I have a lot of scratched CDs that EAC is having trouble with. EAC will be able to extract the data from the majority of tracks found on these CDs, but there's always one or two tracks that it can't read. I have no trouble with playing these same CDs trough a portable CD player, I just can't get EAC to correctly extract data. But is using Brasso really a good idea for this type of problem? I've tried toothpaste on a few, and that didn't really help the read errors any. I also have one or two older CDs that have severe skip problems, should I go with the Brasso route on those as well? Brasso seems to be a little harsh to me, is it safe , and how much should I use on a single cd? I think I have one CD that may have a surface scratch that's causing EAC read errors, does whiteout-tape/liquid paper really work with that problem? Do I need to use specific whiteout tape or does regular whiteout paste also work? Any other suggestions? Thanks!

I've always had good results from the Skip Doctor

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-...R&s=electronics

http://home-12.tiscali-business.nl/~tpm54044/
http://home-12.tiscali-business.nl/~tpm540...d/restorecd.htm

In a thread I started recently (here) Glauber said that working the Disc Doctor on CD too many times might wreck it. After a a bit more research, I've heard that it works well but leaves "polish marks" like you might find on a dark-coloured car that has been waxed. I'm presuming he means that if you polish it too many times the polish marks will add up and wreck the disc. dreamliner77, can you confirm any of this?

I've tried brasso once or twice with no luck. I haven't had time to really get into it yet, so don't count on my experience. Let me know how it works for you.

Okay, I was bored, so I thought I'd give brasso another go. It may work well for making scratches playable (I don't know- I haven't tried that), but from my experience, it does nothing to improve the quality of rip EAC. I still get read errors in the exact same places. So, it seems to do little to improve the very finy scratches on the disc.

Is this what happens with most people, or am I doing something wrong? Cloudy Skies, how are you making out?

I've run discs thru the disc dr up to 10 times. Yes it does leave "polish" marks, but it doesn't seem to interfere with playback. You will wear the polycarbonate down a bit, but this is the point.

Hmm...okay, sounds good. One question though dreamliner77....does the device just make the scratches playable in a CD player, or does it fix them to the point that EAC can get perfect rips from them again? I'm ripping all my CDs right now, and I want to get perfect rips from them if possible. If that thing can get rid of the read/sync errors I've been having, I'll pick one up tomorrow.

I've had good luck resurrecting *mildly* scratched discs. Some still took many hours to rip, but resulted in NO read or sync errors. A select few still had a read or sync error here or there, but upon playback, no noticable error was heard. As is expected, the only discs I couldn't not get a clean rip from were discs with scrathes on the label side.

I didn't have any Brasso around home, so I can't give that a try until Saturday. But ont he bright side, my old/scratched-up CDs now have a nice and minty toothpaste smell . But I thought of an interesting idea not too long ago. I'm basically trying to archive my CD collection onto my computer/DAP, and the majority of the problematic CDs work with EAC with the exception of a couple of tracks. I don't really notice any huge problems other than a stray crackle or pop comming out of these problematic tracks, and I know that EAC's data extraction methods are about as good as it gets, but would it be possible for me to use another more mainstream and simpler program (Jet Audio, for example) to create WAV files for the tracks that give me heck with EAC, and then to upload those WAV files into EAC to convert into LAME/MP3? Does anybody know if this would actually work, and if it wouldn't work for some reason, could I burn the non-EAC WAV files onto a CD-R, and then give that a go with EAC/LAME? That would at least give me a quick fix for my archiving project until I can attempt to Brasso-out all of those scratches and properly rip those few buggy tracks.

That would work....but if I understand what you want to do, you might as well just use burst mode in EAC. The reason EAC give you heck is because you're using secure mode and it tries to fix any errors it comes across. Other programs will just take the erroneous sample at face value, and that's exactly what burst mode does. So, just use that mode, and you won't have to deal with different programs and WAV files.

I've had very poor results with skipDoctor - about six CDs destroyed beyond repair. Granted, it took more than a few passes with each disc; but as they did nothing to improve rippability I consider the device's value questionable. Perhaps it is geared towards making CDs playable in standalone CD players; it certainly did nothing to eliminate read errors in EAC.

