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[luper89]

Somewhere there is a bug that has un-recoverably corrupted MC when ripping to FLAC if there are duplicate track names on the same CD.  Apologize for the lengthy explanation below, but I’m hoping that with a full play-by-play of what happened, someone can help me fix this and avoid in the future. 

I’ve been ripping CD’s to FLAC using MC 11.1.183, Scott Thompson’s In_FLAC 1.6.6 and Enc_FLAC 1.6.1.  Everything was working fine until I put the Allman Brothers Dreams CD 1 into one of the machines.  This CD has two tracks with the same title (both titled “Dreams”, tracks 13 and 17).  It ripped through track 12 with no problem and then on the first “Dreams” track 13 got hung up.  Eventually I got a message in the Rip Details area saying “Rip Failed, ASPI Error”. 

It occurred to me that file name protocol was set to “[Artist] – [Album] – [Name]”, and only then did I notice the duplicate track names on this CD.  I reset the file name protocol to “[Artist] – [Album] – [Track#] – [Name]” to avoid that problem but again it failed to rip.  I tried ripping to MP3 instead, it didn’t work.  I could play FLAC files but couldn’t rip anything.  I reinstalled MediaCenter and reinstalled the FLAC plugins, and again it didn’t work, plus MediaCenter started crashing and hanging up the computer requiring hard reboots.  I deleted the file libraries and reinstalled MediaCenter, and I could rip to MP3 but not to FLAC.  I again deleted the file libraries and reinstalled MediaCenter, this time putting Enc_FLAC.dll in a different folder from before (in Programs/Mediacenter instead of previously in Programs/Mediacenter/Plugins).  This time it worked at first but after successfully ripping a couple CD’s has failed again.  Now it doesn’t recognize CD’s as audio CD’s when placed in the disc drive. 

Help!!  I have run out of ideas at this point.  MediaCenter seems to be hopelessly broken.  I’m hoping someone can figure out: 1. How to fix this problem and get MC working again, and 2. How to keep this from happening again with CD’s that have duplicate track names.

Thanks.

[JimH]

Try ripping to APE or WAV.

[Doof]

No offense or anything, but nothing I read in your posts really indicates to me that the FLAC plugin has a problem like you describe. It's possible, but there's nothing definitive in your post. It sounds more like a CD-ROM drive going bad to me. If it were truly a problem with multiple tracks having the same name, then wouldn't it fail on the second track that had that name, and not the first?

It's much more likely that your CD-ROM drive went flaky and that's causing all of the other symptoms you're seeing, than the FLAC encoder erroring out and completely taking MC out, even after numerous reinstalls.

Does the drive not work at all anymore? Does it even show up in Windows?

[JimH]

Agreed Doof.  That's why I suggested ripping to another format.

[scthom]

When MC encounters a second file with the same name, it ought to (and I believe does) name the second one, e.g. ...(1).flac, so the file name is unlikely to be the problem.

[marko]

When MC encounters a second file with the same name, it ought to (and I believe does) name the second one, e.g. ...(1).flac, so the file name is unlikely to be the problem.

for kicks, I tested this yesterday. Thumbs up to YADB because it returned with the correct info for one of my wife's pretty rubbish multi disc 60's hits cds. I made it so tracks 13 & 17 were the same, and set the rip to .flac in motion...

The second track over-wrote the first one, which surprised me, as, like yourself, I expected a filename with a (1) appended. It's what tends to happen just about everywhere else inside MC. I put it down to the possibility that as the track may not have been actually imported at the time, it got replaced instead of being renamed.

Secure Rip Log created at 08:01:44  Tuesday, June 20, 2006

The quality percentage is the ratio of the minimum number of re-reads
to the actual number of re-reads of the CD data sectors.

Q: The Sixties Beat - B Bumble and the Stingers
   Track  1: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Nut Rocker]
Q: The Sixties Beat - Sam The Sham and the Pharaohs
   Track  2: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Wooly Bully]
Q: The Sixties Beat - The Marcels
   Track  3: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Blue Moon]
Q: The Sixties Beat - Mike Penders Searchers
   Track  4: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Sweets For My Sweet]
Q: The Sixties Beat - Johnny Cymbal
   Track  5: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Mr Bass Man]
Q: The Sixties Beat - The Nashville Teens
   Track  6: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Tobacco Road]
Q: The Sixties Beat - The Swinging Blue Jeans
   Track  7: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Good Golly Miss Molly]
Q: The Sixties Beat - The Box Tops
   Track  8: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [The Letter]
Q: The Sixties Beat - The Crystals
   Track  9: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Then He Kissed Me]
Q: The Sixties Beat - The Drifters
   Track  10: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Up On The Roof]
Q: The Sixties Beat - The Newbeats
   Track  11: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Bread and Butter]
Q: The Sixties Beat - Clarence "Frogman" Henry
   Track  12: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [You Always Hurt The One You Love]
Q: The Sixties Beat - Randy and the Rainbows
   Track  13: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Denise]
Q: The Sixties Beat - The Ad-Libs
   Track  14: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [The Boy From New York City]
Q: The Sixties Beat - Bobby Rydell
   Track  15: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Wild One]
Q: The Sixties Beat - Clodagh Rogers
   Track  16: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Come Back and Shake Me]
Q: The Sixties Beat - Randy and the Rainbows
   Track  17: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Denise]
Q: The Sixties Beat - Mike Pender's Searchers
   Track  18: Completed Ok - Quality 100.00% [Needles and Pins]

