[JMT391]

Head Fi,

I have this optical drive in my computer. I have used it to play/rip/burn CDs and DVDs, as well as play games/create ISO images and I have had no problems - until now.

I recently bought a CD from a seller on amazon. I tried to rip it, and EAC gave me a read/sync error. When I played it, the music sounded awful (lots of fuzz/static). I then (forgive me) gave Itunes a try to see if it would work better, and had the same issue. I tried the same CD on my roommates computer, and then my friend's CD player, and it worked perfectly. I then tried a different CD in my computer, and that worked perfectly. My point is, neither the CD nor the optical drive alone cause an issue - the combination of the two do.

I have never seen/heard of anything like this before - what could the issue possibly be?

 

[tuoppi]

Some sort of copy protection probably. Different drives react differently to them, some can play them fine and some drives can't.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

That's normal. Different CD drives handle errors and scratched or otherwise damaged or used CD differently when ripping. That's why I have two optical drives in my computer. Sometimes one of them works to properly rip a disc when the other drive won't. Neither optical drive is consistently better than the other in that regard. Sometimes drive A will rip a disc that drive B won't. Then I'll have a different disc that drive B will rip properly but drive A won't. It all depends.

I buy used CDs so sometimes have to rip somewhat damaged discs.

 

[JMT391]

I buy used CDs 99% of the time, but this one is new, so I know it cannot be scratches or anything. I looked up some stuff about CD copy protection - I was unaware that this even existed.

Although the issue with copy protection being the culprit is if this CD has copy protection on it, wouldn't all copies of this album have it too? The internet seems to turn nothing up on this particular album, which means it may not be copy protection.

Thanks so far for the suggestions, I am at college now though and might not be able to recycle an old optical drive to try until the end of May. Is there anything else?

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Look for firmware updates for your optical drive. Sometimes the firmware updates address problems with various copy protection schemes and other problems with the drive.

Try ripping with dBpoweramp. Sometimes it can do better than EAC and sometimes EAC does better than dBpoweramp. dBpoweramp supports AccurateRip so you'll be able to know if the rip was good or not.

If your optical drive supports C2 error correction try ripping once with C2 error correction enabled and once with C2 error correction disabled.

Or you can try ripping the CD on a friend's computer or a lab computer on campus using a portable (thumb drive) install of EAC. You may have to bring along some additional CDs to use as key discs to get AccurateRip all configured with the new optical drive.