[SOLVED] MusicBee will not read/play/rip physical CD's

[Avenger]

Hello,

I installed MusicBee (3.0.6276) for the frst time today on a fresh installation of Windows 7.

I have extracted the lame encoder into the codec folder inside the MusicBee installation file.

I put a physical CD into my DVD drive, go to select it from the left hand drive tree and the tracks are not displayed.

Dispite the issue, I click on a line where they should be and then get the error "Unable to play this file - it has an unsupported format or is corrupted"

I tried four other CD's all which are in very nice shape and get the exact same error.

When I go to the "Rip CD" menu under the "Tools" dropdown MusicBee is displaying "No CD is loaded" and the "Start Rip" button is transparent.

All other MP3 files on my drive play flawlessly.


Thank you.

[Avenger]

?

[boroda]

suggest its a hardware problem

[phred]

I agree with boroda74.
I listened to, and then ripped, three CDs yesterday with no issues.

While nothing has changed for CD ripping between 3.0 and 3.1, you might want to try 3.1.

[Avenger]

CD's play and rip perfectly fine in WMP so that's obviously not the case.

[CritterMan]

You can try a fresh installation of MB, or you can try a different drive. Sometimes, specific hardware and specific software don't get along. It's no one's fault. Personally, I would back up MB (check the wiki) and reinstall it first. If that didn't work, I'd upgrade my optical drive to a Blu-Ray burner. And, if it still didn't work, I'd download Exact Audio Copy and use that to rip instead until it was time to upgrade my computer.

[Avenger]

You can try a fresh installation of MB, or you can try a different drive. Sometimes, specific hardware and specific software don't get along. It's no one's fault. Personally, I would back up MB (check the wiki) and reinstall it first. If that didn't work, I'd upgrade my optical drive to a Blu-Ray burner. And, if it still didn't work, I'd download Exact Audio Copy and use that to rip instead until it was time to upgrade my computer.

Already reinstalled the program twice. Playing and ripping CD's works in WMP, Mediamonkey and I even installed an old version of Nero to check there as well with no issues.

I even pulled the drive from my HTPC and installed it in that PC and the problem persists.

The "hardware issue" has already been ruled out several times over.

This is entirely releated to this piece of software having some kind of coding problem.

[Bee-liever]

Have you checked the CD Ripping settings in Preferences?
There has been some rare circumstances where the CD drive is not auto-detected by MB (especially if you have it assigned to A: or B:).

[Avenger]

Have you checked the CD Ripping settings in Preferences?
There has been some rare circumstances where the CD drive is not auto-detected by MB (especially if you have it assigned to A: or B:).

Thanks for this information.

I have pinpointed the coding issue now. For whatever reason MusicBee will not recognize any sort of disc drive with the letter A assigned to it. If I switch it to any other letter it works as it should.

What is the reason for this? Absolutely no modern PC's built in the last 15 years have a floppy drive anymore. Obviously every single other media player developer has recognized this.

Problem is I need drive letter A assigned to this drive for other purposes and I can't leave it changed...

[Bee-liever]

What is the reason for this? Absolutely no modern PC's built in the last 15 years have a floppy drive anymore. Obviously every single other media player developer has recognized this.

It's actually a Windows legacy/backwards compatibility issue.
Even up to and including Windows 10, it is not recommended to install HHD or DVD/CD-ROM to A: or B: drives as no file indexing occurs with these drive assignments.  I even thought Windows 7 warned you when you try to assign an optical drive one of those letters.

Those other media players may not be following Windows recommendations, but MusicBee is.

[Avenger]

What is the reason for this? Absolutely no modern PC's built in the last 15 years have a floppy drive anymore. Obviously every single other media player developer has recognized this.

It's actually a Windows legacy/backwards compatibility issue.
Even up to and including Windows 10, it is not recommended to install HHD or DVD/CD-ROM to A: or B: drives as no file indexing occurs with these drive assignments.  I even thought Windows 7 warned you when you try to assign an optical drive one of those letters.

Those other media players may not be following Windows recommendations, but MusicBee is.

So windows is ignoring their own "recommendations" when WMP doesn't have this issue?

What's the point of not having musicbee recognize optical drives with the letter A assigned to them if no one has a floppy drive in their system any more?

For the select few of us that still have physical media, disc drives are necessaryl but the industry as a majority isn't even shipping a lot of new systems with optical drives at this point. Case manufacturers are doing away with 5.25' drive bays all together in a lot of their new products.

Designating a drive with the letter A specifically for a completely dead format is ignoring where the market/industry currently is at.

It's not 1985 anymore and this seems completely illogical to anyone that's aware of what's currently happening.

[CritterMan]

My curiosity is piqued. Why must your optical drive be mapped to A?

[Avenger]

My curiosity is piqued. Why must your optical drive be mapped to A?

If this discussion was about other programs on that PC and relevant to this peice of softrware/forum discussion I would be more then happy to inform you.


I'm still trying to figure out why a drive letter is being reserved for a completely dead format that hasn't had a new item manufactured for it it in over 15 years.

If every other competitor has figured this out, why hasn't MusicBee?

[Steven]

The BASS library was updated some time ago to handle A: and B: for CDs but I see MusicBee is shipping an old version.
This version of basscd.dll should work:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/y4zjb5kclxzdb7l/basscd.dll

replace the existing basscd.dll where MB is installed

[Bee-liever]

If every other competitor has figured this out, why hasn't MusicBee?

FYI iTunes doesn't recognize the A and B drive assignation either.