I wondered if the replacing had caused Luper89's problems somehow, possibly a windows generated confirmation dialogue hiding behind MC's window, something like that? (I wasn't prompted, but then, I don't use explorer for file browsing so I'm not sure)
Though my first thoughts when reading the first post were along the lines of:

dirty/damaged cd?
conflicting/corrupted aspi installation?
nero and/or roxio software installed?

=======
some of the band names on these cds are great...
was there ever a sixties band called "peter pineapple and the cheeky chunkys"? If not, there should have been!!
What's would your sixties band have been called?

[Doof]

I wondered if the replacing had caused Luper89's problems somehow, possibly a windows generated confirmation dialogue hiding behind MC's window, something like that? (I wasn't prompted, but then, I don't use explorer for file browsing so I'm not sure)

Except that he encountered the problem trying to rip the first track with that name, not the second.

[luper89]

Thanks everyone for your input.  It may be a bad disc, I'm not sure.  I have experimented a bit further and it seems that the duplicate tracks might not be the issue.  There are certain tracks that screw up MediaCenter, the first one I encountered happened to have a duplicate.  Another one is Buddha Bar 1, CD 1, Track 14: Gypsy Rain.

I can't rip either of these, when I try to do so the CD player makes some jerky noises, MediaCenter shows "Rip Failure, ASPI Error" and then starts acting wierd (unable to rip anything else, doesn't recognize audio cd's, etc).  When the problem first started I couldn't rip another file without resinstalling MC and putting the Enc_FLAC plugin into a new folder.  Now it's somehow better; a reboot fixes it until I try to rip either of these tracks again.  I tried ripping through Windows Media instead of JRiver and had the same problem, so it may be a bad disc, will take up the issue with IBM.

A couple follow up questions:
1.  Does anyone know what an ASPI error is?  I did a little poking around online and it seems to be related to the CD drive but if anyone knows offhand let me know.
2.  Has anyone heard of an issue like this where a few specific tracks cause issues?
3.  The first track that caused the problem turned out to be scratched on the CD, when I tried to play it on a regular CD player I got a ton of skipping, does this ever cause a problem in MediaCenter?  I have successfully ripped other tracks that turned out to have skipping when playing back the digital file so wasn't really on the lookout, but have you ever seen a scratched CD cause major issues like this?  The Buddha Bar track which also messes up MC has no skipping no I'm not sure it's a factor.

Thanks again.

[luper89]

Sorry, just to clarify, when I said above "it may be a bad disc", I meant "it may be a bad drive".  Also, when I tried ripping with Windows Media, it was to WMA, not FLAC.

[Doof]

A couple follow up questions:
1.  Does anyone know what an ASPI error is?  I did a little poking around online and it seems to be related to the CD drive but if anyone knows offhand let me know.

ASPI is kind of like a software layer between the media software and the CD-ROM drive. It pretty much translates between the two. An ASPI error just means that for some reason communications broke down. In your case, it's most likely because the drive is unable to read the CD properly.

2.  Has anyone heard of an issue like this where a few specific tracks cause issues?

There's nothing inherent to the tracks themselves. It's usually a scratched CD or a bad CD-ROM drive.

3.  The first track that caused the problem turned out to be scratched on the CD, when I tried to play it on a regular CD player I got a ton of skipping, does this ever cause a problem in MediaCenter?

Not just Media Center, but pretty much anything that tries to read that disc. Exact Audio Copy and Media Center's "Secure" rip mode are both designed to help with this kind of thing. They'll re-read over the same damaged sectors on the CD multiple times in an attempt to get good data from it. If it's scratched badly enough, though, it probably won't be able to get reliable data from it.

I have successfully ripped other tracks that turned out to have skipping when playing back the digital file so wasn't really on the lookout, but have you ever seen a scratched CD cause major issues like this?  The Buddha Bar track which also messes up MC has no skipping no I'm not sure it's a factor.

It really depends on the drive. I've seen some CDs that are scratched all to hell, and won't play at all in a standard CD player, but then MC ripped it and there wasn't a single skip or pop in the resulting file. In the same regard, your CD-ROM drive may have troubles ripping a CD, while your car CD player may play it without a problem. I'm not sure I'd expect the same CD-ROM drive to have problems ripping the CD, but be able to play it fine, though. Not unless there was some copy protection in play. You never know, though. The fact that WMP can't rip the same CD indicates to me that MC isn't the problem, though. And I'd expect that if it were a problem with the CD-ROM drive, that you'd be seeing this problem on a lot more than just two CDs. I suspect it's just a bad disc. You might want to try ripping it on another computer if you can.