Re: audio CDs and cdrdao vs. cdparanoia

[Mirko Parthey <mirko.parthey@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de>]

On Mon, Jul 05, 2010 at 10:43:44PM +0200, Urs Thuermann wrote:
> For each CD I run
> 
>         cdrdao read-cd --datafile data.cdr --device /dev/sg0 toc
> and
>         cdparanoia -d /dev/sg0 -B
> 
> where /dev/sg0 refers to an Plextor Ultraplex 40max SCSI CDROM drive.
> 
> [...]
>
> I can run cdrdao and cdparanoia
> repeatedly, say 10 times, and I get deterministic results, i.e. all
> runs of cdrdao give the same result and all runs of cdparanoia give
> the same result but the results of cdrdao and cdparanoia differ.
> 
> Now my question is where these differences come from and which results
> are the correct (better) ones.

With a suitable CDROM drive such as yours and CDs in reasonably good
condition, there should be no need for cdparanoia's data correction
feature.  In fact, I found that it can sometimes do more harm than
good, so I recommend disabling it (-Z), if only for testing purposes.

You could compare your results to Exact Audio Copy (Windows, free for
non-commercial use), which reportedly also runs on WINE.

Another option would bei morituri, a CD ripper for Linux modelled after
Exact Audio Copy.

Regards,
Mirko