For years I have encountered mp3s ripped by other people that have defects such as pops and skips.
Because I have never created such an error when ripping a cd, and because I could not imagine how these errors were created, I often said under my breathe, "what a bonehead".
Well tonight I'm the bonehead and I'm hoping someone can educate me.
I ripped a cd using MC with the Lame codec and the Copy Mode set to Normal and the Read Speed set to Max. When complete, I tagged the tracks and found a few that had pops, skips, and repeats.
The probable cause of the problem is that I was doing some other heavy lifting (video encoding) at the same time. This is something I do not normally do but today I was in a rush. I also confirmed that the cd is not physically damaged and plays fine.
My assumption has always been that ripping is a fundamentally digital process. By that I mean if the cd is physically damaged I assume the drive will retry and if unsuccessful will abort and report an error. I also assume that if the computer is busy doing other things, the rip process will slow down but that there is no risk of introducing a rip error since it is just a digital calculation and not dependent on any real-time constraints.
Apparently my understanding of how ripping works is wrong. Would someone please educate me on the way rip errors can occur and how to prevent them?
Jumping ahead to possible conclusions: If I use the Secure Copy Mode, will this always prevent errors? Is it safer to Analyze Audio after the rip has completed rather than using the option to analyze during the rip? Should I avoid running other heavy tasks simultaneously?
Thanks in advance.