Another Ripping Gotcha

[Lord Chaos]

I decided to listen to Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Ready My Mind" album a while back. Selected it in Itunes (Apple Lossless ripped from the CD I bought in 1985) and hit "Play." What? The first second or so of "Minstrel of the Dawn" was gone. As far as I can remember the track played correctly at some point after the rip.

 

That led to having to dig the CD out of the box it was in and attempting a re-rip. First, I played it. Got the same truncation. I moved it over to the PC and played it with Windows Media Player. There, it worked fine.

 

So, I downloaded and installed Itunes over there, forgetting that I'd already done so. Perhaps that's why the program blew up when I tried to play the CD. The other version was still there but wasn't "installed." Being tired, I trashed that one and tried again. No go. I gave it up.

 

On Monday I took the CD to work. Played on the PC there, in Itunes, just fine. So, I ripped it and copied the files to a flash drive and took them home. Copied "Minstrel" to my music hard disk and played it. Works fine.

 

I don't know. Maybe it was my day for gremlins. This has gotten me to thinking about backup validity: what if something in my library gets damaged and I then keep backing up? Damaged file overwrites good one, and the only way I'll find out is when I eventually play that song.

 

Anyway, I guess I'd recommend at least spot-checking albums after copying them to the hard disk to make sure you got a goood rip. I don't have the patience to deal with Exact Audio Copy, and failures of this kind are rare.

 

[markr]

Hey LC,

 

Spot checking is good! I've done this sort of thing before too and noticed it later like you. That one turned out to be an optical drive that didn't like that particular disc. This sounds like what you have there, given that the error repeated itself. Rare, but it happens. I have a CD - Dire Straight's-Love Over Gold, that this MacBook won't recognize at all. The same disc works great in my PC, My DVD player and the external optical drive that I bought for this macbook though. I haven't had any other problems with this macbook's optical drive either..... To me, doing a spot check is infinitely more desirable - and enjoyable - than running apps like EAC and CDParanoia. I will use those programs though if I have a problem disc.

 

Spot checking right now...... long-version style.

- markr

 

[audiozorro]

with a name like Lord Chaos. If I were you I would want both a hard drive backup and the physical optical discs.

 

By the way, have you ever listened to Lord Fly or Lord Flea or Lord Melody or Lord Composer or Lord Messam or Lord Tickler?

 

[shenzi]

I used to get this sort of thing with my old, Titanium powerbook. The CD drive eventually failed but prior to that it would frequently fail to recognise disks or gibber a few seconds and then spit them out. An external CD burner sorted it. So the glitch you've noticed may be mechanical rather than software based.

 

I prefer CD drawers that pop out at you so you can see what the hell is going on. Hate the awful sinking feeling when a CD disappears into your laptop, makes a disgruntled noise or two and then refuses to appear. In a paperless office, we're always going to need paperclips.