratched CDs, that is) there's no clear-cut winner: sometimes it's EAC that produces a better result, sometimes it's Nero DAE. The easiest solution is to use both when in doubt.
And another thing - I urge you to do trust your ears. I mean if after careful examination you still can't hear any errors then why be paranoid about it? No offense, really, but worrying too much about this issue will only spoil the joy of listening to the music. Try listening to the tracks in question both through loudspeakers & quality headphones - if everything sounds fine then I say don't worry. Your ears should be the final judge.
Good luck!

Erm, right, sorry, I was talking about Nero CD DAE in my previous post, the standalone DAE, which rips every track twice to see if there were any errors and makes a groovy little waveform to show the problematic parts.

OK. I was talking about Nero standard.

CD DAE is good because it's a secure ripper, but with my drives (Ultraplex40x) it performs much worse than EAC, CDEx, Feurio...
With CD DAE you can know if there are errors, but it produces a lot of them while the others rip without errors (in scratched CDs).

Thanks for the tips. I'll try them out.

I'm a bit wary though about burst ripping. I didn't know Nero used it.

I guess, I'll have to pick which rip to keep CDex or EAC.

There's nothing wrong with burst ripping.
That's the way drives are designed.
The strange way is what EAC does. That's why I don't like it too much. Reading twice every sector and flushing cache are not what drives are supposed to do.

CDEx also rips in burst mode.
I prefer the way PlexTools work. Ripping in burst mode and repeat only when there are errors.

many audio drives are not ment to be 100% perfect during playback.
Small erretas are unoticefull when doing playback.


that also why there is more ECC on a data trakc than on a audio tracks
data HAS to be 100% perfect..audio is not.

thats why EAC do double check, to ensure there is no errata. and it flushes audio cache because it wants to read from the cd again..not just the drives cache.

pretty straight forward and logical if you are in the game for ENSURED QUALITY.

If your CD is scratched, don't waste your time, repair it with a device similar to SkipDoctor. Very effective.

Yeah, I understand all that.
but EAC is not smooth on the hardware sometimes, like burst ripping is. My Ultraplex stops betwen tracks I don't know why, and in burst mode is slower that other rippers... something is not smooth in EAC with my hardware.

how do you know that EAC flushes cache for all drives? how hard is flushing all those times on the hardware?
how do you explain what happens in this thread few days ago?
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=11305

All I'm saying is that it's not so easy.

Ripping twice in burst mode and comparing is as secure as EAC, and less demanding on hardware: no need to read-stop-read-stop, and no need to flush caches.

I'd find more logical if EAC made a 1st pass in burst mode, and then a 2nd one while comparing with the 1st pass, and stopping only if data doesn't match or there are C2 errors... and forget about caches.

All that said, I like EAC and I find it really useful (the best in fact) when the disc is scratched. If the disc is fine I only use EAC if C2 errors are found in burst mode.

go to EAC -> EAC Options -> Extraction and turn off "Synchronize between tracks" then try extracting some tracks with EAC in burst mode again and see if it's still slower than with plextools.

-andy-

Yeah, that whas the option Now it works smoother.
what is its purpose?

EAC in burst mode is as fast as anything.
What I want to say before was that I don't understand why it's clearly slower in "Secure mode" with C2 enabled and drive doesn't cache.
In this mode there are no rereads, so the time should be near burst mode...

i don't know what the purpose of the "Synchronize between tracks" function is, but AFAIK in secure mode EAC is ALWAYS reading every sector at least twice so this mode can never reach the speed of burst mode, even without caching and C2 activated, that's why it's called _secure_ mode

-andy-

No, http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ST&f=20&t=7277&

Do not waste your money on devices like this. Use a bit of Brasso (it's a metal pollish) and a tissue (or preferably something less ebrasive). Make sure you get the liquid brasso. Then hold a quarter-folded tissue on the end of the open bottle, turn upside down once, then clean the CD from side to side. Make sure all residue is removed before trying to rip the CD again.

NOTE: DO NOT clean in a circular motion, this can damage the disc. Heavily scratched CD's may require multiple cleanings.