8 replies to this topic

[kennynd]

Hello. I am working on a big project-ripping cd's onto my hd in the flac mode. A few of my ripped files have dropouts-usually in the first 10-15 seconds of the song. What are the possible causes of this? I have 2 drives-a writable and a rom. The problem occurs on both drives. It seems to be sporadic and random. Is this a software or hardware problem? Thanks in advance for your help.
I hope I have posted this in the correct category.

[Brendon]

Hello,

What application in Easy Media Creator 9 are you ripping these CDs to FLAC with?

[kennynd]

Brendon, on 01 September 2011 - 03:15 AM, said:

Hello,

What application in Easy Media Creator 9 are you ripping these CDs to FLAC with?

Thanks for your quick reply. I am using Roxio Creator Premier V. 9.0.559 that came with my 4 yr old HP. I use the convert cds section. Someone told me that dropouts
can be a known issue with Roxio. I notice that you can adjust the drive speed. Would that have a positive effect on my ripping? Also would a newer version of Roxio
solve my problem?

[d_deweywright]

Can you clarify what you mean by "dropout"?  A silent spot?  A spot where a beat or two (or a fraction of a beat) of music is just missing?  (Like a small skip.)

What if you try ripping as a .WAV file instead?  (Yes, files are bigger, but no encoding has to happen.)

[kennynd]

d_deweywright, on 01 September 2011 - 05:00 AM, said:

Can you clarify what you mean by "dropout"?  A silent spot?  A spot where a beat or two (or a fraction of a beat) of music is just missing?  (Like a small skip.)

What if you try ripping as a .WAV file instead?  (Yes, files are bigger, but no encoding has to happen.)

Yes, a small skip or silent spot. The guy I'm doing this for is a flac perfectionist so I need to do this in flac. I know he has a wav to flac conversion tool but
there are a lot of files here and I would rather just rip to flac.

[d_deweywright]

Okay, but the problem may have to do with the flac encoding while ripping.  Try going to .WAV files for a disc or two, and if the dropouts go away, then we can rule out a problem with your optical drives.  We have to try and determine what is causing the problem before we can fix it.

[kennynd]

d_deweywright, on 01 September 2011 - 05:15 AM, said:

Okay, but the problem may have to do with the flac encoding while ripping.  Try going to .WAV files for a disc or two, and if the dropouts go away, then we can rule out a problem with your optical drives.  We have to try and determine what is causing the problem before we can fix it.

I will give that a go later when I get home. Thanks very much for your help so far.
A few observations
I went thru over 400 recently ripped songs and found 12-15 with the skip. The skip almost always occurred about 7 seconds into the song. The songs involved
were mostly the 2nd or 3rd track of the album rip. A friend said he thought the drive speed may well be part of the problem. I have it set to "max" and he thought
8 or 16 should be the setting. Do you have any feelings about this? Talk to you later in the day.

[kennynd]

Hello again. Did a number of tryouts this morning. First I ripped a disc to wav and it had a skip-same spot and track range as before. I then changed the drive speed to 16X and ripped again to wav-no flaw evident. I then ripped 16X to flac-again no flaw. Did two other discs which had once showed flaws and they came out without flaws. Would you then blame this on ripping speed problems or do you have other thoughts?

Also when adjusting the drive speed in Roxio I noticed that I could only adjust one drive-my other drive, an rom,doesn't show up in the drop down menu. How do I adjust the read speed of this second drive, if it can be adjusted.

[d_deweywright]

I would agree that the speed seems to be an issue.  As for what drives can be set to what speeds, that depends on the drive.  Roxio is reading the drive capabilities from the drive, and ripping speed may not be settable on some drives.  If you can't get a clean rip from one of your drives using Roxio, you may want to try using another utility like Exact Audio Copy.  I don't know what options it has for the destination file type, but maybe it'll help.