¶ a CD death-spasm? · 22 March 2006
In the three-plus years that I've had my PowerBook, I've ripped thousands of my own CDs into iTunes to listen to them. The only one I couldn't rip was an Australian release by David Bridie that I digitized as audio because I didn't feel like sending it back to Australia.
But in the last week I've hit two more. I tried two different copies of Stephin Merritt's Showtunes, thinking the first one was just defective, but the PowerBook just kicked both of them out as if they weren't audio discs. The packaging didn't indicate any sort of copy-protection, and Nonesuch seems like an odd offender, but my wife's PowerBook (different model, different OS version) just ejected both copies, too. I was irritated enough to take the second copy of Showtunes back to the record store and wade through their reluctance to get a refund. Merritt has too many tracks to digitize and index by hand.
In exchange I bought the second Sounds album, and the new Gary Numan record. But the Gary Numan album has the same problem, again on both machines. Put it in, listen to some fruitless whirring, watch it get ejected as unreadable. Two solid hours of Mac troubleshooting changed nothing. Both machines can still read other new and old CDs and DVDs fine. It's a pretty strange coincidence if these discs are normal but both of our machines happen to have started having this very particular trouble at the same moment.
But it's also a pretty strange coincidence if I've just happened to hit two of the three computer-unreadable CDs I've ever encountered (out of well over a thousand I've ripped) right in a row. I've written Numan's label (Metropolis) to see what they have to say for themselves. My fear, I guess, is that some new idiot manufacturing process has just come on line, and half the new music I try to buy from now on is going to do this. My fear is that I'll have to switch to stealing all my music simply in order to be able to hear it.
But in the last week I've hit two more. I tried two different copies of Stephin Merritt's Showtunes, thinking the first one was just defective, but the PowerBook just kicked both of them out as if they weren't audio discs. The packaging didn't indicate any sort of copy-protection, and Nonesuch seems like an odd offender, but my wife's PowerBook (different model, different OS version) just ejected both copies, too. I was irritated enough to take the second copy of Showtunes back to the record store and wade through their reluctance to get a refund. Merritt has too many tracks to digitize and index by hand.
In exchange I bought the second Sounds album, and the new Gary Numan record. But the Gary Numan album has the same problem, again on both machines. Put it in, listen to some fruitless whirring, watch it get ejected as unreadable. Two solid hours of Mac troubleshooting changed nothing. Both machines can still read other new and old CDs and DVDs fine. It's a pretty strange coincidence if these discs are normal but both of our machines happen to have started having this very particular trouble at the same moment.
But it's also a pretty strange coincidence if I've just happened to hit two of the three computer-unreadable CDs I've ever encountered (out of well over a thousand I've ripped) right in a row. I've written Numan's label (Metropolis) to see what they have to say for themselves. My fear, I guess, is that some new idiot manufacturing process has just come on line, and half the new music I try to buy from now on is going to do this. My fear is that I'll have to switch to stealing all my music simply in order to be able to hear it.