[Paranoia] CD Ripping Uncertainty Principle?

[Dale E. Martin]

> What puzzles me also is that cdparanoia does not report the error.

I've got a CD that is all scratched up and the drive I usually rip with
won't rip it.  It generates so many errors that it would take a LONG time
to finish and I'm sure it would have audible problems.

I brought this disk into my office and tried ripping it there (with
cdparanoia) and it ripped without even a "+", let alone any uncorrectable
problems bring reported.  Then I listened to the resulting mp3s and of
course, they had lots and lots of skips in them.  The only thing I can
figure is that the drive reported no errors to the OS, and returned the
same data on each subsequent read as cdparanoia did its thing.  I don't
know what cdparanoia could do about a drive that repeatedly "lies" to it.

Also, in this discussion:
http://lists.slimdevices.com/archives/developers/2004-August/009908.html

this statement was made:
"That's really because cdparanioa isn't bit accurate.  If you use EAC in
secure more to rip your CDs and you calibrate the drive with accurip first
you will actually get the exact same track with the exact same MD5 hash
each time (even if you rip it on different machines/drives).  Assuming
there were no read errors reported by EAC.  I've verified this myself."

(This was news to me.)

Take care,
     Dale
-- 
Dale E. Martin, Clifton Labs, Inc.
Senior Computer Engineer
dmartin at cliftonlabs.com
http://www.cliftonlabs.com
pgp key available