CD Rip Logs

• Spotting Critical Mistakes in EAC Logs
• CUETools Verification Guide

Spotting Critical Mistakes in EAC Logs

What does it all mean?

Take, for example, the following log, checked with the Log Checker. First we'll show the log checker report, and then we'll discuss the problems identified.

Used drive : SAMSUNG CDRW/DVD SM-308B Adapter: 1 ID: 0

Read mode : Burst
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : No
Make use of C2 pointers : Yes

Read offset correction : 0
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : No
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : Yes
Null samples used in CRC calculations : No
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Not detected, thus appended to previous track

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bit rate : 1024 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : Yes
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files\foobar2000\components\flac.exe

Track1
Filename C:\My Torrents\Lykathea Aflame - Elvenefris\01 - Lykathea Aflame - Land Where Sympathy Is Air.wav

Pre-gap length0:00:02.00

Peak level 99.9 %
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 0718DF52
Copy CRC 0718DF52
Copy OK

Track 5
Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Joe\My Documents\Downloads\z v0albums\Back to mine (mp3 v0)\Death in Vegas\05 - Death in Vegas - Songs-Ohia , Soul.wav

Suspicious position 0:02:46
Suspicious position 0:02:49

Missing samples
Peak level 0.0 %
Track quality 98.9 %

Copy finished

Track 7
Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Chriso\My Documents\Uploaded Torrent\Dreadzone - Sound\07 - Different Planets.wav

Peak level 97.9 %
Test CRC 2BB1DFB6
Copy CRC 103045EA

Copy OK


No tracks could be verified as accurate
You may have a different pressing from the one(s) in the database

There were errors

End of status report

Critical problems

The following points are the critical problems in this log:

• Read Mode: This should be secure, not burst. Extremely important!
• Read offset correction: You can check in an online database to see if this offset is correct for the drive that you have used.(Note that occasionally drives with the same name have different offsets.)
• Defeat audio cache: Most drives have a cache, so this should almost always be yes.
• Fill up missing offset samples with silence: Should be 'yes'.
• Delete leading and trailing silent blocks: Should be 'no'.
• Null samples used in CRC calculations: Should be 'yes'.
• Gap handling: Should be 'Appended to previous track'.
• Add ID3 tag: This should be 'no' for non-MP3 rips.
• Track 1: Should always have a line indicating pre-gap length. If that's not present, you did not detect gaps before ripping. The example above in green is how it should look.
• Track 5: Lines with Suspicious position are bad, just like the line Missing samples. And Copy finished is bad, too: it would say 'Copy OK' if the track was copied without errors.
• Track 7: The CRCs don't match - this is bad.

Minor problems

Things that aren't definitely issues and would require investigating in some cases, but are possibly not good:

• Make use of C2 pointers: Very few drives fully support C2, so this should usually be no.
• Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out:This should be supported by the drive, particularly if it has an offset. If this is 'yes' and no errors occur, then that's better than it being no.
• Summary: No tracks could be verified as accurate:You may have a different pressing from the one(s) in the AccurateRip database, but if the summary states 'All tracks accurately ripped', then you can be almost certain that the rip went absolutely fine as far as getting the correct audio data goes. If it doesn't say 'All tracks accurately ripped', you can't be sure of anything. Maybe the rip went wrong, maybe you have a different pressing.

What is a non-audio deduction?

A non-audio deduction is a deduction for any setting which, while required for a 100% log score, does not affect the resulting audio data.

These are the non-audio log checker deductions

• Ripped with EAC 0.95 or earlier (-30 points)
• Ripped with EAC 0.99 during or after 2017 (-1 point)
• Log checksum not used with EAC 1.0 and newer (-15 points)
• XLD signature not appended with XLD 20121222 or newer
• Not using null samples in CRC calculations (-1 point)
• No "Scan ReplayGain" info (-1 point)
• Adding ID3 tags (-1 point)
• AccurateRip is not used (-5 points)
• XLDversion 2010/01/23 - 2010/07/04 log with AccurateRip enabled but cannot verify gaps detected, (-1 point)

Additionally, range rips which can be rescored according to 2.2.10.6. count as having a non-audio deduction.

