I've run into some odd Audio CD quirks lately. Brand new, scratchless audio CDs that behave oddly in PC CD/DVD drives. I just got NIN - Year Zero, and EAC throttled the read to 5.9x - 6.2x the entire way. I put in some other CDs to test, and they quickly ramped up to 15-17x like normal, then I put Year Zero back in and it stayed at 6.2x again. Metallica - St. Anger has all kinds of weird problems. That one starts out normal enough, but suddenly starts throttling down in the last couple of tracks. It eventually gets to about 1.2x for the end of the last track.

How are CD creators doing this? These CDs all need to meet Redbook Standards so they can play in normal, dumb CD players.

Could be some form of "copy control" but it's most likely just bad pressing.

Well, they only need to be read at 1x to meet the standards . So, everything is fine. -- There might also be some extensive indexing in the tracks, or extensive use of cd text ... Are all tracks available?

Have you turned 'autoplay' off? A lot of copy protection runs a program on your PC that causes your ripping software grief. Look at those CDs with Windows Explorer and you'll probably find an EXE or INF file on them.

Autoplay is definitely off. No copy protection I'm aware of - and it wouldn't have installed anyway. I've verified this behavior on other machines as well. Try St. Anger and see (if anyone here has it).

They produce masters and can include anything strange stuff you can imagine........

This is always not according to the red book CDDA standard anymore, so clearly they shoulnt market such discs as Audio CD.....