Importing music CDs crash my MacBook

[MacVault]

I just tried ripping into iTunes some older CDs I've had. Well, on a few of them they'll get to certain tracks and the CD drive will slow down, speed up, make this start-stop-start-stop-start-stop kind of sound, etc. Next iTunes usually freezes up with the evil spinning beachball of death. Sometimes my whole system locks up and I can't open any programs and have to do a force shutdown. If I catch it quick enough it seems to make a difference in that I can open Activity Monitor and force quit the mdimport process and the iTunes process.

Now I have two questions about this:

1) Why the H3LL do these same CDs play just fine in my $30, 10 year old CD player, but NOT play in my BRAND NEW $1300 MacBook - and lock it up to boot?

2) Now I could get over them not playing/ripping on my new MacBook... but what I cannot get over is why Mac OS X is not smart enough to notice a bad track or scratched CD and pop up a nice little friendly dialog saying, This track is bad. Would you like to skip it? Yes or No

I'm not 100% sure but I highly doubt a Windows XP/Vista OS would lock up or BSOD over such a thing.

This reminds me of the pain all us Mac users go through when improperly disconnecting networks on OS X. I mean couldn't Apple fix this kind of stuff with a simple update through Software Update? Or would they have to charge $1.99 for such fixes because they'll call it a New Feature that your network/CD ripping works????

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

1) Because it's not so fuzzy... and if it disregards some data, many times you won't even notice it (until it get so bad it start skipping), but when you want to rip/copy the contents digitally the computer needs more accuracy.

2) I agree there should be some timeout... it's extremely annoying when iTunes just hangs... Many times it will finish though, after an insanely long time (a couple of hours - I have tried ), but the "hanging" track(s) are often unusable.

Note that mdimport is Spotlight (probably trying to index said CD) and has nothing to do with iTunes, per say...

And try to get a hold of an older firewire CD burner or something. I have an old brick of a Sony CD-RW, and some CDs that will cause iTunes to stall when I use the internal disk drive (both from my new MacBook and my old iBook G4) actually rips without problems when I do it from that.

 

[nplima]

Drm

Hi

the answer to both your questions is probably: that disk was not meant to be played in a computer. It was not a CD but a 12cm disk with some sort of copy protection scheme built in.

There's a lot of things to be learned about this, let me suggest you start your reading over here: http://www.defectivebydesign.org/en/node

If after your reading you still don't want to return the disk to the store, the second step is you get an audio cable with 3.5mm stereo jacks so you can play the music you bought with the old Sony player and input it to your computer. Record the music with Audacity and convert it to MP3 or some other DRM-free format of your choice.

Take good care of your old electronics, as the stuff you're getting these days is "defective by design"

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

the answer to both your questions is probably: that disk was not meant to be played in a computer. It was not a CD but a 12cm disk with some sort of copy protection scheme built in.

Nah... maybe, but probably not... iTunes usually chews through those copy protected discs without any complaints (though at a bit lower ripping speed than regular CDs).

Severely scratched discs (one major scratch is enough) is the only thing that has caused iTunes to stall on any of my Macs... so far...

If after your reading you still don't want to return the disk to the store, the second step is you get an audio cable with 3.5mm stereo jacks so you can play the music you bought with the old Sony player and input it to your computer. Record the music with Audacity and convert it to MP3 or some other DRM-free format of your choice.

Take good care of your old electronics, as the stuff you're getting these days is "defective by design"

That's actually a nice advice... though I'd probably use CD Spin Doctor (bundled with Toast) to record, as I've successfully done with a couple of vinyl albums... never thought of doing that with troublesome CDs though...

Thanks...

 

[MacVault]

Hi

the answer to both your questions is probably: that disk was not meant to be played in a computer. It was not a CD but a 12cm disk with some sort of copy protection scheme built in.

Ah.. NO. That's not it. If so then that's some ****y copy protection because I can rip all but one or two tracks. The disks are pretty scratched so I think that's the problem. But the real problem is OS X is so stupid it just hangs.

The two disks are:
Tony Bennett - Unplugged (1994)
Judy Collins - Shameless (1995)

I doubt they were DRMing CDs back then.

 

[islandmonusvi]

The Mac CD reader needs to access the CD sectors DB and then the Data sectors If either is dirty or damaged the process stalls.
iTunes then needs to convert the AIFF data from the CD > m4a and write to a HDdisk storing the iTunes music directories.
Check your Console CrashLog for the problem and use Activity monitor to get
info on the stalled processes.
You also just quit the process before the kernel panics cuases the OS to crash.

 

[bozigle]

Definitly not a copy protection.
I had the same problem , plus plenty of track with scratch sound...
I bought 2 weeks ago an external samsung dvd burner...
Of all cds that had problems... only two still did have the same problem and they certainly don't have copy protection... but they are rather "full"... over 72min

The bad news is that my superdrive seems to be dying... the scanning problem was just the begining of the end... i hope it is not the same for you

bozigle

 

[MacVault]

World's Most Advanced Operating System

I don't expect to the system to "guess" what 1s and 0s are under the scratches on my CDs, but you would think the World's Most Advanced Operating System would be able to notice something is wrong and then ask the user what to do and give the user a little feedback!

Instead the system just hangs/freezes/crashes, or whatever you want to call it.

 

[ghall]

Why would you want to import bad music?

