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How to make click-free CD copies

April 17th, 2003: This page has been taken offline for revision. I wasn't satisfied with it in its old state and the information was not completely correct so I decided to give it some reworking.

For short, this page tried to describe for idiots how to compare two separate readings of the same audio track from a CD, to assure a correct reading. I made it after being fed up with receiving traded CD-Rs with synch errors. Ofcourse you can also use Audiograbber's Checksum - get the same checksum twice (after using Dynamic Synch Width) and you're (almost) guaranteed to have a correct reading.

Or use Exact Audio Copy.

The files are still available:

Compare files:

comp.exe zipped, taken from the Windows NT package © Microsoft.) A more advanced replacement is XComp which recursively compares directories of files.

Combine files using my program comb:

If you are unable to achieve two identical files, no matter how many times you read the same track and compare, you might still be able to rescue the lost data that is held hostage on the CD, using my program "comb". This program will combine several different files into one by "combing" through multiple files in parallel. Upon spotting a difference at some place in a file, it jumps to another file of the set of files you supply it with, to try to find enough equal files at every offset. The number of required equal files at every offset is user specified. 3 equal files out of 5 readings, or less, is usually enough for damaged CDs, but you might need more readings the more severe the damage. Often, specifying one less equal files than the total amount of files will work (like 4 out of 5), which proves that the errors are unique, thus only occuring in just one file each.

Comb tutorial coming later...
Until then, in order to better understand the program's behavior (which might seem somewhat murky), please experiment on the "testdata" files included in the full package above. Knowledge of DOS is recommended, since the current version is a console-mode program only. I am working on a Windows GUI version which should soon be finished.