Stereodude
Not really a
I bought a used CD on eBay last weekend that arrived on Thursday along with a bunch of others. I couldn't rip two of the tracks successfully. The 3rd and 2nd from last tracks. I was getting Read and Sync errors with EAC even with my generally most forgiving optical drive drive (a Optiarc (NEC) ND-7200A I put in a USB enclosure). The CD had a few minor scratches, and one that looked a bit more serious. The more serious scratch was exactly concentric (the worse kind). I had the feeling based on lots of ripping experience that the damage to the disc wasn't exactly jiving with the problems I was having ripping it. I've ripped worse looking discs without issue.
However, I screwed around trying to polish it by hand with some Meguiar's PlastX, and made some headway minimizing the larger scratches, and was able to get the optical drive to read further into one the trouble tracks without error but ultimately was not successful. The disc also was starting to get lots of very fine scratches that were visible under the right lighting from the hand polishing and I wasn't making any forward progress. In fact it seemed to be getting worse. I tried ripping it with every optical drive I have installed in a PC (all 8 of them) to make sure it wasn't something specific to the two optical drives in my main desktop, but just couldn't get through it. All the other drives were worse. Some of the drives were old CD burners, some were DVD burners, and some were Blu-ray ROM/burners.
So I got ticked and decided to go with the nuclear option. I got out my Griot's Garage 3" random orbital polisher, the foam pads, and two different Menzerna polishes, 1500 and 4000. In relatively short order brought disc to a perfect glass like mirror finish with not even the slightest hint of any scratches on the bottom or any damage to the CD's reflective layer. It basically looks better than a brand new CD. The kicker, it still doesn't rip without Read and Sync errors. It's better than it was getting further into the problem track before puking with Read and Sync errors but it's basically a pristine disc that won't rip. The best ripping drive I had for damaged/scratched discs couldn't quite get through it (nor could the others). This wasn't the first time I've had what looks to be a completely pristine disc that just wouldn't rip though I think it had only occurred one or two other times out of around 1000 CDs.
I should note there is an odd slightly visible crescent shaped line that is visible in the reflective layer if you look at it just right with a flashlight that goes through the last 2 or 3 tracks on the disc. The shape of the curve appears to match the curvature of the outside of a CD. I'm guessing it's a manufacturing defect of some sort and doesn't correspond to any sort of physical damage to the disc. It's the only explanation I have for why the disc doesn't rip. Anyhow...
I had a disc or two in the past month of my used CD buying spree that ripped okay (according to the low level EAC functionality) with no reads or sync errors and generating a matching test & read CRCs that still report discrepancies with AccurateRip and CTDB for some of the tracks or in more than one of my optical drives. As a result I decided to learn about repairing the rip using the CTDB. EAC mentions it in a somewhat cryptic message. "If you are sure that your rip contains errors, you can use CUETools to repair it." I only learned about the CTDB because EAC added a plugin for it at some point. After ripping an entire disc EAC will give both AccurateRip and CTDB results whether your rip matches others of the same disc. Like this example:
In the case of the the CTDB there is apparently some small amount of parity information stored for each disc, not just a checksum like the AccurateRip database. You can use CUETools and point it at your folder of FLAC files and have it do a verify for the tracks (just like EAC does for the disc). So it works like this. Open CUETools, point it to the folder with your FLAC files. Be sure to highlight the listing in the folder tree. You also have to give it an output path.
You can see the CTDB results are the same as EAC.
Now for the good part. CUETools can also repair the rip and make it consistent with the other rips by using the Encode option with the radio button and picking repair from the drop down writing new files in another folder. It looks like this:
Click the Go button and it gives you a popup to pick which rips you want to align with.
Click Ok and off it goes. It comes back with:
You can point it at the output directly and do a verify to make sure everything is good if you want. In the case of this example, this is the output log.
So, back to my problem disc. I decided to just let drive sit and work on ripping it even with the Read and Sync errors. In order for the CUETools repair to work it needs a complete file. So I let EAC sit ripping despite the errors and it finished those two tracks in a few minutes with EAC reporting some read errors and suspicious positions. I fed it into CueTools per the above method and sure enough it was able to repair the rip.
