So what do you do when EAC keeps on falling through all 3 lines of error correction (don't see how going up to 5 lines would help either) on a track? And does this for a significant portion of the track? You can wait all day and it won't finish extracting the track in secure mode! What to do

Well, when that happened, I was using
Drive has 'accurate stream'
drive caches
drive is capable of C2 retrieval

'Use c2 error info for error correction' was not checked.
I understand that I'm already taking some risks by checking 'drive is capable of C2 retrieval' as few drives that claim this actually manage to produce accurate C2 info (so I've heard). But I figured that I have nothing to lose now, and checked 'use c2 error info' as well. Now EAC seems to be making some progress, going to 73% of the track and still using only two lines of EC (whereas in the last rip it had already got 'read error' and 'sync error' and I gave before 70%)

Do I stand a chance of getting vaguely accurate rips this way? Or am I screwed and should be just using fast / burst mode?

What bugs me is that in fast / burst mode, you don't even get a report saying which part of the track is flawed, so you have to look through the whole track when doing glitch removal. Any way around this?

I usually try a different drive, or try to repair the CD if EAC is having a lot of problems. Usually it's pretty clear what scratches are causing the problems.

What you want to do is note the CRC value of each extraction.

If you can get one to show up more than once, you've likely achieved perfect extration.

(Try using test & copy)

You may want to use a CD scratch removal kit and try again.

chris

Getting same CRC with so much lines of error correction would be a miracle.

The first thing to do : trying all your drives. Improvement expected : 20 %
If it fails, repair the scratches with a scratch repair kit. Improvement expected : 80 to 100 %
If the CD is not scratched, and if you checked cache just for safety, uncheck it. Speed up expected : more than twice (but don't if your drive reports caching).
If the result is not acceptable, switch in burst mode, and pass the resulting wav through Deglitch.exe. Improvement expected : 0 to 90 %

Before buying a CD repair kit you might rub it rapidly on a soft cloth. This will polish the surface, in most cases the result will be good enough to make it readable again.

After that you should kick the person who ruined the CD into the lower rear part of his body and show him how to handle them in the future.

Twas just a borrowed CD in the first place...

I think I can spot the trouble spots... two little splotches that look like what a CD would look like you managed to get water in between the plastic and the aluminium, if you can imagine that... so I don't think it's something that can be polished away

Thanks for the suggestions so far, but still nobody has commented on whether it's a good idea to try enabling 'use c2 error info for error correction'...

What's deglitch.exe?

deglitch.exe is a program that comes with EAC. Look at the EAC site under "Sound Editor" to see what it does - it (tries to) remove glitches, i.e. wrong sample values. Dunno how good it does this.

Try enabling C2 and you will see or hear if it has been a good idea. At leas it cannot harm your equipment

Deglitch.

Know of anyone with a Plextor drive? Maybe let them 'give it a rip'. My Plextor drive has no problem with most CD's except for the ones belonging to my friends that are deeply gouged.

Another thing you can do is try ripping with CDex. Under CD Drive | Ripping Method, choose Paranoia, full.

Deglitch is not a part of EAC, it is another program that removes the noises produces by bad CDs. Follow destroid's link.

I'm not mental, thank you very much.

I just managed to rip the only two CDs that EAC has never managed for me with PlexTools. Both of them have one spot where they are badly damaged, so EAC slows down, stays there for an hour or more and eventually skips ahead with a sync error.

Decided to give PlexTools a go seeing as I'd heard good things about it, and I have a Plextor writer, here's the result:



Listened to the resulting wav files, no pops, clicks or skips, and with EAC there were many, also when ripping in burst mode.

So PlexTools has definitely found a place here, it makes my Plextor drive rip as fast as my Teac drive I'll go with EAC for the unscratched disks (most of my collection B)) because of the features, but it's nice to know that I can rely on something when that fails, rare as that might be.

Cool B) Look, this CD really isn't working in EAC. I didn't buy no Plextor drive, where can I get PlexTools?

I assume doing a google search for words like "plextools" or "full", perhaps in some sort of combination, might help you there

I actually had to find it that way myself, I threw away the CD while moving, I never used it anyway... And then of course a week later they issue an update that brings the DAE up to par with EAC. Grr. Oh well, at least you could say I'm entitled to it, having a Plextor drive

Don't know how well the DAE works on non-plextor drives though, but by all means, give it a shot...

Unfortunately, Advanced DAE is not supported for non-Plextor drives in Plextools.
Without a Plextor drive, it just rips in burst mode.