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Rips from certain (Copy Protected?) CDs resulting in distorted FLAC files...HELP!

djftw

djftw

Heterodox Member
Hello all.

As some of you may remember I made the jump to NAS/Streaming recently and have been working my way through my fairly extensive CD collection. I am however discovering a small percentage (39 CDs so far) that result in heavily distorted rips regardless of software used. They all seem to be from various arms of Warner Music and despite none of the discs indicating that they are anything other than Red Book CDs I assume this is some sort of Copy Protection.

This irritates me enormously as most of these CDs date from a time where had I been minded to I could have quite easily obtained CD quality pirate copies at no or negligible cost which would still play perfectly in my current system. Essentially these brain dead technophobes have decided to punish me for not being a thief!

I have had a bit of a scurry round the web and have drawn a bit of a blank. Using older optical drives seems to have been a workaround at one point, however I have pulled a few out of storage to find none of them work any longer!

Playing them and recording the analogue output would of course work, but seems crude. Also I have already sold my good CD Player on to another Fishy and am not sure I actually own any recording equipment more advanced than the line in on my desktop!

Anyone had any success getting round this another way? Or perhaps be able to let me have use of some hardware that would work? Maybe someone could advise of say an old duel drive CD Recorder on eBay etc that might copy without copying the copy protection and give me a rip-able copy!? I'd be reluctant to spend too much, but if something like that was inexpensive and worked...

Or do I write to Warner about their faulty products and see if that goes anywhere, and if not (and having fulfilled the pre-claim conduct guidelines) file a small claim for the cost of repurchasing the music as a CD quality download?!

Yours profoundly annoyed,


Dom
 
I have only ever found one "unrippable" cd which was A+M

Are you using EAC and has it calllibrated your drive?
 
I’ve not had much experience of copy protection, but I remember it was an intermittent beep over the music, not distortion,

I’m assuming they play OK through the CD drive that you’re using to rip them with.

Have you tried ripping them to another format, like WAV or APE? Have you checked the media properties of the distorted rips to be sure that they’re redbook rips.

Have you tried ripping with foobar?

I’d try to get hold of a USB external CD drive and try there. It’s not a bad idea to have one as occasionally a CD will just not rip on one drive but will rip in another. I’be had a cheap Sony one for years, it gets used twice a year max but I’m glad to have it.
 
What were some of the problem discs? I ripped about 1300 CDs using the drive on my zen vortexbox and never had any problems with any discs, bar about 3 which the vortexbox just wouldn't read, but I had no problems ripping them on a laptop with a usb CD drive and Jriver.

Certainly never encountered any distorted flacs after ripping.

Worst problem I had was a Japanese import cd which created a seemingly infinitely nested directory structure with Japanese characters in its name, and I've never yet been able to delete it! But Jriver ripped the disc no problem.
 
colasblue said:
I have only ever found one "unrippable" cd which was A+M

Are you using EAC and has it calllibrated your drive?
Click to expand...

In the first instance yes and yes, EAC is my preferred software. I have tried with various others that I have on my computer for various reasons and the output is much the same, heavily distorted.
 
On the rare occasions I've had a copy protected CD, there has always been a little MCPS logo hidden away on it somewhere, so that can be a giveaway. Different rippers seem to deal with it in different ways, and although I wouldn't rip with it otherwise, I have found iTunes to be pretty good at coping with them.
Technically, a copy protected CD cannot conform to the Red Book CD standard, so strictly speaking, you could demand a refund from the seller on the basis that it isn't a CD!
 
mandryka said:
I’ve not had much experience of copy protection, but I remember it was an intermittent beep over the music, not distortion,
Click to expand...

Those ones were rootkit based ones IIRC, modern Windows treats them as a virus and disables them (quite rightly)

I’m assuming they play OK through the CD drive that you’re using to rip them with.
Click to expand...

No, with the same type of distortion... I think these are the ones which notoriously don't play properly on anything that uses a transport designed for anything more than Red Book CD...

Have you tried ripping them to another format, like WAV or APE? Have you checked the media properties of the distorted rips to be sure that they’re redbook rips.
Click to expand...

Yes, not sure what you mean vis "Redbook Rips", where do I check that?

Have you tried ripping with foobar?
Click to expand...

Yep same result.

I’d try to get hold of a USB external CD drive and try there. It’s not a bad idea to have one as occasionally a CD will just not rip on one drive but will rip in another. I’be had a cheap Sony one for years, it gets used twice a year max but I’m glad to have it.
Click to expand...

I'll look at ordering one and trying that soon...
 
Some of my old Phonogram CD singles from the late 80s & early 90s were heavily distorted too, as if they were recorded in a frying pan. Don't think they were copy protected as other singles from the same album were fine to rip.