Success!!!
:bomb: :bomb: :bomb: :bomb: :bomb: :bomb:
However, I screwed around trying to polish it by hand with some Meguiar's PlastX, and made some headway minimizing the larger scratches, and was able to get the optical drive to read further into one the trouble tracks without error but ultimately was not successful. The disc also was starting to get lots of very fine scratches that were visible under the right lighting from the hand polishing and I wasn't making any forward progress. In fact it seemed to be getting worse. I tried ripping it with every optical drive I have installed in a PC (all 8 of them) to make sure it wasn't something specific to the two optical drives in my main desktop, but just couldn't get through it. All the other drives were worse. Some of the drives were old CD burners, some were DVD burners, and some were Blu-ray ROM/burners.
So I got ticked and decided to go with the nuclear option. I got out my Griot's Garage 3" random orbital polisher, the foam pads, and two different Menzerna polishes, 1500 and 4000. In relatively short order brought disc to a perfect glass like mirror finish with not even the slightest hint of any scratches on the bottom or any damage to the CD's reflective layer. It basically looks better than a brand new CD. The kicker, it still doesn't rip without Read and Sync errors. It's better than it was getting further into the problem track before puking with Read and Sync errors but it's basically a pristine disc that won't rip. The best ripping drive I had for damaged/scratched discs couldn't quite get through it (nor could the others). This wasn't the first time I've had what looks to be a completely pristine disc that just wouldn't rip though I think it had only occurred one or two other times out of around 1000 CDs.
I should note there is an odd slightly visible crescent shaped line that is visible in the reflective layer if you look at it just right with a flashlight that goes through the last 2 or 3 tracks on the disc. The shape of the curve appears to match the curvature of the outside of a CD. I'm guessing it's a manufacturing defect of some sort and doesn't correspond to any sort of physical damage to the disc. It's the only explanation I have for why the disc doesn't rip. Anyhow...
I had a disc or two in the past month of my used CD buying spree that ripped okay (according to the low level EAC functionality) with no reads or sync errors and generating a matching test & read CRCs that still report discrepancies with AccurateRip and CTDB for some of the tracks or in more than one of my optical drives. As a result I decided to learn about repairing the rip using the CTDB. EAC mentions it in a somewhat cryptic message. "If you are sure that your rip contains errors, you can use CUETools to repair it." I only learned about the CTDB because EAC added a plugin for it at some point. After ripping an entire disc EAC will give both AccurateRip and CTDB results whether your rip matches others of the same disc. Like this example:
Code:
- CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.6 -
[CTDB TOCID: gReDTXMGStGPtlSWZFW6DQg9Uzg-] found
Submit result: already submitted
Track | CTDB Status
1 | ( 3/61) Accurately ripped, or (35/61) differs in 687 samples @05:19:56-05:19:57, or (3/61) differs in 235 samples @05:19:56, or (2/61) differs in 687 samples @05:19:56-05:19:57
2 | ( 3/61) Accurately ripped, or (35/61) differs in 432 samples @04:58:63-04:58:64, or (3/61) differs in 154 samples @04:58:63, or (2/61) differs in 432 samples @04:58:63-04:58:64
3 | ( 3/61) Accurately ripped, or (35/61) differs in 561 samples @04:28:34-04:28:35, or (3/61) differs in 210 samples @04:28:34, or (2/61) differs in 561 samples @04:28:34-04:28:35
4 | (57/61) Accurately ripped
5 | ( 3/61) Accurately ripped, or (35/61) differs in 346 samples @04:17:38-04:17:39, or (3/61) differs in 84 samples @04:17:38, or (2/61) differs in 346 samples @04:17:38-04:17:39
6 | ( 3/61) Accurately ripped, or (35/61) differs in 482 samples @05:22:19-05:22:20, or (3/61) differs in 158 samples @05:22:19, or (2/61) differs in 482 samples @05:22:19-05:22:20
7 | (58/61) Accurately ripped
8 | ( 3/61) Accurately ripped, or (35/61) differs in 837 samples @04:40:26-04:40:27, or (3/61) differs in 280 samples @04:40:26, or (2/61) differs in 837 samples @04:40:26-04:40:27
9 | (59/61) Accurately ripped
10 | (59/61) Accurately ripped
11 | ( 3/61) Accurately ripped, or (35/61) differs in 830 samples @02:57:64-02:57:65, or (3/61) differs in 262 samples @02:57:64, or (2/61) differs in 830 samples @02:57:64-02:57:65
12 | ( 3/61) Accurately ripped, or (35/61) differs in 394 samples @04:09:48-04:09:49, or (3/61) differs in 138 samples @04:09:48, or (2/61) differs in 394 samples @04:09:48-04:09:49
13 | ( 3/61) Accurately ripped, or (35/61) differs in 596 samples @04:52:16-04:52:17, or (3/61) differs in 187 samples @04:52:16, or (2/61) differs in 596 samples @04:52:16-04:52:17
14 | (58/61) Accurately ripped
15 | (60/61) Accurately ripped
If you are sure that your rip contains errors, you can use CUETools to repair it.
