[gkinberg]

Hello,

I am ripping CD's to computer hard drive using dbpoweramp. I frequently get messages that a track was ripped insecurely or in some cases I skip a track because it is taking forever. Invariably, my discs have scratches and I assume that this is the cause of the errors or insecure rips. I don't think it has happened with a pristine disc. But I wanted to know if this sounds like an error that is caused by inappropriate setup.

Thanks for any help, Garth

[firedog]

Yep, sounds like the result of scratches on the disk. Try cleaning the disks with a suitable soft cloth. Many times just a simple wipe down will improve them enough that the disc can be read and errors corrected by dbpoweramp.

[gkinberg]

Even though this may be frowned upon, I have clicked the option for dbpa to interpolate unreadable frames. this results in insecure rips but at least it gets the track ripped. I've tried cleaning the discs with a cloth but I've not tried more drastic approaches to polish the disc -  toothpaste or pleadge.

Garth

[AB]

Toothpaste will destroy the disc. At least it has in my experience.

DL EAC - it's free - and let it try to rip your damaged Cds. It might take an hour or so but it will often get you an accurate rip when all else has failed.

[gkinberg]

I am reviving an old thread to discuss dbpoweramp. I think that my above issue was resolved when my optical drive was replaced in my laptop. However, I just ripped my Cranberies CD and several of the tracks were slow to rip and one was
"insecure". I played this track and there were skips, gaps and other audible artifacts.

I just reripped this CD using itunes and the offending track plays almost flawlessly.

Is this the exception or is this normal?

Is it possible that if dbpoweramp can't rip a track securely then it doesn't bother to make the flawed track sound good?

This make me wonder if dbpoweramp is all that people think it is. I'm curious to hear others thoughts.

[scp2]

I have instances where I would get errors on dbpoweramp and simply ripped a second time and it was fine. I have also found if I have a shoddy disc I clean it with a product I got from Mapleshade called Mikrosmooth and that helps as well.

[firedog]

I've found that often just cleaning a disk with one of those cloths meant for glasses or screens (doesn't scratch) is enough. If not I use a small  amount of distilled water (just enough to dampen the CD) and then the cloth. In most cases this solves the error issue.

[firedog]

I am reviving an old thread to discuss dbpoweramp. I think that my above issue was resolved when my optical drive was replaced in my laptop. However, I just ripped my Cranberies CD and several of the tracks were slow to rip and one was
"insecure". I played this track and there were skips, gaps and other audible artifacts.

I just reripped this CD using itunes and the offending track plays almost flawlessly.

Is this the exception or is this normal?

Is it possible that if dbpoweramp can't rip a track securely then it doesn't bother to make the flawed track sound good?

This make me wonder if dbpoweramp is all that people think it is. I'm curious to hear others thoughts.

It depends how you have dbpoweramp setup. If you have it set up for secure ripping and the CD is flawed, it will file it as insecure. iTunes rips it, guesses how to "fix" the problems, and doesn't tell you anything is wrong.

DBP also has settings for "non standard CDs" and where you can tell it to "interpolate errors". You have to look through the various settings and choose the ones you want.

That's the beauty of the program - it let's you set the kind of rip you want and informs you of the result, instead of just doing what it wants and not telling you what it did.

[gkinberg]

firedog,

I agree, conceptually it is a very nice program. However, I have it set to interpolate errors (or unrecoverable frames, I forget the terminology). As I'm trying to get the best rip, from an allbeit flawed disc, I don't really care if it is "secure" or "insecure". I just want it to be the best it can be 

But I've found that if the disc is flawed (scratched or what ever) and it is going to give me an "insecure" rip from dbpoweramp, then I am better off ripping from itunes from a sound quality perspective. I mean if I play it in my cd player and it sounds ok, then shouldn't the ripped files from dbpoweramp sound ok as well.

I guess it boils down to my expectation that rips from dbpoweramp to sound as good or better than any other ripping software and that does not seem to be the case.

Garth

[*Scotty*]

All optical drives are not created equal. The problems you are experiencing may in part be due to how well your optical drive reads the data off the disc.
 I purchased a stand-alone External USB DVD Reader/burner with C2 error correction capability, a Samsung Model SE-S084. This will be listed as one of the features on the better DVD drives look for it.
 When I have a problem reading a disc with scratches or that is non-standard in some way I will try a different drive. If I have a problem with one I will try the other and that will usually succeed in getting a secure rip.
 The other reason for a stand-alone optical drive is that secure ripping puts more wear on the servos in the drive when compared to non-secure burst ripping. The EAC program specifically cautions you to be aware of this.
 For cleaning I use Windex and Puff brand plain tissues to wipe the disc dry. This gets rid of finger prints and low levels crap and the surfactants left behind by the Windex have a short term anti-static property.
Scotty