The Geek Forum
Main Forums => Hardware, Software, and Other Imperialist Crap => Topic started by: Demosthenes on March 25, 2007, 01:00:29 PM
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I typically rip any CDs I buy immediately and copy them to my MP3 player. I'm an avid music fan, and I have hundreds of CDs, all of which I've ripped.
I have one, however, that is baffling me.
I have occasionally encountered a CD which will not rip correctly on my laptop's optical drive. Whenever that happens, it goes in this odd seeking mode where it's stuck in the middle of a track and it keeps spinning the disc up and stopping it, almost like it's trying to find where it left off or something.
I've encountered only a couple of CDs like that, and in every case, I chalked it up to the optical drive on my laptop being hypersensitive to some discs, because when I try ripping those same CDs in one of the desktop machines I have, they rip just fine, using the same OS (Slackware Linux) and software (Grip, using cdparanoia for ripping and LAME for encoding).
Well today I ran into one that has stopped me cold.
It is an older CD from circa 1997 and is not copy protected in any way that I can note -- besides, most copy protection schemes for musical CDs really only apply to Windows. In Linux the software music labels have had developed simply doesn't run, so I'm able to read the raw CDDA data straight off the disc without any hindrance whatsoever. The CD plays just fine in my car stereo, an ancient boombox I have in the house, and my home stereo system.
However, when I put the disc into a computer -- any computer, even my wife's Mac and my Windows b0xx0r -- it won't play. It skips around and eventually just hangs forever, stuck, no matter what track I try to play. Not like it's scratched, that's a different kind of skipping. Like the format is invalid or something. Visual examination of the data surface shows a flawless CD... no scratches, scuffs, or even smudges that I can see, even with a magnifying glass.
When I try to mount it in Linux it tells me that it's an invalid disc.
Has anybody ever encountered anything like this?
I'd better make sure the RIAA doesn't get ahold of it to reverse engineer whatever the problem with this disc might be. It seems like a pretty rip-proof album. I've never encountered an audio CD that I couldn't eventually find a way to rip clean tracks off of, at least, not one that would still play in a normal CD player.
But this one plays flawlessly in any CD player I've tried, but it stops cold in any computer I've tried, over three operating systems, no less.
If it weren't from 1997 I'd say it was some sort of intentional copy protection scheme built into the formatting of the disc itself, but nobody was doing anything like that back then, and if that's the case, I am truly shocked that it would play in all the CD players I've tried, some of which are pretty sensitive to modern copy protected discs (I have two that simply won't play a copy-protected music CD, period, and both of them play this disc just fine).
I was tempted to see if I could get the raw data off of it and try burning that to a new CD, just to see if there was something physically wrong with the formatting, but I can't even mount it to do that.
Any suggestions, guys?
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It's not a special edition CD with bonus features or anything, is it? I had trouble with a Sarah McLachlan CD once because it had interactive crap.
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It's not a special edition CD with bonus features or anything, is it? I had trouble with a Sarah McLachlan CD once because it had interactive crap.
Let me guess... "Surfacing", right?
Windows gave me shit about that particular one of Sarah's "enhanced" CDs, but in Linux the interactive/bonus stuff just shows up as a file tacked on the end of the disc, so it never gave me any trouble ripping it.
No, this one doesn't have any bonus content or anything like that.
I did just notice something that might be a clue though.
The ONLY other CD I've ever had a lot of trouble ripping was Pantera's greatest hits CD. Try as I may, in every optical drive in which I put that Pantera disc, I could only rip 14 of the 15 tracks on it. That 15th track would hang in exactly the same way this particular disc is hanging. I finally had to settle for 14/15ths of a rip on that one.
The thing I noticed is that that Pantera CD was released on the Rhino label... and this problem disc I'm messing with now was too.
That makes me wonder if I'm not actually encountering some oddball copy protection scheme that Rhino implemented as long ago as 10 years. It seems far-fetched, but it can't be a coincedence that both discs that have given me the most trouble out of all the hundreds I've ripped happen to be from the same label. :x
I'm googling all over, but I can't find any references online to any kind of copy protection scheme implemented by the Rhino label. But maybe I'm missing something.
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That was the one.