_________________________________
Track 1
Peak level 100.0 %
Track quality 99.8 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [F272E721] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 2
Peak level 100.0 %
Track quality 99.8 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [B529B1D0] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 3
Peak level 100.0 %
Track quality 99.8 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [3EDE17E6] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 4
Peak level 100.0 %
Track quality 99.8 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 25) [8C78B547] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 5
Peak level 89.1 %
Track quality 99.9 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [C867703F] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 6
Peak level 100.0 %
Track quality 99.9 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [CAA5A2EC] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 7
Peak level 100.0 %
Track quality 99.8 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 24) [6610ACDA] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 8
Peak level 100.0 %
Track quality 99.8 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [95C82C59] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 9
Peak level 100.0 %
Track quality 99.8 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 24) [FD89428E] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 10
Peak level 99.9 %
Track quality 99.8 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 25) [67964FDF] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 11
Peak level 76.2 %
Track quality 99.8 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [072C4935] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 12
Peak level 88.1 %
Track quality 99.8 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [B7A8F036] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 13
Peak level 98.8 %
Track quality 99.8 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 3) [3FA3A722] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 14
Peak level 100.0 %
Track quality 99.8 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 24) [FC69FC73] (AR v2)
Copy OK
Track 15
Peak level 100.0 %
Track quality 100.0 %
Accurately ripped (confidence 24) [D81E4F50] (AR v2)
Copy OK
All tracks accurately ripped
No errors occurred
End of status reportYou can see the CTDB results are the same as EAC.
Now for the good part. CUETools can also repair the rip and make it consistent with the other rips by using the Encode option with the radio button and picking repair from the drop down writing new files in another folder. It looks like this:
Click the Go button and it gives you a popup to pick which rips you want to align with.
Click Ok and off it goes. It comes back with:
You can point it at the output directly and do a verify to make sure everything is good if you want. In the case of this example, this is the output log.
Code:
[CUETools log; Date: 4/21/2018 10:26:09 AM; Version: 2.1.6]
[CTDB TOCID: gReDTXMGStGPtlSWZFW6DQg9Uzg-] found.
