i read somewhere (definately an unvalidated source) that when a perfect rip is impossible (because the cd is too damaged) that eac is no longer the best ripper to use. is there any truth to this? i find it hard to believe, but was just wondering if any of you guys had any thoughts on it....

No this isn't true. But sometimes secure mode ripping isn't the best way to go. You may have to use burst mode for badly damaged CD's. Cleaning the CD with Brasso (or some other metal polish) usually does the trick though.

would burst mode actually put out better sounding rips, or would it just be significantly faster? cause i have no problem letting eac work overnite on a damaged cd if it would get me a better rip...

In my own experience EAC is the best...
Why??
I have used many CD rippers before that EAC. Particularly I had 3 CDs with bad tracks and impossible to rip with any CD ripper. Disappointed, I assumed that never would recover these tracks. But, after, a friend told me about of the incredible performance of EAC for recover damaged tracks. I thought, ok; I could try. The result was excellent, I could recover all the damaged tracks (6 tracks in total). I listened very carefully each track (many times with headphones) in order to verify that really there were not AUDIBLE errors. Results: the tracks did't have any AUDIBLE errors.

From that day, I use only EAC, as a result of its excellent quality and performance.

I use Secure mode (without any problems to my LiteOn drive),
with these settings--> Accurate Stream: on;
Drives cache audio data: off;
C2 error information :off

NOTE: each damaged track took around 35 minutes for its extraction...

Curious...if you're not retreiving C2 error information, how do you know that you're getting a correct rip? Couldn't errors be slipping by because you're not looking for them? Maybe I'm mistaken about what I thought the purpose of C2 was...

Is I use EAC in secure mode and read or sync errors occur I definitely hear spurious noises when playing back the resulting flac file through my main system, as is to be expected it is much less obvious if played through my computer speakers. If I use burst mode on the same track it completes the rip in a reasonable time but will report timing errors. These error I also pick up on playback but these come across at a much lower amplitude compared to when I use the secure mode.

Usually EAC in secure mode would be the tool I'd prefer, but I've also have had one experience of a rip (out of veeery many) where EAC secure produced only noise, while Audiograbber in unbuffered burst mode produced a fairly good result. In some special cases it might be a good idea to make two or more rips using different strategies and compare.

I use two different CD-ROMS:

one LiteOn, model LTN-526S

one Samsung SC-512L

The LiteOn CD-ROM don't have C2 error information feature, the Samsung model have this feature, but this is not good. I tested (with good CDs without scratches) many times the Samsung with C2 enabled, and ALWAYS obtained differents checksums for the same ripped files.

The LiteOn is more precise and more fast.

It's not necessary have a CD-ROM with C2 feature to obtain precise rips...
Many good CD-ROMs don't have C2 error information and they extract audio digital
excellent.

Remember that EAC read each little piece the information AT LEAST two times and after compare before of to write to the Hard disk... if the comparation is succesful (the data is exactly the same), then EAC write the information to the HD, if not, then EAC read so many times it is necessary until obtaining that the compared data is the same... It's not necessary the C2 error information feature for this...

I listened with my headphones several times the recover bad tracks, and, I am sure that they didn't have any AUDIBLE errors...

NOTE: the C2 error information is not reliable in some CD-ROMs..

Ah, cheers for the info...makes sense now. Those little red lights that turn on...I thought those were C2 errors being reported, not general double-read errors.

You say you can get damaged tracks extracted properly, but it takes a long time...how do you do that? For me, it seems to go through the five row of red lights then report an error if it still hasn't read it right. Can you get it to keep going back until it read properly?

Thanks again

afaik, if all 5 rows of red lights light up, it is safe to assume that, at least with the cd in its current state, that bit of data cannot be accurately read. it will report an error, but that does not necessarily mean that it is an audible error, or even that there is a definate error, just a possible error, that is possibly audible. if it turns out to be something that is a problem, you will have to try to physically repair the cd. afaik

has anyone else had experiences like this? also, i heard that you are more likely to get sync errors with the error recovery quality on high. any truth or validity to this? what are sync errors anyway? thanks guys.

