Ripping Badly Scratched Old CDs - Has Anyone Tried This?
I use Exact Audio Copy. The program tries over and over again until the result is as good as it gets.
It's a free download (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/), Windows only though. 
I have a SkipDr device which polishes out the scratches. It has proven effective in allowing me to rip discs without any problems once treated.
I have a SkipDr device which polishes out the scratches. It has proven effective in allowing me to rip discs without any problems once treated.
+1
The text in my original post seems to have vanished.
So...
The question was - has anyone tried copying their original CDs onto CR-Rs or CD-RWs or even CD+RWs using the error correction software in the CR copying package, then ripping the copied CD-R/CD-RW/CD+RW into FLAC? Someone on another website says it works, I just wondered if anyone round here had tried it?
Talk me through that again...why wouldn't you just rip the original CD (with error-correction) to FLAC? Why copy it to another CD first and rip that?
Oh and the advice still stands re. the metal polish. Don't worry there's no strange hifi voodoo about it, metal-polish thins the sharp edges of the scratches down and makes it easier for the laser to track the CD. I've never needed to try it on CDs but I've done it with a couple of charity-shop DVDs which were too scratched to play fully. Bit of elbow-grease with Brasso and they played fine.
My FLAC riping software (dbpoweramp) doesn't seem to be able to cope with the number of errors it's getting. Ripping to FLAC brings up less than perfect results, if the software doesn't just give up first.
The theory is that pukka CD-ROM copying software copes with errors better, attempts to read the scratched up CD over and over until it makes sense of the data, then writes the corrected data to the new CD-RW.
Like I asked - has anyone tried this? it's a boring Saturday afternoon here - wife's out in one car, one other car is grounded (the battery is in the boot of the one she's driving around in) and the Discovery is in the shop waiting for its third replacement engine (she doesn't think Landrover engines maintaing so she drives them until they go kaboom - so I just gave it a whirl. Or spin. Or...
Anyway, the results will follow. Once the wife gets back and I can pop out for some CD-RWs, that is....
Sadly not...CD ROM copying software will simply in many cases not detect the errors, then transfer the audio (with errors to a CD-R), the CD-R will then be ripped without errors, because the errors are then already encoded into the audio stream (secure cd ripping software might rely on c2 pointers or re-reading to detect an error, neither of these will happen on the CD-R).
AccurateRip is useful to detect if a rip is error free.
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Yes. Use metal polish on the playing side to thin-down as many scratches in the plastic as you can, make sure you're using error correction and hope for the best.
Main gear: Mac Mini > HRT Streamer II+ > Cyrus 2 + PSX > Cyrus tuner > Mission 794
Also cluttering-up the place:
Thorens TD160 no cartridge; Technics SL-P777; Marantz CD63 mkII KI; Marantz PM66 KI; Nakamichi DR-1