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (43/61) Accurately ripped, or (3/61) differs in 922 samples @05:19:56-05:19:57, or (3/61) differs in 687 samples @05:19:56-05:19:57
2 | (43/61) Accurately ripped, or (3/61) differs in 586 samples @04:58:63-04:58:64, or (3/61) differs in 432 samples @04:58:63-04:58:64
3 | (44/61) Accurately ripped, or (3/61) differs in 771 samples @04:28:34-04:28:35, or (3/61) differs in 561 samples @04:28:34-04:28:35
4 | (57/61) Accurately ripped
5 | (42/61) Accurately ripped, or (3/61) differs in 430 samples @04:17:38-04:17:39, or (3/61) differs in 346 samples @04:17:38-04:17:39
6 | (40/61) Accurately ripped, or (3/61) differs in 640 samples @05:22:19-05:22:20, or (3/61) differs in 482 samples @05:22:19-05:22:20
7 | (58/61) Accurately ripped
8 | (43/61) Accurately ripped, or (3/61) differs in 1117 samples @04:40:26-04:40:27, or (3/61) differs in 837 samples @04:40:26-04:40:27
9 | (59/61) Accurately ripped
10 | (59/61) Accurately ripped
11 | (43/61) Accurately ripped, or (3/61) differs in 1092 samples @02:57:64-02:57:65, or (3/61) differs in 830 samples @02:57:64-02:57:65
12 | (42/61) Accurately ripped, or (3/61) differs in 532 samples @04:09:48-04:09:49, or (3/61) differs in 394 samples @04:09:48-04:09:49
13 | (42/61) Accurately ripped, or (3/61) differs in 783 samples @04:52:16-04:52:17, or (3/61) differs in 596 samples @04:52:16-04:52:17
14 | (58/61) Accurately ripped
15 | (60/61) Accurately ripped
[AccurateRip ID: 00266f7c-01ae6d2a-ce0fb90f] found.
Track [ CRC | V2 ] Status
01 [5530368e|21f658b9] (2+3/5) Accurately ripped
02 [b3069a59|ae72b7ab] (2+3/5) Accurately ripped
03 [3ab85e12|cec086dd] (2+3/5) Accurately ripped
04 [12a67b88|8c78b547] (2+4/6) Accurately ripped
05 [2d059fda|04c5c9ea] (2+3/5) Accurately ripped
06 [81ebfac3|0f7e3f2d] (2+2/4) Accurately ripped
07 [43a15e09|6610acda] (2+4/6) Accurately ripped
08 [38bf235d|0e7aebd0] (2+3/5) Accurately ripped
09 [7c0a39fd|fd89428e] (2+4/6) Accurately ripped
10 [1cc5eb17|67964fdf] (2+4/6) Accurately ripped
11 [7fb2e1e9|68d8988a] (0+3/3) Accurately ripped
12 [23e6337c|bd9ce96f] (2+3/5) Accurately ripped
13 [85b48cfa|a559c147] (2+3/5) Accurately ripped
14 [229ab53c|fc69fc73] (2+4/6) Accurately ripped
15 [5729d1b5|d81e4f50] (2+3/5) Accurately ripped
Track Peak [ CRC32 ] [W/O NULL]
-- 100.0 [F17EEFA4] [16A53167]
01 100.0 [764956C7] [E2496B56]
02 99.9 [8827B473] [5EE0C0EA]
03 100.0 [90932E7B] [58B77CD7]
04 100.0 [7CB3C067] [6F9171A9]
05 89.1 [DC443FC6] [A99FC5E8]
06 100.0 [F703851F] [6866FC4E]
07 99.9 [874A4501] [CD798B35]
08 100.0 [A4EA08C1] [BEFEC7E9]
09 99.9 [20AEB7D7] [BC3AA104]
10 99.9 [CA1F6A83] [AF62DEF9]
11 76.2 [8CC7D7BF] [08254BBA]
12 88.1 [69119001] [CBC872CF]
13 98.8 [3710851E] [6AEC2308]
14 99.9 [46F29777] [4B465926]
15 99.9 [32CD9C28] [2BF1009E]So, back to my problem disc. I decided to just let drive sit and work on ripping it even with the Read and Sync errors. In order for the CUETools repair to work it needs a complete file. So I let EAC sit ripping despite the errors and it finished those two tracks in a few minutes with EAC reporting some read errors and suspicious positions. I fed it into CueTools per the above method and sure enough it was able to repair the rip.
Code:
[CUETools log; Date: 4/21/2018 10:45:40 AM; Version: 2.1.6]
[CTDB TOCID: o5r9F9lT4lO0to8Nqjak6r8L41U-] found.
