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[lalittle]

In the past, I've been able to get "unreliable data" rips to give 100% results by manually dropping MC's "read speed" for ripping down to 1x.  Using a Pioneer DVR-A07XLA DVD drive and MC 10 (173), however, I can't seem to get MC to properly control the drive's speed.  I set it down to "1x," but it always rips at the same speed that it does when set to "max."  Why can't I get MC to control the speed of this drive like it does with my other system?

Thanks,

Larry

[lalittle]

I did make sure that the Pioneer has the latest firmware, and that it's running in DMA mode.  Is there a way to get MC to drop the read speed to 1x when I want to rip "problem" CD's, or is this some sort of limitation with the drive where it ALWAYS runs at max speed?

Thanks,

Larry

[JohnT]

Some newer CD/DVD drives do not respond to the read speed change command that MC uses. We need to update MC to use a new speed setting method. It's not a quick and easy change, so I can't say at this time when the software will be updated.

[lalittle]

Is there any way to tell ahead of time which drives do/don't support the MC speed commands?  I obviously need a drive that obeys the speeds commands from MC, but I have no idea how to check this without trying the drive.  Is this information listed somewhere for popular CD and DVD drives?

Thanks,

Larry

[JohnT]

I haven't seen a list of drives that support this command, but I believe Pioneer is definitely in the camp of NOT supporting it. I did some research on this. The committee that draws up revisions to the MMC standard (for CD/DVD read/write commands) had considered obsoleting the command around 2001, 2002, but now have gone back to supporting it's existence. It is however an "optional" rather than a "mandatory" command for cd  drive manufacturers. Interestingly, an engineer from Pioneer seems to have been the main one voting to obsolete the command.

After doing the research, I decided there really wasn't a newer or better way to set the CD read speed. The method I was thinking of using is more for setting the DVD read speed for streaming video content. I don't believe it's reliable for reading CD audio data. If anyone knows differently, please let me know.

Your suggestion of having MC determine whether the drive on your system supports the "read speed" command is a good one and I'll look into implementing that during the next beta cycle.

I don't have data on this, but I believe the majority of drives DO support the command based on trying it around here (JRiver). The exceptions seem to be DVD read only drives, many of which are Pioneer brand. Our newer DVD burners support the command.

If I find a list of drives that support this, I'll post it.

[lalittle]

JohnT,

Thanks for the information.  You said Pioneer seems to be in the camp that does NOT support the commands.  Do you happen to know if Plextor DVD RW's would be more likely to support the commands?  Due to my system configuration, I can no longer have both a CDRW and a DVDRW drive in the system, so I need to find a DVDRW that will work.

Thanks,

Larry

[JohnT]

My Sony DVD-RW supports it. I'll check if our Plextor DVD-RW supports it and let you know later.

[evanr76]

In the past, I've been able to get "unreliable data" rips to give 100% results by manually dropping MC's "read speed" for ripping down to 1x.

that's interesting - does the drive you're using not automatically back off in read speed when it encounters a "difficult" part of the disc?

are you ripping multiple cd's at once?

[lalittle]

that's interesting - does the drive you're using not automatically back off in read speed when it encounters a "difficult" part of the disc?

It does slow down automatically, but apparently not enough -- i.e. it never gets as slow as it "needs to."  It keeps getting slower as it continues it's retries, but it would seem that it still hasn't slowed down enough by the time all 16 tries have taken place.  Manually setting the speed to 1x results in speeds that are slow enough to get a good read.

are you ripping multiple cd's at once?

No -- MC's rip workflow requires me to hit "close" in between each rip for two reasons:  1) it allows me to verify that it got a good read on all the tracks before moving on, and 2) it allows me to correct mistakes in the tags retrieved from the database (tagging mistakes are present about 99% of the time.)  If you insert another disc without hitting "close," it starts ripping automatically without letting you verify the tags.  (I'm hoping this is no longer a problem with MC11.)

Larry

[lalittle]

Does anyone know if this issue was addressed in MC11?

JohnT posted this above regarding someone else's suggestion:

Your suggestion of having MC determine whether the drive on your system supports the "read speed" command is a good one and I'll look into implementing that during the next beta cycle.

John -- did this ever happen?  Is MC11 "more likely" to be able to control the speed on more Pioneer drives compared to MC10?

Thanks,

Larry

[lalittle]

I just did some tests, and this issue is not fixed in MC11.  With a Pioneer DVR-A07XLA, the speed setting in MC11 does not have any effect on the rip speed.

On a related note, the selectable speed settings in the MC11 dropdown box does not correspond to the available CD read speeds that this drive offers (a Pioneer DVR-A07XLA.)  The available options in the MC11 settings for this drive are 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, and Max.  These, however, correspond to the avialable "DVD" speeds that the drive offers rather than the available CD rip speeds, which go all the way up to 40x.  When I rip, the speed displayed in MC11 only goes up to a max of 8x, but I'm wondering if it actually IS ripping at 40x, but just considering the maximum speed to be "8x" because it's incorrectly calculating the speed as if it was a DVD.

