Okay, I'm stumped.

Now that I've got more disk space in my empeg, I'm back to ripping my CD collection. I've been using the aforementioned Plextor drive with AudioGrabber on Win2000. I installed the third-party ASPI drivers recommended by folks here.

What seems to happen, occasionally but more likely on longer discs, is that it will be ripping along perfectly until it his the last track. Then, it will slow down, unable to read at full speed, then it will simply stop. AudioGrabber, in its typically unhelpful way, just sits there.

Now, before I'd installed the 3rd party ASPI driver, the behavior was that my whole machine would wedge. Admittedly, the current situation is infinitely preferable, but still unsatisfying. What I've been doing, for these occasional problem CDs, is using my DVD drive to do the ripping. It only runs at 8x (versus the 16-30x I get with the Plextor), but it does seem to work reliably.

Any ideas on how to fix my Plextor? Do I need to upgrade its firmware or something?

Thanks!

I had a similar problem with my Plextor PX40TS (the SCSI CD-ROM). It'd bail on the last track. Strangely, I'd not changed any of the driver software at all, as far as I can tell.

I switched over to using a Teac CD-ROM in my other computer.

Try giving Plextor a call/mail. Last time I tried (about a different issue), they were quite helpful.

Oh, and let me know if you have any success -- those things rip faster than anything else I've ever used.

It could be a bad drive. I've seen some drives that lose tracking at the outer edges of the disc. Both audio and CD-ROM.

But if it only happens on certain discs, check to see if it's a disc with an extra data-track at the end. I've had some discs confuse rippers because the ripper thinks the last song and the appended data track are the same thing. This usually produces the exact symptoms you describe.

The way around it is to edit the track length of the last track before ripping.

Roger,

I have exactly the same drive...I was thinking about that the drive is faulty.

Let me know If you have some news.

I have one CD that my Plextor UltraPlex40Max (SCSI) cannot rip from. It cannot be ripped with my Yamaha 4x4x24 burner either. Both of these drives can "play" the CDDA without a problem though. The only drive I have around here that has been able to rip the disc is a very cheap 40x Toshiba. It only rips at a true 1x though.

The problem with ripping slowing down to a crawl or slowing down at all, occurs on a few of my discs as well. Sometimes at the end of really long discs (nearing 80 minutes) or sometimes somewhere in the middle tracks. I'm pretty certain it has something to do with the way the discs have been mastered. On some of them you can see visible gaps between the tracks on the surface of the disc.

If you're using Audiograbber and ANY track starts to slow down below the value ripped on the previous track, then you will have to adjust your rip settings. Any track this happens to will have pops and otehr corruption. I have found that lowering the DAE speed to 8x works for some tracks, while others need a setting of 1x. On the Plex40, setting to 1x in Audiograbber will do a real 4x DAE. This has worked perfectly for all problem tracks except the one disc I mentioned.

The disc in case anyone can also verify, is Ministry's "The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste."

About the only other ripping application that I would ever consider above Audiograbber (for quality) is EAC (Exact Audio Copy). It's much slower than Audiograbber though because of its redundancy. With a good SCSI Plextor drive (there's nothing better for DAE) - AG does work very well. And its interface is fairly friendly, easy to navigate and convenient for ripping mass quantities. :) (I've done all 450 of my current CDs already - encoded with LAME 3.9alpha)

I have a Plextor 40X SCSI also and am experiencing the exact same problem but under Linux, so I doubt it's a driver issue. On long CD's (> 60mins) it has trouble riping the last few tracks. Out of the 250 or so CD's I have, I only experienced this on 3 or 4 CD's. The drive rips beautifully otherwise. Kind of annoying since I purposely bought this drive because I believed it was the highest quality drive for ripping available.

I have a Sony that has trouble sometime after 60 minutes when it tries to rip at high speed. If I tell cdda2wav to use 8x then everything is fine. Have people tried forcing their ripping software to go slower?

Richard.

This is a known and acknowledged problem with almost all of the "fast" drives. Most manufacturers haven't made their drives to automatically slow down when it encounters the speed errors. Currently, they just throw in the towel. There was an article that talked about it in Maximum PC's October issue. They were referencing the TDK VeloCD 24/10/40 and it's problems with this. They're reccommendation is what's already been said... slow down the speed of the drive until it works. It'll take longer, but at least you'll be able to rip the music.

I have a plextor drive as well, the 8/4/32a, and it works fine most of the time. I have a few cds that have problems with the last track. I just cut a few seconds off the last track in audiograbber and redo that song. That usually takes care of the problem.

Paging Mr. Fabris: This sounds like something for the FAQ.

Interestingly, I finally found a CD in my collection (Monty Python's "The Final Ripoff") that fails with my Plextor burner and my Toshiva DVD. The Plextor craps out two tracks before the end and the Toshiba craps out on the last track. It's an older CD, which you can observe because the varnish is turning brown around the edges. Rip it now before it goes bad altogether.

I'll give the variable-speed thing a try to see if that works. I'm surprised there isn't a ripping program that knows how to slow down and retry.

Oh well...

And, while I'm on the topic, I see that the new ripping FAQ no longer mentions 3rd-party ASPI drivers, which are pretty much mandatory under Windows.

Along with mentioning Adaptec's ASPI layer, the current version (4.60) should also be mentioned and also the fact that Adaptec recommends that it is not for use under Win2000 or Me. But in fact it works 100% and is recommended by Plextor.

Audiograbber will be adding "secure" ripping in version 1.9. Secure not having anything to do with protection, but actually having to do with making sure you get a full and correct rip. I will mention the speed throttling to Jackie the author.

I didn't have to install third-party ASPI drivers to get my rippers to work.

Well, OK, on NT 4.0 I did, but not any other version of Windows.

And the thing about ASPI drivers is fully covered in the documentation that comes with the ripper. I shoudn't have to document that stuff in my FAQ.

Okay, okay, I've added a couple bullet points to the FAQ.