Sorry if you read my tone as harsh... No harshness was intended. I never saw your previous postings. However, posts like your original one in this thread are a
big pet-peeve of mine. Be aware, I don't work for JRiver and I any help I provide to other users I do out of the kindness of my heart. Since you didn't post a link to the old thread in your new thread, the fact that you provided the error message "at some random time in the past" means that I have to go searching for it. Considering that I am doing this for free and out of the kindness of my heart, this isn't real likely. My tips weren't meant to be nasty. I was trying to educate you on what
you can do to make your questions more likely to be answered, for now and for the future.
Jim made another very important point. It may seem simple to you, but when you run your ideas all together in one big paragraph it is hard to read. When it is hard to read, you might not get as many people willing to take the time to figure it out. The fewer people who read your question means the lower chance you might get an answer you can use. To be completely honest, when I got to the line where you said "Why did this happen?" but didn't provide the exact error message or a link to where you had provided it, I skimmed the rest of the post but really stopped reading in detail because I knew without further information I wouldn't be able to help.
That error message means that MJ was
unable to read the disc. This can happen for a number of reasons:
1. The drive may be unable to read the type of dye used in that particular brand of CD-R.
2. The drive may be faulty or may need a firmware update.
3. As Jim suggested the drive may be incompatible with the reading software in some way.
4. The disc may be damaged somewhat. Using a "secure mode" rip may help.
5. The disc may be dirty.
6. The disc may be damaged completely and the data may be gone.
When the last option (completely damaged) happens, it does often happen at the "end" (or outer edges) of a CD, meaning that it is far more likely to happen to the last tracks on a disc than the first tracks. CDs are not a perfect (or some would say even very good) long-term archival storage medium. They are sensitive to light, dust, humidity, and all sorts of other factors. Discs over 2-3 years old can become unreadable if not stored perfectly. Recent tests have shown that even with proper storage, most CD-R discs will degrade significantly within 10 years or so.
That's not to say your discs are bad for sure, but they might not be good with that particular drive or with that particular ripping mode. You could try using MC's secure mode to rip the discs, or use a program like EAC to try to rip them. You could also try using a different drive. If you still have access the the burner that actually created the discs, this might be the best bet.
If you are using the original burner still, then it is likely not to be an incompatible drive. In this case, I'd try:
1. Cleaning the discs thoroughly. Be careful not to clean them improperly!!
http://www.ehow.com/how_2499_clean-cds.html2. Re-rip the disc using MC's Advanced Ripping options. I'm not sure what options are availble in older versions of MC, but things to try in the current build are:
- Change the Read Speed to 1X. The slower the read the less error prone it will be.
- Try changing the copy mode to Secure. If this fails, maybe even try Analog.
- Disable On-The-Fly encoding.
3. Beg, borrow, or steal someone else's high-quality drive. Plextor is known for making high-quality reader drives, though NEC, BenQ, and others also make very nice ones. Try other drives, as they might have more (or less) success reading a damaged disc.
I am by no means an optical disc data extraction expert. Some other users may be better equipped to give additional advice than I would be.
As far as your questions about the Audio Editor and recording. I've never used this function of MC, so I can't help you there.