Cleaning made no difference, not that they looked damaged on the surface anyway. I think there is some sort of CD rot that can go on.
 
Can you tell us something about the playback equipment? How about the nature of the distortion? Possibly if your DAC's output is a little hot and the audio on the offending discs is heavily compressed, that could cause a problem.
 
I use dbpoweramp on a Windows 7 laptop (one of the last to offer a choice between win7 and win10).

I have found that an external BLURAY drive (mine is a Samsung) works better than the internal DVD drive - tracks that rip as "insecure" on the DVD drive often come out "accurate rip" on the BLURAY drive! With this external drive I have no idea which CDs are copy protected or not - there has been no problem since I started using it a couple of years ago.

Before I had this solution, I experienced problems with copy protected CDs by Roger Waters (When the wind blows), Camille (Le fil) and Ultrabra (can't remember which one) - I just found a more recent non protected copy 2nd hand...
 
I’m currently re-ripping my CDs to lossless after initially ripping them to MP3s in the mid-2000s. (Hurray for the tumbling price of storage.) I recognise your problem, and also the way it occurs pretty much exclusively with Warners CDs from around the turn of the millennium, plus or minus a few years.

These CDs ripped without issue on my previous computer (HP Windows XP desktop bought in 2004) but fail either partially or completely on my 2010 Dell Windows 7 desktop. It’s not a condition issue; the discs are immaculate, and it’s not CD rot as that doesn’t affect Warners discs.

I bought an external Samsung optical drive to give me a second chance of success over the Dell’s internal drive, which helps in some but not all cases.

Note that I use dbPowerAmp with AccuRip enabled, so if a rip fails at least I know about it as it happens rather than when I finally get round to listening to it.

What works for me is copying the affected discs to a CD-RW using my Yamaha CDR-HD1500 CD/hard drive recorder. This has never failed me yet. Somebody’s bound to moan that the CD-RW element results in an inferior rip, but AccuRip seems to recognise the copies as if they were originals and pass them appropriately, so this solution works for me.

For what it’s worth I don’t think there’s copy protection applied to the affected CDs, more like a certain laxness in production standards that had an attractive (for Warners, at least) by-product.

Some discs that, from memory, I’ve had issues with:

Joni Mitchell “Clouds” HDCD
The Flaming Lips “The Soft Bulletin” HDCD
Missy Elliott “Miss E...So Addictive”
Yes “Drama” expanded reissue
Led Zeppelin “How The West Was Won” (just last night, in fact; only a few tracks rather than entire discs)
The Incredible String Band “The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter”
 
It's certainly worth trying a new drive. My old desktop PC (also a Dell), would not rip, play, or even recognise most Warner Brothers CDs. I could however rip these CDs fine on my partners Dell laptop, which was a similar vintage.
When she got a new laptop from work recently, which of course did not have a DVD drive, she bought a USB drive which when I tested it on my PC, ripped the offending WB's discs just fine. I then took a chance and bought a new internal DVD drive (an ASUS) for my Dell, which also works fine.
I must say that I have never had discs which rip OK but then sound distorted. They either rip correctly, or not at all. (Scratched discs excepted).
 
Probably not much help, but I'm using a Naim HDX to rip CDs and serve them to my streamer.

Very occasionally, the HDX wouldn't recognise a CD, displaying "no disc present"

I've been able to get round this by copying the CD on my MacBook, using Toast Titanium, and the resulting CD-rom has always ripped OK.
 
Had the same problem using iTunes on a Mac to rip CDs from an external USB Apple drive. The rips had distortion when playing them back.

I found ripping them using XLD cured the issue, but I can't remember which settings I played around with to get it to work.
 
djftw said:
Yes, not sure what you mean vis "Redbook Rips", where do I check that?


...
Click to expand...


I meant that they’ve been ripped at 16 bits 44.1 kHz, if they’ve been ripped differently your DAC may not like it and it will indeed sound distorted.

In Windows right click on the music file and select properties, you should be able to see a tab for media properties, you get a huge list of properties but the information is in there, usually at the bottom. If you haven’t got a media tab you may have to download an add-on.
 
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alanbeeb said:
What were some of the problem discs? I ripped about 1300 CDs using the drive on my zen vortexbox and never had any problems with any discs, bar about 3 which the vortexbox just wouldn't read, but I had no problems ripping them on a laptop with a usb CD drive and Jriver.

Certainly never encountered any distorted flacs after ripping.

Worst problem I had was a Japanese import cd which created a seemingly infinitely nested directory structure with Japanese characters in its name, and I've never yet been able to delete it! But Jriver ripped the disc no problem.
Click to expand...

Smiths, Eagles, REM, Tracy Chapman, The Cure, MCR, Muse, Led Zeppelin... quite a variety. In some cases I have more than one pressing/mastering of an album and one would rip another not!
 
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