Laarree's obsessive-compulsive CD> Apple Lossless project progress report

[laarree]

Re: my thread from a few days ago, about getting a new mac Mini, integrating it into my home theater setup and proceeding with creating a fresh iTunes library into which I am importing from audio CD to iTunes as Apple Lossless format: http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1...sg-1026598

As of this morning (8 days after buying the Mini and setting it up), I have imported a total of 295 individual discs (including many double or multiple-disc anthologies). Import time into ALAC format is reasonable; needless to say, I've been multitasking around my home while this is going on. The persistent weirdness in this process has been that for a minority of the CDs (perhaps 10-20% of them), the Mini emits a loud hum while importing from them, and while the import is going on, I get a spinning beach ball in other applications--they only become responsive briefly when importing a track is finished.

I've tried to find reports of similar weirdness online, and have seen comments about the printing on CDs causing them to spin unevenly, slight unevenness in the disc itself, the possibility of the drive being defective, the fact that the slender "Superdrives" in Minis, iMacs and Macbooks are not meant to get used in as demanding a way as "Superdrives" in Mac Pros, etc.

Should I call Apple tech support or go see a Genius at the local Apple Store about this issue? Could it have something to do with how the CDs are mastered?

When I imported these CDs into iTunes originally on my Mac Pro as 320kbps aac files, this loud humming/CPU usage issue never happened, FWIW.

[edgarbc1]

also you might want to check that the files are not corrupted after import

I have a live at the BBC Beatles disc that plays fine in the CD player
but my macs cant read the last tunes on the discs. Dont know why
the last ones which were read, have some corruption issues and basically i deleted them... The high pitched whine came up during the rip.

twas a C2D last of plastic white iMacs before they went Aluminum

[laarree]

edgarbc1 wrote:
also you might want to check that the files are not corrupted after import

I have a live at the BBC Beatles disc that plays fine in the CD player
but my macs cant read the last tunes on the discs. Dont know why
the last ones which were read, have some corruption issues and basically i deleted them... The high pitched whine came up during the rip.

twas a C2D last of plastic white iMacs before they went Aluminum

WIll check that, but so far tracks have been fine. The rips on these anomalous CDs DO happen, and take no longer that with the other CDs--it's just the noise and CPU usage that is weird. I also have error-correction turned on. The problem with these CDs occurred whether or not this was enabled.

[OWC Jamie]

Slot loaders are notoriously sensitive to out of balance discs. I bet there's a lot of ink coverage on that one side of the disc.

FWIW if I were doing what you are, I'd have scrounged up a tray loading optical to do it - they are MUCH faster and more robust.

[jdc]

OWC Jamie wrote:
Slot loaders are notoriously sensitive to out of balance discs. I bet there's a lot of ink coverage on that one side of the disc.

FWIW if I were doing what you are, I'd have scrounged up a tray loading optical to do it - they are MUCH faster and more robust.

:agree::agree::agree::agree:

it would have only taken 3 days and not 8.

seriously -- if anyone else plans on doing this Ive got an old TDK 52X CD external USB 2 CD burner I will send you. 1/3 the time of a slot loading drive.

[laarree]

OWC Jamie wrote:
Slot loaders are notoriously sensitive to out of balance discs. I bet there's a lot of ink coverage on that one side of the disc.

FWIW if I were doing what you are, I'd have scrounged up a tray loading optical to do it - they are MUCH faster and more robust.

I just bought an open box 5.25" Mercury optical drive enclosure from you guys--will be sticking a bare Superdrive in it tonight. :-)

Thanks for verifying the reality of the reports I read about out-of-balance-discs. It makes me all the more glad that I am drastically cutting down on my personal use of DVDs and CDs with all the DVD-ripping and CD-ripping I've been doing.

[laarree]

jdc wrote:

it would have only taken 3 days and not 8.

I am doing this in my spare time. I'm not nuts, you know. :wink:

For doing something like in in one's spare time, doing nearly 300 discs in 8 days is pretty good. Tonight, however, I will be having a new external optical drive do the work, cobbled together from an "open-box special" OWC Mercury optical drive enclosure and a new superdrive, connected to the FW800 port on the Mini. I'll be able to do do real world speed and noise comparisons--I put aside many of the hum-producing CDs with the idea of doing this kind of nerdly testing.

[Jimmypoo]

Well, Nerd? How's it going?!?

[bwicklander]

Im doing the same thing right now - CD or ink is uneven - happening to me too

[laarree]

Jimmypoo wrote:
Well, Nerd? How's it going?!?

Not home from work yet, J-poo. I'm busy freezing my laundry.