CardinalFang Wrote: > Data drives also have more capabilities than audio only drives. Not when they're reading audio CDs, they don't.
> Offline rather than real-time allows you to spend more time and > processing power to make corrections or gather the correct data. No. On a "copy-protected" CD that has deliberate uncorrectable errors, THERE IS NO CORRECT DATA TO BE RETRIEVED. All any CD reader can do (whether it's an audio player or a data drive) is to conceal the error using interpolation. And there is no systematic evidence to suggest that data drives do better interpolation than audio players. I happen to have compared the interpolation performed by my Plextor PX712A versus that done by a Micro-Seiki CD-M100 (which uses a Philips CDM1 mechanism), and can report that the Plextor's interpolation was slightly better than the Micro-Seiki's, but that's just one data point and has no statistical significance. > For example, tools like IsoBuster can often recover audio data that a CD > player can't by applying many different types of error correction or > data retrieval since they use Yellow Book not Red Book only like a CD > player. An audio CD is Red Book. It can't be read as a Yellow Book disc, because it simply does not include the additional level of redundant error correction codes. Rippers that can retrieve data from a damaged disc that an audio player can't play do so by repeated re-reading of the bad blocks until they get something usable. But a CD with deliberate uncorrectable errors cannot be successfully ripped like this - no matter how many times you re-read, you'll get exactly the same uncorrectable errors. If Isobuster (which I've not used) has especially sophisticated error concealment algorithms, then I applaud it. But it can only ever start with the raw data it's got to work with, and that is no different than what an audio CD player can do. And in any case, has your position suddenly changed from a belief that hard disk playback is better in all cases (as was implied by your first post in this thread) to one of thinking that it's only better on deliberately corrupted discs? As it happens, my position is that a hard disk setup is certainly better than a CD player in the case of damaged (but not deliberately corrupted) discs, because it is these cases where non-realtime ripping has a realistic chance of beating a CD player. (And there's another reason why it's more reliable, which you mention later on....) > I was absolutely correct that CD players need to use error correction a > lot more than occasionally on many new discs Do you actually understand the difference between error correction (which happens *continuously* while reading even a pristine CD) and error concealment (which happens very rarely - in fact usually not at all on an undamaged CD)? > Additionally CDs gradually degrade from scratches and oxidation, data on > a hard disk does not slowly change and can be protected using RAID. > Doing an up-front rip on a brand new disc using data retrieval tools > like EAC on good discs and IsoBuster on badly corrupted discs will > result in a consistent audio signal over time, the CD in the CD player > will not. You've finally given one good reason why using a hard disk based system is probably more reliable than CD players, and I agree with you on this point. -- cliveb ------------------------------------------------------------------------ cliveb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=348 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18991 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
