From: Fred Maxwell <rockbox_at_anti-spam.org>
Date: Sat, 3 Jan 2004 21:53:28 -0500

Nix wrote:

> On Fri, 19 Dec 2003, Fred Maxwell spake:
> >> cdex does everything eac does and it is open source to boot.
> >
> > No, cdex does not do everything that EAC does. Its error detection and
> > correction is practically non-existent.
> >
> > http://doc.hydrogenaudio.org/wikis/hydrogenaudio/SecureAudioExtraction
>
> That author's copy of cdparanoia/libparanoia/cdex seems to me to be
> severely broken. It's as though cdparanoia's not being used at all.

I've seen his well-documented test, the public responses to it, and your
claim that his particular software 'seems to [you] to be severely broken'.
He's a "Super Moderator" on hydrogenaudio's forum, is most active in CD
Hardware/Software, and has credentials and experience. Sorry, but I'm going
to have to go with the meticulously documented test for this one.

> For me, cdparanoia has sucked data pretty much intact (no artifacts that
> I could detect) off the following:
{snip}

I'm glad for you that you are happy with it, but that doesn't mean that it
works as well as EAC. And, as the tests referenced above show, it does not.

If you have a scientifically valid test that has results which run contrary
to his, I'd be happy to consider it.

> I've heard of people getting audio back from things like CDs snapped in
> two with cdparanoia, but I can't vouch for the quality of that audio.

I think someone is pulling your leg. A CD track is roughly 1/50th the width
of a human hair. What's the chance that you'll be able to glue a broken CD
back together again maintaining that alignment? What's the chance that the
glue will hold as the CD spins up to thousands of RPMs? And what's the
chance that the CD fractured without distorting physically at the point of
the break? It all seems unlikely to me.

> Some of this depends on your CD-ROM drive, and on the OS: Linux's
> ide-scsi driver doesn't properly report all SCSI errors to the IDE
> layer, so some errors will not be properly apparent to cdparanoia. This
> is Linux's fault: the solution (as of 2.6.x) is not to use ide-scsi at
> all.

The 2.6.0 Linux kernel was released on 18-Dec-2003. So what you are telling
us is that Linux users have been able to use cdex to make error free rips
for about two weeks? And anything ripped before that might have undetected
errors? Sounds like a strong argument for having a copy of Windows and EAC
on a spare drive -- even if you are primarily a Linux user.

Regards,
  Fred Maxwell
Received on 2004-01-04