What does this mean?

FLAC/Log rips with only non-audio deductions can trump those rips which have audio deductions. This means that, for example, a rip which scores 99% due to being ripped in EAC 0.99 can trump a rip with a CRC mismatch, and an EAC 1.0+ rip without the checksum can trump a rip made with the wrong offset correction.

Only a 100% rip can trump a rip with exclusively non-audio deductions.

CUETools Verification Guide

CueTools is a handy set of program tools for verifying, ripping, and splitting lossless audio files. This guide gives a quick overview of the "Verify" function which checks CD rips against both the AccurateRip (AR) and CueTools (CTDB) databases. This feature is very handy for checking if Exact Audio Copy (EAC) and X Lossless Decoder (XLD) rips have been ripped correctly. It also outputs the track CRCs (with and without null samples), peak levels of the audio files, and compares EAC log track information.

Database Comparisons

AccurateRip - ARv1 and ARv2

• Older database in use since 2003 with more than 2 million discs
• Two flavours available: v1 and v2
• v1 has more submissions, but flawed implementation (ARv1 has a flawed algorithm that skips 3% of audio data in calculating track checksum.)
• v2 addresses the shortcomings of v1 with an improved algorithm
• Drive offsets are part of the CRC calculation for AR submissions (i.e. a badly configured offset or shifted samples may result in inaccurate results.)
• Contains an authoritative collection of drive offset values
• Rips containing the same data but different offsets are called "Pressings"
• At least 10 common CD ripping programs support AR integration and checking

CUETools DB - CTDB

• Newer database that started in 2011 with fewer discs than AccurateRip
• Offset is not calculated in checksums, so drive offsets do not affect database match results.
• CTDB stores checksums for both disc TOCs and individual tracks.
• Can indicate the closest match to your track and also indicate which samples are different.
• Includes features to "repair" tracks with errors. A CTDB confidence rating of 2 or more is a recommended safe choice for patching files.
• CTDB Ignores disc pre-gaps, so no recovery for HTOA or hidden tracks.
• Has special CRC comparative functions with EAC logs only.
• Available in less CD ripping programs (as of 2017, EAC and CUETools only)

Installation

1. Install CueTools on your system. Simply unzip the .zip archive into your desired folder. For most purposes, the current stable release is the best version to pick.
2. CueTools will run on both Windows (.NET) and non-Windows using Mono. The Mono version can only read WAV files, so ensure your FLAC files are uncompressed if verifying your rip with this library. (The lossless plugins have not been ported to C#.) . UPDATE: Linux/Mac users do NOT need to convert to wav to use CUETools. The mono version can read and write FLAC (and ALAC) files since it has an encoder/decoder written in C#. However it is not enabled by default. To use go to Settings -> Formats -> flac and for both encoder and decoder select 'cuetools'.
3. CUETools can be easily started by double-clicking on the CUETools.exe. If running the program from Mono, you can only launch the .exe file within the CueTools program folder. In Windows, you can create shortcuts to the program.

Verification Steps

• Select the "Settings" button in the top right corner.
• Select the "AccurateRip" Tab. Check "Write Accurate Log." If you want it placed in the source files folder, check that option too. If you want the file to have a different name format, enter it in the "Log File" box. By default, the AccurateRip file will have the cuesheet-filename.accurip filename. Make sure to enable "Verbose" to get as much information as possible.
• Click the folder icon next to Input Under the "CUE Paths" Section. This will open a file browser that will let you select the directory that contains the CUE sheet or the CUE sheet itself.
• Click to select the directory or CUE sheet. It should show up in the Input box.
• Select "Verify" from the radio buttons for Action. Leave the default option on. Click the "Go" button to begin verifying your audio tracks.
• As the verification process happens, it will get outputted to the bottom of the window. If you specified for it to write an AccurateRip log, the same information will be saved to a text file (as shown earlier).
• After it has completed, if you followed the exact steps earlier in this guide, you will find the results saved to cuesheet-filename.accurip.
• You can open this .accurip file in any text editor of choice to examine the contents.

