Ripped audio CD bypassing a track in some playback software

[Dave3000]

I just finished re-ripping all my audio CD's including doing touchups in the tagging. I ripped them to FLAC format. I noticed so far that in one CD that I ripped, Carpenters - Christmas Portrait (Special Edition), track #2 get's skipped and it goes straight to track #3 during the playback even though all tracks ripped successfully without errors, according to EAC. It happens in Windows Media Player and VLC in Windows 11 and also Windows Media player can't open that specific audio track. I can play that track manually through the File Explorer and that track does not get bypassed during playback the VLC app on my iPhone. Does anyone know what special about that track that it get's skipped with that software? This is the only track I noticed so far that get's bypassed during playback of an album of one of my ripped CDs.

 

[Steltek]

I just finished re-ripping all my audio CD's including doing touchups in the tagging. I ripped them to FLAC format. I noticed so far that in one CD that I ripped, Carpenters - Christmas Portrait (Special Edition), track #2 get's skipped and it goes straight to track #3 during the playback even though all tracks ripped successfully without errors, according to EAC. It happens in Windows Media Player and VLC in Windows 11 and also Windows Media player can't open that specific audio track. I can play that track manually through the File Explorer and that track does not get bypassed during playback the VLC app on my iPhone. Does anyone know what special about that track that it get's skipped with that software? This is the only track I noticed so far that get's bypassed during playback of an album of one of my ripped CDs.

Have you tried ripping it using a different drive by any chance?

Off the top of my head, my suspicion would be that there is something wrong with your particular CD that is affecting that track. While I don't have that particular CD, a google search doesn't indicate that there was any sort of widespread mastering issue involving track 2 on it.

 

[Dave3000]

I tried re-ripping on a different DVD-ROM drive and this time Windows Media Player didn't bypass the track after playing the preceding one. Also I ripped it to a different location as well but changing the location of the other rip didn't help either. This time however, I didn't run MP3Tag to tweak the metadata of the rip before playing it and just went straight to playing it after ripping it. Also I try to avoid ripping CDs using my portable DVD-ROM drive when possible because it's twice as slow and ended up doing all my rips on one of my mom's spare computers in the house that she never uses that has an internal DVD-ROM drive. Also I get messages that it cannot find certain tracks of the rip in Windows Media Player despite setting it to the correction location of my ripped music CDs and one of the tracks is the one it bypasses.

 

[Dave3000]

It's not MP3Tag that is causing the issue as I just ran MP3Tag with the rip that didn't have this issue and the issue didn't occur in that one even then. However, I did replaced the files from the old rip with the new rip into the same directory as the old rip, and once again the issue reoccurred. I suspect that it's something about that directory location that is causing the issue.

 

[Dave3000]

I moved the ripped files to other locations and retried and it still bypassed that track in those locations I tried. I also remembered to set the correction location of the ripped files in the settings of Windows Media Player after doing so, so it's not that the folder location is wrong in the settings that's the issue. Maybe something embedded in the metadata tags that gets changed when these files are moved around that can be causing this issue?

 

[Dave3000]

Also Windows Media Player Legacy didn't detect the track that was bypassed during playback in Windows Media Player.

 

[Dave3000]

Winamp isn't detecting that specific track either.

 

[Dave3000]

I even removed the metadata of that ripped album using MP3Tag and I'm still experiencing the issue.

 

[C1]

Been a long time since I did any CD ripping, but supposedly some CDs include copy protection methods that intentionally include "bad sectors" to hinder copying. This can lead to errors that result in a track being skipped or corrupted, so see if you are able to increase the error correction level in your ripping software's settings.

Also, when ripping, I recall the ability to specify the space between ripped tracks (in terms of number of seconds of silence),

See if you can, increase the space (in terms of number of seconds of silence) between ripped tracks. I remember a setting in which 3 seconds was default.

