Mac CD ripping - je suis baffled

[the shape]

On about three out of 500 CDs I get this annoying clicky crackly sound whenever I import them to my computer. Doesn't matter what method I use: copying the AIFF to the desktop uncompressed; importing with iTunes with or without error correction; importing with LAME. The songs always end up with this sound over the top which is really top-endy and gets right in your ears.

The discs are totally clean. No dust, fingerprints, scratches.

Play the tracks directly from the CD, on the same drive and same Mac, and they're fine!

I figure my CD drive is reading too fast and making errors maybe? I hooked up an old (slower) external drive and it was better, but I still got crackles and the occasional almighty pop. Can I force my drive to read at 1x speed rather than spinning up to 32x or whatever it's doing?

I don't understand!!!

[womblingfree]

3 out of 500?

Not a bad statistic.

Copy protection maybe?

[Kotatsu Neko]

Copy protected music CDs can easily be copied with a PC DVD drive. Amusing.

I've never had a problem, iTunes ripps then perfectly.

[the shape]

Doesn't seem consistent enough to be copy protection. Sometimes it only affects the second half of the album. As this would be further out towards the edge of the disc I still think is could be related to jitter from my combo drive spinning up so fast.

I found another one, too. Dream Theater 'Live Scenes from New York' has the same trouble. But it's still such a small percentage that it's boggling. If it was a bad drive I'd expect most of my stuff to be buggered.

Perplexed.

[muddy]

try using Toast and copying the CD to a CD-R then try ripping the CD-R, might be worth a shout.

mud

[Magnakai]

Doesn't seem consistent enough to be copy protection. Sometimes it only affects the second half of the album.

Are they CDs with computer content on them? I had this problem with a couple of them. If you have a PC to use, try using EAC, that's pretty much guaranteed to work. If you can't, maybe try downloading it. You can't feel bad about downloading something that you own...