You could try copying the CD with Disk Utility, or Toast, or Disco, or something similar, then import the copy. Copying CDs have fixed many of my CD woes.

 

[SkyBell]

Why would you want to import bad music?

That's exactly what i thought when I read the thread title.

Thought you were talking about rap.

 

[MacVault]

Why would you want to import bad music?

You could try copying the CD with Disk Utility, or Toast, or Disco, or something similar, then import the copy. Copying CDs have fixed many of my CD woes.

Did I say I want to import bad music? NO! I said I want OS X to communicate with me and allow me skip the bad track(s) rather than hang my entire system. Of course I don't want to import bad music.

 

[calculus]

In your iTunes preferences have you ticked the box against 'use error correction when importing CDs'? When I have a dodgy disc I find this usually works, although the import will be slower.

 

[MacVault]

Do I have a bad optical drive?

I started this thread because my BRAND NEW MACBOOK C2D usually hangs/panics when importing music CDs into iTunes. I just tried another CD, it hung on the 3rd to last song. So I tried importing that one song from the same CD into my 3 year old iBook G4. Lo and be-FRICKIN-hold the song imports without a glitch on my old iBook!

WTF is wrong with my MacBook? Please tell me I can fix this without having to send in my MacBook! Anyone else have this problem????

I'm P1$$3D!!!!

Any chance this problem could be due to the fact that my iTunes library is an alias in my Music folder pointing to a library on an external FireWire drive?

 

[direzz]

i'm having this problem too when im importing alot of cd's from the early 90's. its really frustrating.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Do I have a bad optical drive?

Probably not... As I tried to say earlier: This is expected behaviour when you try to rip scratched CDs. It happens to me a lot when I rip CDs from the local library as they are often in a very poor state (what is wrong with people?).

You can get a better result by, as someone suggested, use error correction and, also mentioned, even better if you get an external CD drive, preferably a big and old one, as they tend to be less picky than the very compact drives that comes with notebooks (and some "portable" external drives).

And remember, some CDs are just too far gone:

If you can import tracks from other CDs, make sure the disc is clean and free from debris and scratches. To clean, wipe the shiny surface with a soft, damp cloth, working from center to edge. If the disc is scratched, it may be unreadable.

 

[bozigle]

Did I say I want to import bad music? NO! I said I want OS X to communicate with me and allow me skip the bad track(s) rather than hang my entire system. Of course I don't want to import bad music.

I'd say the comment was "regular nice sarcasm" about the cds artists
Tony Bennett - Unplugged
Judy Collins - Shameless
Rather than specific comments on the technical quality of your cds.
I guess sarcasm was just lost on you...

It might just be that some superdrive are defectous and need replacement. my warranty run off before i realized what was the problem and i'll probably have to by a new one by myself but if you can change your superdrive while the thing is still under warranty you'd better do it. If apple received enough complain on the subject they might do something to improve the matter.

bozigle

 

[MacVault]

Probably not... As I tried to say earlier: This is expected behaviour when you try to rip scratched CDs. It happens to me a lot when I rip CDs from the local library as they are often in a very poor state (what is wrong with people?).

But as I said in post #13 the same CD rips without a glitch in my iBook G4. Is it's optical drive just less picky? I notice it rips at about 5x speed rather than 20x speed on the MacBook. Could it be that the speed of ripping has something to do about it? Is there a way to slow down the MacBook? I've never had any problems importing on my iBook G4 over the last few years - and I've imported thousands of songs on that. Now with my new MacBook I think I've had the problem with most of the CDs I've ripped since I got the MacBook.

You can get a better result by, as someone suggested, use error correction and, also mentioned, even better if you get an external CD drive, preferably a big and old one, as they tend to be less picky than the very compact drives that comes with notebooks (and some "portable" external drives).

And remember, some CDs are just too far gone:

I've tried with error correction and without. No difference for me.

 

[MacVault]

Finder copies track fine! WTF is going on???

Ok.. someone above commented on that I might try copying the disk with Disk Utility, mount the image, and rip from the mounted image. Well, I didn't exactly try that... but I did try putting "bad" CD in MacBook -> drag the AAIF file straight to the desktop -> imported the track into iTunes -> right-click on track -> Convert Selection to MP3. Bingo! Finder copied song without a problem to the Desktop and iTunes converted it without a glitch.

NOW WTF IS WRONG WITH JUST RIPPING STRAIGHT FROM THE CD TO iTunes??? WTF IS GOING ON?!!!!

Please tell me this at least means my optical drive is ok! I don't want to have to send this thing in!

 

[Chundles]

Ok.. someone above commented on that I might try copying the disk with Disk Utility, mount the image, and rip from the mounted image. Well, I didn't exactly try that... but I did try putting "bad" CD in MacBook -> drag the AAIF file straight to the desktop -> imported the track into iTunes -> right-click on track -> Convert Selection to MP3. Bingo! Finder copied song without a problem to the Desktop and iTunes converted it without a glitch.

NOW WTF IS WRONG WITH JUST RIPPING STRAIGHT FROM THE CD TO iTunes??? WTF IS GOING ON?!!!!

Please tell me this at least means my optical drive is ok! I don't want to have to send this thing in!

It's been reading all your disparaging posts about OSX and has decided to mess with your mind. It's spoken to your iBook which has decided to rip the CDs slower just to mess with you more.

Now THAT's what I call an advanced OS...