Are there hidden tracks?
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That was the one.
Are there hidden tracks?
Not that I can see. When I put the disc in and fire up whatever ripping app I try, it sees the same number of tracks as are listed on the liner notes. The CD in question is "Space Ghost's Musical Bar-B-Cue". My old roommate had this album and I never got around to purchasing it myself until now. I'm very famliar with it because I've listened to it many times.
I'm baffled though... I've never been stopped cold from ripping an entire disc like this before, in Windows 2000, Mac OS-X and Linux.
:?
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Wonder if they've since re-pressed the CD with newfangled Sony-esque technology.
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Wonder if they've since re-pressed the CD with newfangled Sony-esque technology.
Well, it's not the much maligned Sony "rootkit" of a couple of years ago. That scheme depended on autorun in Windows to install the software the hijacked Windows' ability to read anything off the disc other than a special data section where they had low-bitrate compressed audio files -- not the raw music tracks.
A friend of mine had one of those Sony CDs... I tried it out in my Linux machines and I was able to rip high-quality MP3 tracks off of it with no problem at all.
No, this particular case is almost like it's the formatting of the data area of the disc itself. It's really weird. I can get a track listing when I insert it, but that's about it. No data.
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http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=22779&sid=66e32c1182dd9de98aee5020b33bfa7d
It may not help but I googled this from the cdrlabs forum. Someone suggested isobuster but there was never a reply as to whether it worked or not.
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http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=22779&sid=66e32c1182dd9de98aee5020b33bfa7d
It may not help but I googled this from the cdrlabs forum. Someone suggested isobuster but there was never a reply as to whether it worked or not.
Good link.... I missed that one while I was searchening all over today.
It sounds like that guy's having the same issues I am. I think I'll bring it to work and see if I can just burn an image of it to a different CD and go from there.
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Please post what you find out, and the results of your re-burn. I have beaucoup CDs; most of them not ripped yet, but I've already found some that act wonky in one drive but fine in another- both music CDs AND software CDs. CD's and CD drives have ALWAYS been a thorn in my eye. I've resorted to finding copies of most of what I already have on WinMX(<--highly recommended, btw!). I'm still rebuilding my library that way instead of trying to rip CDs or copy my 400+ cassette tapes.
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If that fails there's always the bootlegger's favourite; a CD player, the line in port and a double ended jack =P
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You know, I think this is a manufacturing defect. I'm finding numerous references to other people having issues with some Rhino CDs that sound exactly like this, particularly with some CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives.
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I have used audiograbber, which is free now, on some karaoke back ups which had a screwball copy protection on them. Slower than my usual methods but it would read the discs.
If you think you can make a copy with another drive you might try copying it to a virtual drive such as daemon tools, or the ones that come with alcohol 120 or clone cd, and rip from them.
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omg ur teh l337 h4x0r
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omg ur teh l337 h4x0r
Shhhhhhhhhh that's supposed to be a secret.
But really if you buy these thing for usually about 20 bucks apiece, you really don't want to use the originals if you don't have to.
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Shhhhhhhhhh that's supposed to be a secret.
But really if you buy these thing for usually about 20 bucks apiece, you really don't want to use the originals if you don't have to.
I paid $2.99 for this CD. But I agree. Virtual CDs mounted from images are the way to go for some purposes.
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Well... Is it working yet? :wink:
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If that fails there's always the bootlegger's favourite; a CD player, the line in port and a double ended jack =P
HAHA! That used to be my first choice. The actual AUDIO. I still have a CD player and a pro cassette deck patched through to my board; I can play the tape/CD and "fix" it (usually only the cassettes) with my rackfullashit, and ship it right into my pc at whatever bitrate I wanted. It's extremely tedious, though, for over 400 cassettes and I dontknowhowmany CDs.
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I use the double ended cable for quickly ripping songs of YouTube and stuff, also it's been easy for transcribing my drunken black-box recorded (now SOLID STATE), easily the best thing I've ever bought from rat shack.
Most music it's quicker just to download however.
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I just ripped this CD on my machine at work (Slackware Linux 10.1, Grip using cdparanoia to rip CDDA data into .wav, LAME to encode the wavs into MP3) and it worked with zero problems at all.
