[pernod]

Originally Posted by uhclem

Some drives can read into the 'leadin', some can read into the 'leadout', some can do both, (most) can do neither. This is also called 'over reading'.

The leadin and leadout are parts of the audio CD required by the redbook standard and placed at the very beginning and very end of the audio respectively, as the names imply. When you rip a disk with correct offsets, your drive doesn't actually read into the leadin or leadout but it thinks it is doing one or the other because it has been told to apply an offset. For instance, if your read offset correction is +98 this tells your drive to start reading 98 samples ahead of usual. The drive therefore thinks that when it gets to the end of the disk it has to read 98 samples into the leadout before stopping. It's not really reading into the leadout but it thinks it is, so if the drive can't read into the leadout it won't be able to read those last 98 samples. If your drive can't read into the leadout set EAC to 'fill missing samples with silence'. Odds are that those missing 98 samples were silence anyway.

You can tell if your drive reads into the leadin or leadout from the tables, or you can tell by adjusting the offset and seeing if you get sync errors. If you have a positive offset correction and always get a sync error on the last track when you tell EAC to over read then your drive can't actually read into the leadout. Likewise if you have a negative offset correction and your drive can't read into the leadin, you will get sync errors on the first track if you tell EAC to over read. Note that there is only one setting for reading into both the leadin and leadout in EAC. So here's a summary:

- positive offset correction - drive must read into leadout - if it can't, turn off over reading and set to 'fill in missing samples with silence'

- negative offset correction - drive must read into leadin - if it can't, turn off over reading and set to 'fill in missing samples with silence'

Strictly speaking exact copies are NOT possible if the extracting drive cannot over read as required. This is most drives. Oh well.

I've configured EAC quite some time ago and my settings has Overread into Lead-Out and Lead-In checked. Reading your post and mentioning the fact that most drives can't over read I'm having second thoughts about it being correct. Can I test my drive if it's capable of overreading without having to configure EAC from scratch? And if so, how?