In any case, it's not working "correctly."  The displayed speed seems to be wrong, and the MC11 speed settings have no effect on the drive's speed.  Given that Pioneer drives are one of the more popular drives out there, and the fact that this model was new as of the beginning of the year, this seems like an odd issue for a program like MC to have.

Thanks for any help/feedback on this.  The fact that MC11 is not letting me manually drop the rip speed for this drive is interfering with my ability to get reliable rips on slightly damaged discs.

Larry

[lalittle]

Does anyone know if the newer Pioneer DVR-A09XLA (as opposed to the A07) has this issue (where MC is not able to control the drive speed)?  I like the Pioneer drives for DVD creation, so I'd like to get another one, but this issue is standing in the way since I use MC to rip.  The options at the moment are to use another app to rip, or to use a different drive.  Obviously the best solution would be for MC to be able to control the speed on these drives, but we never heard back from anyone on this issue, so I have no idea if this is still being looked at, or if it was dropped.

Thanks again for any information on this,

Larry

[JohnT]

Hi Larry,

The answer on controlling the read speed of the Pioneer drive is that we can't do it. The enhancement of having MC detect if the drive supports the read speed command hasn't been implemented, but this wouldn't help you anyway since it would just grey out the read speed selection if MC detected that your drive did not support the read speed command.

The list of read speeds (1X, 2X, etc.) is not meant to show all the read speeds supported by the drive, it just gives you some low end speeds to choose along with the default maximum speed. It assumes you want to slow the drive way down to get more accurate reads so there's no point in showing 44X, 48X, etc. for a 52X speed drive.

The actual rip speed displayed during the rip process is the combined result of the actual real world audio ripping speed of the drive combined with the concurrent encoding process which is usually the bottleneck. A 52X drive can never do an actual audio rip across the entire disk at 52X speed. Another big factor is the "secure" rip setting which will slow down the process by at least 50%. If you're doing mp3 encoding, 8X is pretty normal for a final rip speed. You could turn off secure mode and change encoding to "uncompressed wave" to see the actual raw rip speed of the drive.

This has been a long winded response, but if the Pioneer isn't giving as good quality rips as your previous drive, do you still have the old one around? Maybe you hook it up and use it for ripping only? Or find another similar one, they're quite cheap these days. My Sony DVD-RW supports the read speed command.

[lalittle]

The answer on controlling the read speed of the Pioneer drive is that we can't do it.

So is this a limitation of MC, or of Pioneer drives in general?  Are you saying that the speed of Pioneer drives actually "can't" be controlled at all, or simply that MC can't do it?

The enhancement of having MC detect if the drive supports the read speed command hasn't been implemented, but this wouldn't help you anyway since it would just grey out the read speed selection if MC detected that your drive did not support the read speed command.

Actually, it would still "help" since it would at least prevent me from having to test the drive just to see if it would support the speed control.

This has been a long winded response, but if the Pioneer isn't giving as good quality rips as your previous drive, do you still have the old one around?

It's not long winded at all -- I appreciate the details.

It's not that the Pioneer isn't giving "quality rips" in general -- it's that with some "problem" discs, the only way I can get the secure rip to give me reliable reads is to manually slow the rip speed down.  If I can't slow the rip speed down, I can't get a reliable read.  The "old drive" is actually still in another computer, and as far as using a second drive goes, I don't have the IDE channel available, and I don't want to have to deal with extra drives even if I did have an available channel -- I want to be able to rely on a single optical drive for all my optical drive needs.


Thanks again,

Larry

[JohnT]

So is this a limitation of MC, or of Pioneer drives in general?  Are you saying that the speed of Pioneer drives actually "can't" be controlled at all, or simply that MC can't do it?

As far as I can tell, this is a limitation of the Pioneer drive itself, not MC. If you can find another app that can control the read speed of that drive, let me know as it might help investigate how they're doing it. The MMC documentation doesn't show me another way to do it.

Actually, it would still "help" since it would at least prevent me from having to test the drive just to see if it would support the speed control.

I agree that it would be a good enhancement. I hope to be able to implement it at some point.

[GHammer]

The Pioneer can't be controlled, I have a 109 myself and use my Plextor for ripping instead.

My experience is that drives that can be controlled will slow down but not speed up again during the rip. Makes for a LONG session if the initial track is wobbly and the rest is ok.

At least on a Sony I used to have and the Plextor, neither will respeed(?) after hitting a bad patch.

But if you know a whole CD is scratched, it is useful to put it on 2X and go to sleep.

[JohnT]

Thanks for the info GHammer.
Larry - maybe you want to get a Sony or Plextor drive.