Hi,

When I buy CD's I tend to rip them to FLAC right away. When ripping I use Foobar2000 or Exact Audio Copy and enable secure ripping which uses error correction. Recently I bought a 2 CD compilation album brand new but when I tried to rip the second CD on my laptop using Foobar2000 it struggled with the last 2 tracks and was unable to finish. EAC was also unable to get an accurate rip and reports read errors. Ripping in fast mode results in audible errors in the output track.

I have tried another computer and having similar problems. I cannot see any damage to the disc and it has not been dropped or anything.

The weird thing is that I had similar problems with a different album and different PC a while back. This other CD was a compilation disk so it was also right up to the CD capacity limit and again it was the last few tracks that would not rip. Dozens of other discs have ripped fine

So I am wondering if the CD is simply defective, or whether it is something else. How common are defective CD's? Do some CD drives struggle with CD's of this capacity? Or Is this some kind of copy protection?

I'm thinking of asking Amazon for a replacement but it would be annoying if I get the same problem again.