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (14/14) Accurately ripped
2 | (13/14) Accurately ripped
3 | (14/14) Accurately ripped
4 | (14/14) Accurately ripped
5 | (14/14) Accurately ripped
6 | (14/14) Accurately ripped
7 | (14/14) Accurately ripped
8 | (14/14) Accurately ripped
9 | (14/14) Accurately ripped
10 | (14/14) Accurately ripped
11 | (13/14) Accurately ripped
12 | (13/14) Accurately ripped
13 | (13/14) Accurately ripped
[AccurateRip ID: 002035a2-013d32e4-b30ff10d] found.
Track [ CRC | V2 ] Status
01 [c2e5c3fb|52feff13] (19+06/33) Accurately ripped
02 [127a49b1|bd45aceb] (19+06/33) Accurately ripped
03 [d49289af|4127835c] (20+06/34) Accurately ripped
04 [3c72b527|30b9da82] (20+05/33) Accurately ripped
05 [71c7b80b|62208fa8] (20+06/34) Accurately ripped
06 [5c371023|e7f72a65] (20+06/34) Accurately ripped
07 [f593c485|48b0dee1] (20+05/33) Accurately ripped
08 [152a3478|a321c1b4] (19+06/33) Accurately ripped
09 [6a08373a|d0b86777] (20+06/34) Accurately ripped
10 [b37c6c55|11f657ac] (20+06/34) Accurately ripped
11 [fcc5478a|6b0daf4e] (19+06/33) Accurately ripped
12 [ab7260cf|e621896b] (19+05/32) Accurately ripped
13 [e3d155bb|f19d7819] (16+04/27) Accurately ripped
Offsetted by -669:
01 [434b2b7d] (06/33) Accurately ripped
02 [65e1aa68] (06/33) Accurately ripped
03 [7cd942fb] (06/34) Accurately ripped
04 [3988b5dc] (06/33) Accurately ripped
05 [af45bea5] (06/34) Accurately ripped
06 [e3f4ba72] (06/34) Accurately ripped
07 [ddab22eb] (06/33) Accurately ripped
08 [2c3a2c90] (06/33) Accurately ripped
09 [5687afbc] (06/34) Accurately ripped
10 [e77b09b9] (06/34) Accurately ripped
11 [651f8017] (06/33) Accurately ripped
12 [b8c9a9cc] (06/32) Accurately ripped
13 [ebcabd2e] (05/27) Accurately ripped
Offsetted by -664:
01 [f44fdb81] (02/33) Accurately ripped
02 [451d5a79] (02/33) Accurately ripped
03 [0a652cab] (02/34) Accurately ripped
04 [f30d208a] (02/33) Accurately ripped
05 [23be3cdf] (02/34) Accurately ripped
06 [5cc19ecc] (02/34) Accurately ripped
07 [2bc3f261] (02/33) Accurately ripped
08 [f92937b8] (02/33) Accurately ripped
09 [2b0d6e2a] (02/34) Accurately ripped
10 [dd868735] (02/34) Accurately ripped
11 [203ac2a2] (02/33) Accurately ripped
12 [def44067] (02/32) Accurately ripped
13 [40aedaa3] (02/27) Accurately ripped
Track Peak [ CRC32 ] [W/O NULL]
-- 99.0 [0F8BD730] [12E1420F]
01 99.0 [3422728F] [7F33C966]
02 99.0 [822CA0CA] [608333DE]
03 99.0 [E8670A05] [DCBA5DA6]
04 99.0 [893B53DF] [79513E33]
05 99.0 [61B2B160] [95CE9829]
06 99.0 [95991803] [DC575069]
07 99.0 [68C486F7] [15C9688F]
08 99.0 [EB9758F5] [5CFF297B]
09 99.0 [7AD5C9A0] [D4F8DDD5]
10 99.0 [62B8EF23] [6B2C1131]
11 99.0 [020216BB] [5CA56D61]
12 99.0 [17797144] [6CAA55CD]
13 99.0 [BE26A5ED] [3B83DCDF]Success!!!
:bomb: :bomb: :bomb: :bomb: :bomb: :bomb:
