I use a Lite-On LTD163 DVD-ROM with EAC for my ripping purposes. This drive is famous for achieving very fast DAE, often averaging 20X realtime or more from a CD in fairly good condition. I use EAC's secure mode, without C2 error correction enabled, and with good results. At least, that's what I assumed.

Most rips are excellent and I've had great confidence in EAC's ability to keep every sample neatly lined up in the right order. But recently I have been listening to some of these rips, that were subsequently encoded to MPC and archived.

And, to my surprise, in some of them I find small glitches. They're not static clicks or spikes, but rather very short "skids" in the audio. Often they're not even visible in a wave editor, that is, there is no clear indication of a "warped" signal as caused by a major scratch. But they are enough of a nuisance to make me want to re-rip the CD.

I have also noticed that on scratched CD's, lowering the extraction speed sometimes helps. One time I was ripping in full speed and got a read/sync error. Lowering the speed to 16X completely avoided the errors, and ended up in a 99.7% correct read.

These two experiences, put together, leads me to question the integrity of these high-speed rips. Does anyone have similar experiences, or some knowledge as to why EAC reports an OK rip and there still are glitches in the .wav? I have verified that they do not exist on the CD itself, through re-rips.

I encode a lot of music from the local library (perfectly legal here in Sweden). Re-ripping the CD's is therefor a bit of a hassle. Also, some of the music is not new to me in the sense that I really want to check rips in realtime by listening closely to every .wav before encoding. Call me lazy, but I'd like to let EAC handle that and merely archive the CD for future use, while instead spending more time listening to new music.

Finally, to avoid any misunderstandings, let me state that the vast majority of the rips are perfect. Of about 100 CD's encoded lately, I've noticed these glitches in maybe 10 tracks and verified a faulty rip in about 5 (the other CD's I haven't re-ripped yet). Still, the issue should be of interest. The point is that I'd like to be as certain as possible (if not 100%) that when EAC says "OK", it is. If that means lowering extraction speed, fine by me. And if speed isn't the cause, I'd like to know what is.

Cheers,
Uosdwis

which firmware version are you using? in eac forums i often read, that ver. GH5E is the most reliable when it comes to audiograbbing (i believe it's the last fw version, that does not cache).

regards; ilikedirt

Are you disabling the cache? Sometimes drives cache data even if EAC doesn't detect that they do. I was having this same problem with my drive until I checked the box to disable caching, and ever since I haven't heard a single pop or click in any of my encodings.

Thanks for your replies. Since I posted the drive has totally crapped out on me and now refuses to work at all. I actually had to pry it open to get to the CD that was stuck in it.

Naturally I conclude that this has something to do with the problems I described. I'm not too concerned about my previous rips, though. Like I said, most of them are fine from what I can tell (I've listened very carefully using good equipment).

So now I basically need a new ripping drive. I have a Lite-On LTR40125W burner, but since it caches it's not optimal. I get pretty fast rips, about 10x, but the smallest error will slow down extraction to about 0.5 red squares / second.

Any suggestions? It doesn't have to be a DVD-ROM, I can also get a CD-ROM or preferably a burner suitable for secure DAE. I can find other uses for my current Lite-On. All I want is reasonably fast and of course secure rips, no caching and preferably for it to handle scratched cd's well. Any and all specific suggestions (i.e. model number) or links to where I can get advice is welcome.

Cheers,
Uosdwis