Good luck

 

[Dave3000]

Been a long time since I did any CD ripping, but supposedly some CDs include copy protection methods that intentionally include "bad sectors" to hinder copying. This can lead to errors that result in a track being skipped or corrupted, so see if you are able to increase the error correction level in your ripping software's settings.

Also, when ripping, I recall the ability to specify the space between ripped tracks (in terms of number of seconds of silence),

See if you can, increase the space (in terms of number of seconds of silence) between ripped tracks. I remember a setting in which 3 seconds was default.

Good luck

This CD I ripped is suppose to be seamless track-to-track, as playing directly from the CD it has no gaps track to track as some tracks, so I think it's suppose to not have a 1 second or 2 of silence between tracks. I also converted that album to WMA lossless from the rip and WMP did not include that specific track in the list. I also noticed that that was the only track that didn't get a track number added to it during the conversion and the metadata was removed just on that specific track during the conversion. I also tried the ripped album on my other PC and it had the same issue with the bypassing of that specific track during playback. Thing is that it was not bypassed, until I attempted to move the album to my Music folder, then it would be bypassed no matter where I moved it, even if I moved that album back to it's original location that it was ripped to. The track is not bypasses if I use the VOX app on my iPhone to play that album or if I use Foobar2000 on my PC.

 

[Dave3000]

Also how is it that it could be due to copyright protection, when it's not illegal to rip audio CDs anymore (or was it ever?). I thought audio CDs don't have copy protection embedded in them. If it were illegal wouldn't WMP and iTunes not have an option to rip audio CDs? I'm talking about in the US. Should I try other ripping software?

 

[Dave3000]

I just installed dBpoweramp and re-ripped that CD. This time that track was not bypassed in WMP. So far that's the only track that I know has this issue when ripping the CD through EAC, and I tried two different DVD-ROM drivers to rip that CD and EAC said no errors at the end of the ripping both times using EAC. I wonder if anymore tracks that I ripped through EAC end up with this bypass issue with more than one playback software. I will probably end up re-ripping my audio CDs for peace of mind with dBpoweramp.

 

[Dave3000]

I ran the ripped album through MP3tag, making the filename the same name as the track title conversion option. Now the issue with bypassing the 2nd track happened again. Maybe there's a filename character length limit for these software players that have this issue and the filename is too long for that particular track?

 

[Dave3000]

I solved the issue. The issue was that the file name for that track was too long, so I shortened the filename. That track had a very long filename. Maybe that's why when I edited the tag with MP3tag using the Tag to Filename option with the rip I did using dBpoweramp, it bypassed playing that track after. dBpoweramp assigned a shorter filename. That could explain why some software will not bypass that track and some will. Also I used MusicBrainz as the metadata source when I ripped my CD's with EAC and MusicBrainz as the metadata source to edit the metadata afterwards on those rips that I did not use MusicBrainz in EAC.

 

[Dave3000]

Instead of going through all my tracks I ripped from my CD's and shortening the filenames manually for the ones that are too long, I did went into Group Policy in Windows 11 Pro and enabled Win32 long paths. That also solves that issue.

 

[C1]

Ya, CD audio media traditionaly follows the ISO 9660 standard.for file naming convention.

However, this standard comprises different levels and different media players as well as different vintages of the same player may host different capabilities as regards file name handling.

Notwithstanding, happy that you've come up with a solution and thanks for letting everyone know what was found.

 

[Dave3000]

Ya, CD audio media traditionaly follows the ISO 9660 standard.for file naming convention.

However, this standard comprises different levels and different media players as well as different vintages of the same player may host different capabilities as regards file name handling.

Notwithstanding, happy that you've come up with a solution and thanks for letting everyone know what was found.

Also, I found out that in WMP (Legacy) I also had to shorten the filename of that track that was not showing up in that player as just enabling Win32 long paths was not enough, even though in the regular WMP it was enough, so set the filename lengths of all my ripped tracks to a maximum of 25 characters, using MP3tag. Tag editing for my ripped CDs is more work that it seems depending on how reliable I want the tagging to be with different players.