I'm finally working on ripping my music collection to my HD, and I've encountered a hiccup on occasion. I'm using the "Copy image and create cue sheet" option with FLAC. The issue is that at times the gaps are not detected properly, and the result is that the very first millisecond or two of a track is cut off, and is played at the end of the prior track, so the track index setting in the .cue is a slight amount too late.

What can I do to get rid of this problem? The issue really only presents itself if I listen to music randomly instead of straight through an album (at which point the problem is unnoticeable). I have Gap detection set to A / Secure. My ripping drive is a Lite-On LTR-24102B burner. I dunno if offset has anything to do with this, but I used the recommended read sample offset of +12 for my particular drive.

Is there anything I can do besides experimenting with different drives / different gap detection methods?

Thanks,
Joelmole

EDIT:

Well.....maybe never mind. I'll have to experiment some more. The album in question here is Bjork: Debut, right at the juncture between "Like Someone in Love" and "Big Time Sensuality". I stuck the original CD in and listened to the CD itself, and the same problem happened, so my guess is that the problem is in the mastering of the audio CD itself, not in my ripping methods. If and when I catch a problem of this nature I suppose I could "correct" it by editing the indexes in the cue. The thing is, I know I've caught this problem before on another audio CD, but don't remember which one it was. Hopefully I'll find it so I can test the audio CD to see if it's a similar problem (poor mastering)

Wierd....

More insight: I tried playing the same disc in my DVD player (Lite-ON LTD-163) and did not have the problem anymore. Looks like I shouldn't rip with my burner anymore. Either the drive model itself has a problem that makes it not good enough for my purposes, or something is defective or out of alignment with my particular unit. I'll see how ripping goes with my DVD player.

Thanks

Are you using "allow speed reduction during extraction" ?

No. Why would that affect anything though?

More insight....I tried ripping with my DVD player after I set the correct offsets (+594), and I still have the same problem. If I cue the tracks up from the disc in a music player, I don't get the problem at all on playback when using the DVD player, but ripping causes it to happen. Argh.

Regardless, I think I'm going to continue using the DVD player as it seems to recover better from errors, and I installed firmware for it that disables audio caching, which will make ripping faster.

Edit: Wonder of wonders: I reripped with the offset zeroed out (was +594) and I no longer have the problem. I'm wondering now what to use for the offset. The figures in Accureterip's database are obviously causing me problems.

As you can see in this thread, I have same drive and it's much more sensitive for reading errors without using that option. I don't know if it will help you, but I hope there's no harm done if you try it.

Have you tried other detection methods than A / Secure ?

I'm not surprised by this result. We know very well that most commercial CDs have a wrong offset. In the case of this one, the music is recorded just a bit too early. That's why drives and CD Players usually have a positive read offset correction. Its purpose is to avoid this kind of problem.

Your experience shows that an offset of 594 causes perfectly audible problems. We usually don't pay attention to it because it usually causes a loss at the end of the pause of each track. There is no audible difference between a complete track followed by 88200 samples of silence, and the same followed by only 87600 samples of silence.
But as soon as you remove some music instead of removing silence, it can be audible.