[dip16amp]

I find that buying used CDs can give EAC a lot of problems. They are very lossy with scratchs and scuff marks which cleaning can not remove. EAC can sometimes take more than ten hours per track to transfer to disk, still have read and sync errors, and still have clicking and silent gaps in the track. This is with a plextor PX-R820T drive and EAC 095pb5 with accuraterip. Works great with new CDs but terrible with scratched ones. I really don't want to spend more than thirty minutes on a track so I'll have EAC skip tracks that it has to reread too much.
I also tryed easy CD creator and it will copy the track fast but it will have a lot more clicks and pops. Too many errors to want to listen to the track at all.
So I put the scratched CDs in my Pioneer 563A and it plays with almost no errors in real time. Only on the worse scratchs will there be a click but most of the time it has no noticeable errors. Since it is real time speed and almost no errors, I decided to connect the digital toslink output to my RME Digi96/8 PAD toslink input and record the track with cooledit at 44100 sample rate and 16 bit data. This seems to work the best in terms of speed and quality. I do have to trim the beginning and ending of each track as I start the recording before I play the track and stop it after the next track begins. I could just record the whole CD in one big wav file but I still like separate tracks. Anyone else do this or have other methods of dealing with scratched CDs?

 

[bg4533]

I ripped some CDs this weekend using EAC that looked like complete trash. Using a Lite On DVD-ROM drive EAC did an amazing job producing almost flawless results. Out of 4 CDs there were 3 tracks I told EAC to skip because they kept hanging up, other than that, perfect.

Have you tried using a different optical drive to do your copying?

 

[Asmo]

Perhaps try a different drive like suggested above.

I buy a lot of used cds and borrow cds too, and I find EAC works flawlessly with 99% of them. I have LG 52x CDRW Burner.

 

[dip16amp]

I haven't tryed any newer drives and I know my plextor is old, but some CDs may only have one or two tracks that are really bad which is like what you had. Were you able to play those bad tracks on a CD player without problems?

 

[Johncan]

Have you tried Plextools Professional? It has secure ripping and may get through a scratched CD faster than EAC. If you did not get Plextools with your Plextor drive, you may be able to find it via a Google search.

I use it more then EAC.

John

 

[Richteralan]

yup
get a cheap LiteON DVD-ROM(like mine: LTD-166S) can recover most those scratched CDs.

And it's reading capabilities are very good.

 

[MrDetermination]

I ripped my whole 120+ CD collection last month to .flac

I tried 4 different drives and I think it was a Sony that got through error correction the quickest... no where near half an hour a track. Half hour per VERY BAD DISC, maybe.

And we're talking some 12 year old CDs in the lot. CDs that have been stored over a sun visor with half dozen other CDs, just loose on the floorboard, etc. REALLY BAD scratches, several of them.

When I errored out I used Meguires ScratchX (car stuff) and a slightly abrasive rag to rub it in, then a smooth rag to polish it off.

There was only 2 tracks out of the whole project that I had to go out on the web and find .ape files for. Those .ape icons look kind of funny in my .flac collection, but I'll convert them, someday

 

[Mr.Radar]

With your Plextor drive you might want to try PlexTools instead of EAC.

 

[Imyourzero]

I find that if EAC gives you problems reading CD's in Secure mode (usually happens with scratched or dirty CD's) and you try a couple times and absolutely can't get EAC to read the track without throwing up error messages, just go into "Drive Options" and change your read mode from Secure to Burst. It reads the track much faster and on scratched CD's can/will actually produce better results than secure mode. I've had several tracks that EAC simply refused to read in Secure mode, but the tracks read and sounded just fine when copied using Burst mode. Try it!

And yeah, I imagine some CD drives are better than others when it comes to reading dirty/scratched CD's.

 

[Jasper994]

I find that my Creative DVD drive works better than my TDK CDRW drive so I always use it. I'll get the occasional bad track with sync and read errors but it's pretty rare. I have also found that sometimes it's best to skip the track if it starts giving you problems, and then go back to just that track and re-rip it. It's very rare for that not to work.

I've heard brasso works to polish CD's, you might do a search and see if you can find some information on that.

 

[Distroyed]

The trick to getting the best (and significantly faster) 100% rips with eac is to rip the whole cd as an image+cuesheet. For whatever reason, I get *much* better results when I use this method rather than one track at a time. And it rips much faster (Im talking about the difference between ~3x and 16x speed). Give it a shot, I bet it will slice through your used cd's as smooth as butter.

 

[CSMR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dip16amp borrowing used CDs can give EAC a lot of problems.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Asmo I buy a lot of used cds and borrow cds too

So you are borrowing CDs and keeping copies for yourselves? You should be ashamed of yourselves. Head-Fi doesn't exist to encourage this sort of activity.