Reading The Verification Log

This is a quick overview of the verification log.

CUETools Header

This part is the CUETools header which contains the report date and CUETools version used.

 CUETools log; Date: 3/21/2017 12:04:16 PM; Version: 2.1.5]

CTDB Section

This section indicated that there was a match against the CUETools Database. Tthe disc's CTDB signature is displayed (based on the entire disc). The (X/Y) format indicates how many matches out of the total rips of the same disc in the database. In this case, it matches all 10 out of 10. This example does not have differing samples to any matches, but you will see it indicated next to the track. Track 9 is a notable exception since it only matches 9 out of 10 records, possibly due to a slightly different rip result. However, it still has a high confidence in regards to matched tracks.

[CTDB TOCID: dUYCuDUCPebXl2j_f9bm13Np4IY-] found.
Track | CTDB Status
1 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
2 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
3 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
4 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
5 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
6 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
7 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
8 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
9 | ( 9/10) Accurately ripped
10 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
11 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
12 | (10/10) Accurately ripped
13 | (10/10) Accurately ripped

AccurateRip Section

This table has a bit more information since it outputting matches against both ARv1 and ARv2 databases. Each track will have a unique AR CRC value. The V2 value means (ARv1 matches + ARv2 matches / Total # of matches). In this example, there are no matches for the ARv1 database, but there are 5 in the ARv2 database. Most tracks match 5 of those matches. The exception is Track 13, where it matches only 4 out of 4 total records. 

[AccurateRip ID: 001c5390-011e9241-ad0e610d] found.
Track [ CRC | V2 ] Status
01 [d655a7ab|c5a524fc] (0+5/5) Accurately ripped
02 [608f2951|03adc830] (0+5/5) Accurately ripped
03 [7e55beda|8bd0a858] (0+5/5) Accurately ripped
04 [dc65189c|62e5a359] (0+5/5) Accurately ripped
05 [77b125ec|184fa1fb] (0+5/5) Accurately ripped
06 [fafdcfe8|f44f1c40] (0+5/5) Accurately ripped
07 [cdc26555|f0507f57] (0+5/5) Accurately ripped
08 [a7d59877|1bd7af67] (0+5/5) Accurately ripped
09 [a4c8173f|0e3c16f3] (0+5/5) Accurately ripped
10 [c8390b0a|22931ffa] (0+5/5) Accurately ripped
11 [3c434d36|b94b3a0e] (0+5/5) Accurately ripped
12 [515ffeb7|02b458fb] (0+5/5) Accurately ripped
13 [aa514ce4|459559bd] (0+4/4) Accurately ripped

EAC Peaks / Track CRC Section

Should be pretty straightforward here. The LOG column is created when CUETools detects an EAC log in the same folder. The values under it will indicate what kind of CRC is in the rip log, and also if there were differences between the CUETools Verification Log CRCs to the EAC ones.

Track Peak [ CRC32 ] [W/O NULL] [ LOG ]
-- 100.0 [1A566DA9] [095F086B]
01 100.0 [91A97352] [3F43C29E] CRC32
02 100.0 [ED171365] [8F4EBC5E] CRC32
03 98.8 [D648512E] [E84AD887] CRC32
04 96.6 [B38A4236] [A70243A7] CRC32
05 100.0 [B998D985] [576293DA] CRC32
06 100.0 [AFD35027] [B8AA3517] CRC32
07 96.6 [EA81917D] [DF7B2A9B] CRC32
08 99.4 [3981ADAA] [1EBE9F51] CRC32
09 100.0 [B2C939F4] [5C5E0817] CRC32
10 95.5 [DE28E8B6] [46DAB30F] CRC32
11 99.9 [4FC55B29] [7A02D251] CRC32
12 92.5 [CD4DE48C] [7999946C] CRC32
13 100.0 [4A8B29AA] [E2D6EDDE] CRC32