The same goes for Brasso. If your CD is hard to find and replace, a professional CD restoration service is your best bet. It is a lot better to lose a dollar or two on the CD than to lose the CD ittself.

Thanks for the info NeverAgain, that was just what I needed to know. It's unfortunate...I have like 75 CDs I need to clean up. Most play fine, but I want perfect rips. However, the local professional place charges $4 per disc, so it's not quite economically feasible. Man, I wish there was another way.

After having tried Brasso etc with fair results, thanks to this thread, I now have one of my drives in burst mode and am using this dive to rip any cds or tracks that gave errors on my primary drive.

I dare contradict that
For me brasso (or a similar polishing product) are *the* solution against read errors (to get a perfect rip). It has always worked so far on the 20-30 CDs I've done so far.

I admit that it is sometimes a pain (brasso's drawback is that it can be slow, especially on deep scratches). So, you will want to use it efficiently, which means e.g. that you will only rub the scratch that causes the read error, etc. - for more details see the article Digga referred to (there I've written down my personal experiences regarding CD restoration).

Yeah, those are the real problems. As long as a scratch doesn't affect the data layer (This is visible on the CD.) any scratch should in principle be repairable.

According to my experience, the scratches that cause uncorrectable errors in EAC are usually one or a few very deep scratches, the minor ones don't cause any problems. You can watch EAC during error correction: A few frames ripped without correction, then the scratch position is encountered, sync error, and everything again in the next "circle".
I can recommend a very simple method: Locate the scratch that probably causes the error on the CD. (Gaps between tracks have a different reflecting behaviour, use them to locate the erroneous track's position on the CD data surface, then search in a circle for a large scratch.) Then rub hardly and vertically over the scratch using your finger nail. This makes the edges of the scratch, which irritate the laser, softer. Then try ripping again.
The method worked on at least 2 of 3 CDs on >10 CDs, changed a sync/read error into a correctable error (bit perfect rip). It is time consuming, but you have fine control not to destroy your CD and you don't need any repairing item!

I forgot to add something: Be careful not to press too much when rubbing, or keep the CD in the palm of your other hand. Once I had an old CD lying on the carpet floor and then it suddenly broke during rubbing.

what if one copies the damanged CD to a new CDR disc. then use the new disc which does not have any scratches in EAC?

I have many CDs that play just fine on my CD player but EAC just can correct the errors.

The CD-ROM drive won't be able to read the scratched areas, and so the new disc will have the same errors.

Indeed. You will create a clean, scratchless CD, with bad data written on it (because the original CD returns bad data due to the scratch).

If you wonder why EAC can't rip but the player can play:
-Your audio player may have better error correction or better overall capabilities.
-If an audio player isn't able to correct an error, it performs error hiding - that means the error is still there but not audible. EAC doesn't hide.

Again I see that we talk about EAC here on and on, forgetting that apart from reading the data twice (and more if they do not match) EAC really does not contribute anything. If one want to deal with scratches one needs to select the drive correctly and preferably do the DAE tests as described on the EAC website. You can have a sitty drive that does not interpolate well but when encounters errors it returns the same (say 0 or something else) samples. In this case EAC would carry on as usual. So again, get the drive right 1st.

Triza

EAC reads 27 sectors = 63,504 bytes twise, and compares them in secure mode. When a scratch occures, then it is very rare that it only affects 1 byte. Usually a scratch will affect several tens of bytes at a time. Now when EAC does the second read and compares, then some of the bytes that where wrong before will be right, and some that were right before will be wrong, and then the difference will be detected... -Martin.

Edit: My point is that the secureness of different drives that uses EAC is about the same, but the ripping quality, which is an entirely different thing, offcourse have everything to do with the drive. Like one bad drive can report several 'Suspicius Possitions' for a disc, but another good drive ripping the same disc, will report 'No Errors Occured'... Also when EAC detects differences in the two reads of 27 sectors, then the additional rereads that EAC performs to try to correct the errors, they will not be 27 sectors long, but only cover the faulty area... -Martin.