Question about CDex (1 Viewer)

[Greg*go]

I was using CDex tonight when I noticed in the "status" column, instead of the usual OK, I had a x2 for a song. Does this mean there were 2 errors while trying to rip the song? I redid it, and got a x3, so I kept the original. I couldn't hear any distortion on my computer speakers, but that doesn't really mean anything since they are $2 speakers. I never gave the status column much thought since it has always sayed OK before. But what does this x2 mean?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Greg*go]

Well, I found out it was the number of "jitters" it encountered during making the cd. That's a bit odd, because I don't hear anything wrong, but I've heard a couple problems with other songs that reported no jitters and then re-ripped them. Weird.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

The jitter detection is a complex thing. The settings in the options area set how this works: It reads a number of sectors, each bite overlaps slightly- and part of the overlapping area is compared and if they don't match, it says there is an error.

The issue is, even if there is an errored sector- it might be correct (i.e.- just because the 2 don't match, doesn't mean the one it keeps isn't right-- the first one might have been wrong)-- and when you're talking about audio sampled at 44,100 times per second- often a small error in one or two samples will not be audible.

So CDEX is just telling you that, at some point, it compared two versions of the same sectors and came up with a difference. But because it doesn't compare every sector (although you can tell it to, and ripping will take 10 times as long), and because even though it's different it might still be right-- the jitter detection is not always the whole story, but a neat tool none the less.

-Vince

 

[Greg*go]

Thanks Vince, as usual your comments are usually at the very brink of my comprehension. And somehow I feel smarter knowing that I understand. Your answer also explains why it doesn't sound like there are any errors, which is what I was really wondering. But I did increase the "Read Overlap" in the options, and re-ripped the problem songs with better success. And it also gave me some ideas for ripping CDs I thought weren't possible. Thanks again!