[Daedalus Audio]

i have a G4 mac and have ripped about 300 cd's, many of the files have problems. the cd's will play fine but i get digital artifacts in the rip.  i use AIFF or WAV in itunes.  can replacing the optical drive in the computer help?

thanks,
lou

[mattyturner]

Did you enable error correction in iTunes? That is essential.

[jtwrace]

Lou,

Great speakers btw...I can't answer that question but can say that you shouldn't rip more then 30 CD's in a day.  The drive will go bad in time..

[Crimson]

When you say digital artifacts, are you referring to ticks and/or pops at the exact same location in the track? Make sure that when ripping, you are not doing anything else in iTunes (listening to other ripped tracks, manipulating album art, etc.) even with error correction enabled.

[Bemopti123]

I have exclusively used AAC or Lossless.  Never had any problems with ripping.  The only time I have ever had problems as you have mentioned was when I had an old pc, with Pentium III and Windows XP.  Can those ticks be related to a HD that is going bad? Where did you store those files?

[avta]

Try Max ( www.sbooth.org ) for ripping with your G4. It does a better job in my opinion. I use a G4 Mac Mini for ripping and have had good results with it for the past two years.

[funkmonkey]

I use MAX as well, set to CD paranoia with very good results.  So far a couple of rips have been white noise (this is a known and very rare problem with some CD's when using CD paranoia) but just re-ripped with the comparison ripper and I'm all set.  I used the iTunes ripper at first and encountered some of the problems mentioned in the initial post, same disc ripped with MAX= no skips, blanks, or pops.

[Daedalus Audio]

i do use error correction and the ticks etc are consistent, also have files on two different HD with same issue. it's definitely in the ripping process.

JTWRACE:  thanks for the compliment btw.  i did do some heavy use of the optical drive and noticed noise from it, when a drive goes bad can it cause read errors?  if so that could be the problem. as i say most of the time the cd's will play fine on a transport but the ripped files have ticks etc.

are all optical drives pretty much equal or is there a preferred one to upgrade to?

thanks,
lou

[Rashiki]

are all optical drives pretty much equal or is there a preferred one to upgrade to?

I can't say that there's a preferred one, but there are differences and some drives are better than others. A few years ago, Plextor was considered the best overall brand for ripping, but many of their newer drives are reported to be inferior to their older models in terms of audio extraction. I've had good results with Lite-On (CD-RW), Sony (DVD-RW) and Pioneer (DVD-RW) drives.

[nicksgem10s]

I have been using an external Plextor Premium drive instead of the onboard on my MacBook Pro with excellent results. 

I did this when I got serious about computer audio.  It is supposed to be one of the better drives that was offered.

I have had it for a couple of years and have been thrilled with the results.  I don't know much about the current external drive offerings.

I know I like using an external as I feel it is less wear and tear on my MBP.

I use iTunes AIFF & WAV files only and always use error correction and do not do anything else on the computer when ripping.

I have started using a flash drive for storage for some critical listening and it does seem to be the way to go.  I can't wait for their to be affordable large flash/ss memory available.  I don't think it will be to much longer before prices get to reasonable levels and drive sizes get larger.