So. I chalk it up to what I found on the interweb. Manufacturing defects from some discs released by the Rhino label that make some optical drives barf all over the place when trying to read them.
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All I know about Rhino is that they apparently make really shitty MST3K DVDs.
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Well, at least they make them. I thought the only peeve people had with their MST3K box sets were the choices of eps. It would be great if they simply released them season-by-season, but there were unsurmountable copyright issues with respect to the original films. Stupid, but true. I think Rhino did they best they could.
Rhino started out as a small label that issued compilations, soundtracks and obscure artists. For instance, they were key in boosting Shatner's campy (and pre-Internet) music ventures.
If you want all the MST3K episodes Rhino has not released, I know a good source.
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Without Rhino, a lot of older cool stuff never would have made it to CD.
<3 Rhino.
I have 6 CDs that I was never able to rip and a couple that I had to leave off a track because it kept borking. Not bad out of 1400 or so. Curiously those play in a player but not a computer. Eventually when I get the equipment to finally rip the LPs and cassettes I guess I can rip these the same way.
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Thanks Ivan, but most torrent trackers I've used have quite a few, I'm getting though them slowly.
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Gotcha. But if it's ever worth your while to buy DVDs of unreleased episodes, check out Cheepnis (http://www.cheepnis.com/). He runs a great site and a great e-store, is affordable, prompt, reliable -- all good. And the Zappa tie-in pushes it over the top for me. I've bought a few single eps from him, but will eventually get all the Joel years in season sets, starting with Season 0 (which I have never seen) and Season 1 (of which I've seen only a few on Turkey Marathons).
Keep circulating the tapes!
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Yeah I've never seen any Season 0 either, apparently they weren't very good (can't blame them, they were just figuring out what the show was at that point I'd imagine) but I'm a completist that way.
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So. I chalk it up to what I found on the interweb. Manufacturing defects from some discs released by the Rhino label that make some optical drives barf all over the place when trying to read them.
Well you could also try seeing if there are any firmware upgrades for your current drive. But if you've gotten them ripped it may not be worth the effort.
Hmmm. There used to be a site dedicated to that, firmware upgrades that is. I wonder which box around here might still have a link to it.
Edit: well it didn't take google long at all to find it.
http://forum.rpc1.org/portal.php
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Yeah I've never seen any Season 0 either, apparently they weren't very good (can't blame them, they were just figuring out what the show was at that point I'd imagine) but I'm a completist that way.
I am member #939 of the original KTMA TV-23 Mystery Science Theater 3000 Fan Club. I joined in the winter of 1988 because I was a huge fan of the show, and it was a local cult hit here in Central Minnesota back then. I still have my Fan Club card. Joel Hodgson used to do standup comedy in this area then too, and I got to meet him a number of times. He's even funnier in person. They did a live taping of the show some time after that at a comedy club in Minneapolis and fan club members got reserved seats -- for free.
Afterward they did a meet-and-greet and I got autographs of the entire original cast and Mike Nelson was there too, though I don't think he was technically officially part of the show until it moved to Comedy Central.
I actually agree that it's great that Rhino has released what they can on DVD... it's a piece of great TV history in my opinion, and it's not hard to get bootlegs of any season except the almost mythical "Season 0" unless you find some of the hardcore Minnesotan fans from back when the show first started airing around here on a local independent channel nobody cared about.
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I am member #939 of the original KTMA TV-23 Mystery Science Theater 3000 Fan Club.
Good Lord! That's a million times more elite than a tripple-digit Jeff.com number!
Awesome!
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Good Lord! That's a million times more elite than a tripple-digit Jeff.com number!
Awesome!
I never realized how big a deal the show became until years later. I'm glad I hung on to the Fan Club Card. It's seen better days, but it's still legible.
Alas, I don't have a triple-digit JEFF.com account number. My "demosthenes" account there is #1348.
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Yeah my pbsaurus is 5014. I'm such a n00b. I had a charter membership card to 924 Gilman (went to the inaugural show there) but it was in a wallet that was stolen back in the '90s.
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924 Gilman? That's so elite, I don't even know what it is!!!
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Google it.
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Majorly cool!