As I said before:
My settings for my LiteOn drive are these:
Accurate Stream: on;
Drives cache audio data: off;
C2 error information :off.

These settings are as a result of the manual configuration that EAC reported for this specific drive.

The settings for "Error recovery quality" in High.

It's not true...
"Error recovery quality" in High is more precise than normal. Why?
Because "Error recovery quality" in High takes more reading than the normal setting.

I had one instance (out of at least a few hundreds) that the CD I coudln't rip with EAC (even in the burst mode) somehow got processed by Easy CD-DA, with apparently no noticeable artifcats in the problematic sectors.

But in general, if EAC can't make it, nothing else well.

I normally run in secure mode, if problems, clean the CD real careful and do it again. if still problems, switch to the burst mode. the problem with the burst mode is sometime it doesn't report any problems, so you have to listen the results. If still some problems, I know it's a hopeless case. (never try to 'shave' the CDs though. probalby this is last the last resort measure)

That's how I set mine up too, after your suggestion. However, I just figured out that you meant it would take 35 min to read a messed up track, and not take 35 min to correct a messed up position...that was where I was getting confused. Cheers.

God!! , probably my CDs were in very bad condition .

A particular one CD, have one song that was impossible to play in any normal CD player

But EAC extracted this song without AUDIBLE errors

I have very good experience with Easy CD-DA Extractor and option "Error Recovery And Repair" set. I use usually LG 4160B or Toshiba SD-R5112 (both being DVD-RW).

At least Plextools is better than EAC for such discs. If you have a plextor drive
you should always use plextools anyway.

Ahhh, gotcha. Yeah, I'm going for the good ol "Copy OK." Chances are I could rip without audible errors....but I'm trying to avoid that for now. In the end though, I'll probably get sick of the smell of brasso and go for what just sounds good to the ear.

The problem is that is very difficult to obtain the status "Copy OK" with damaged CDs. With my 3 bad CDs I used Brasso too, but, these CDs apparently were very damaged, because brasso did not make great difference . However, I have friends that have used brasso, and they have reported me very good results, but, either they didn't obtain the status "Copy OK". In the best case, they obtained less errors...

I remember to have read of some few cases (from internet) where was possible to obtain "Copy OK" status from damaged CDs cured with brasso.

If you cannot recover without audible errors. Then you may give a small app a try which was posted on these forums a while ago. I think its name was "deglitch". It takes an already ripped WAV (with errors) and tries to make the audible errors inaudible. Search the forums for it.

- Lyx

Deglitch:
http://members.home.nl/w.speek/deglitch.htm

heh, im in the process of ripping a very badly damaged cd... on secure mode, eac has been working on it for over 24 hours, and is 70% done. i have it set to go on cool down cycles every hour to save my drive, but im very curious to see what the results will be. like i said, the cd is in very bad condition. it looks almost as bad as this cd. (actually, i got the cd for free from a used cd store. they said it couldn't be played. im determined to prove them wrong ) i used this white-out tape method and skip doctor. i got a decent rip in burst mode, and now and trying in secure mode. when its finished, i plan on using deglitch where ever eac reports possible errors (it will probably be large ranges on the cd). im excited to see how it will sound in the end. ill let you guys know how it works out. so far, eac has been going through the error correction blocks quickly, not having to realign the lazer after each read, as explained here, which i think is a good sign.... well see

I have heard this from various sources and I'm not doubting it's true, but I'm curious why Plextools should be chosen over EAC for secure rips with a Plextor drive.

Thanks.

Because plextor say it

Lol, i don't know, but anyway on my plextor drive, plextools is faster and work better than eac. The big advantage of plextools is that it already knows all the features of your drive.
My settings
Drive speed limited to 8x (this has a big influence on the result IMHO, in plextools as in EAC)
-Advanced error detection enabled, read retry count set to : 10
-Maximum errors : 100
-Allow Speed Down : yes
Read Error Recovery Strategy : 5. Recover the best bytes (least errors) per sector

Plextools is faster, I'll give you that, but surely it relies on C2 information being 100% accurate which as far as i'm aware isn't always the case.

And doesn't support accuraterip.