Dual Disc Nightmare on the Dualdisc ripping street

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winopener

2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Since 2002/2003
Joined
Mar 2, 2002
Messages
4,208
As i've said one month ago, i've started the work to transfer all the cd into hd in flac; a 50-disc robot is a WONDERFUL tool for the job - especially because you can open a 200-cd pack, load a stack then it does rip everything, repeat three times then repack and open another pack; however there were some discs i didn't wanted to go thru the robot for various reasons: MFSL and similar Gold disc release, extra rare Japanese ones, Hybrid SACD and Dualdiscs.
I have no explanation but only a statistic: "Gold" and Japan all ok, Hybrid SACD all ok, Dualdisc... a true nightmare: 4 out of 47 ripped correctly as they should, for 43 i had to go thru Plextor drive and Plextools to recover it at best. Be aware that with Plextools i've been able to rip at least 30 bronzed cd and only on 5 he had serious problems recovering correctly the bytes on the last tracks... it's a great digger combo.
The four good ones were all USA DD, (2 Bon Jovi, Wallflowers and Donnas), vast majority of the 43 were european releases.
Since nearly all the dualdiscs are in "like new" condition (=bought by me sealed, ripped the DVD part then stored) a so high failure rate does surprise me. I know DD is out-of-specs for CD but... this is really too much.
Quality control problem or flawed design from the start? I'm more on the second opinion...
 
I don't know what flac is, but it seems to me you're downgrading all your surround sound to stereo. What for?
 
I think he's trying to rip the CD side of the dualdiscs, so that he can have flac of all of his stereo CDs.

Flac is Free Lossless Audio Codec, it can handle any PCM bit resolution from 4 to 32 bits per sample, any sampling rate from 1 Hz to 655,350 Hz in 1 Hz increments, and any number of channels from 1 to 8. So, while I don't think it's what he's doing, technically he could convert the surround to flac without downgrading to stereo. I think flac would make a great format for selling surround music online, but I doubt we'll see that, at least not anytime soon. However, some sites have been offering stereo flac downloads, which is a great idea.
 
I don't know what flac is, but it seems to me you're downgrading all your surround sound to stereo. What for?

FLAC is a lossless format for compressed audio, so you get it down on size (usually 60%) and not lose anything in quality.I'm moving the stereo cd collection (+- 4000 discs) to hard drive... all the surround stuff, both in dts or dvd-a, is *already* into a bunch of hard disks in multichannel format, ready to be played with a dedicated pc from a network server.
The "downsizing" in terms of weight and storage space *without* any downsizing in terms of quality is a BIG plus, especially now that you can have 2Tb hard disk drives. That might be only my case, but, being someone that has to relocate frequently (every four years) it's a extra good thing to have to move only 8 hard disks (4 for use + 4 mirrors) instead of many 25Kg cartons full of CDs.
 
The extra thickness of the discs throws off the focussing in the CD laser on a lot of players.
Out of the 5 CD players I have here, 4 of them will not play the CD side of DD at all.
 
A great number of CD players won't read the CD side of DualDisc so this is no surprise. The only good news for me is that I never play the CD side of my DualDiscs so it isn't a big issue and the same DVD players I tried to play the CD side with will play the DVD side without issue. DualDisc was a dumb idea as a result although for me personally, it hasn't been a problem. You will have to use whatever drive you find that works properly to copy the CD side of DualDiscs. It wouldn't surprise me if 50% or more of CD players have at least some issues with the CD side.

Chris
 
Hey, winopener! I went through a similar nightmare trying to rip the CD sides of my DualDiscs to lossless about a year ago. What ticks me off is when I am listening to some of these rips a year later, thinking I've got good rips of 'em all, and then discover a track that has some skips. Arrgh!!! :D Oh, well... Part of me is glad to simply have the CD side, even if it is a bit glitchy. Then, again, the other part of me wonders why these DualDiscs couldn't have simply been released as regular, normal thickness DVD-A's so that I wouldn't wonder if it's slowly destroying my gear.
 
Rather than DualDisc and it not being RedBook compliant, these should have been 2 disc sets. CD plus DVD.
 
I'd rip the MLP or LPCM (if available) from the DVD side of the Dualdisc then convert to FLAC.

It would be a manual process but the quality would be better, and most people have problems with the CD side of dualdiscs.
 
Sorry for the OT. When you rip tour CDS to FLAC, ¿How can play the linked tracks without pauses? Thanks a lot.
 
Sorry for the OT. When you rip tour CDS to FLAC, ¿How can play the linked tracks without pauses? Thanks a lot.

Single FLAC file + CUE file.
It' s a format that get rid of any "gapless playback problem" that sometimes arise on the software players.
As for ripping that way, looks for CueTools 2.14 which includes also CueRipper, works really well.
BTW, the Flac+Cue combo is recognized and works correctly even in my Android cell phone with the Poweramp player. No need for a double-inventory (flac and mp3) for mobile applications.
 
I known this solutions when using a computer or mobile, but there are problems when playing the files with a dedicated media player like Oppo or Pioneer AV receiver.:(
 
I known this solutions when using a computer or mobile, but there are problems when playing the files with a dedicated media player like Oppo or Pioneer AV receiver.:(

You can try to use the Android phone as a UPNP control point in order to stream from a dedicated server (foobar, for example) to the pioneer receiver.
 
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