Importing from enhanced cds

Try using xAct to extract the audio from the disc to your HD. Or if you have Toast 5 and up it has an export feature.

Once you get the audio files to your HD you can use the iTunes Add To Library command (File > Add To Library), tag the files and convert them to another format besides AIFF.

Hm. That is kind of odd behavior. Are the discs showing up on your desktop?

I'm assuming you've tried the obvious step of rebooting, yes? If not do that and see if iTunes will see the disc. If that does not work then boot off the restore disc that came with your Mac and repair permissions. Repairing permissions is not a cure-all for problems, but I have known it to help in situations like this.

Indeed it is odd. An enhanced CD should show up as two icons on your desktop. The first session contains the audio tracks and there is no reason iTunes shouldn't see them. Also, you should be able to simply drag the tracks from that session to the Finder to extract the AIFF files.

The second icon should have any movie or data files. These also can be extracted from the disc simply by copying them to the Finder. You would use Toast's Data window to burn these to another disc, not the Video window that you apparently used.

Because the OS isn't seeing these files correctly my guess is something is corrupted in your System. Try running Disk Warrior or other maintenance/repair tools.

So your Mac plays regular audio CDs okay but can't see the audio tracks on the enhanced CD. What this indicates is the OS is only seeing the last session on a multi-session CD. Open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder and Repair Permissions on your hard drive. Also, choose Verify Disk to check if there is any directory problem with your System. If errors are reported when you Verfiy Disk you will need to boot your Mac from your OS install disc and run Disk Utility from the install disc.

Disk Warrior is a more powerful disk repair utility. But you have to buy it from Alsoft.

Another thing to try is cleaning System caches. You can do this with the freeware application MacJanitor. There are other shareware applications that do this such as Onyx and Macaroni.

I believe the problem is with the OS but that's only a guess.

I just wanted to thank you guys for this particular discussion. This very issue hit me yesterday and today. I purchased two new CDs and I wanted to rip them to my Mac so I could listen to them on my iPod. I would put the CD into the drive and after spinning up and down about three times, the drive would just eject the CD.

I went into System Preferences, set the option for the system to ignore when I inserted a CD and then had Toast just export the AIFF files.

Thanks for these invaluable tips!

In addition to the OS install CD you can do repairs by connecting your Mac to another Mac using Target Disk Mode (with your Mac not booted) and using the other Mac's Disk Utility, or by booting from a Firewire hard drive or second internal hard drive that has the OS installed on it. Or you can get Disk Warrior from Alsoft which is superior for repairs than Disk Utility and comes on a disc that is bootable on most Macs.

Good tips, but for anyone following this thread to solve a similar problem, it is not necessary to use an OS X installation disc or boot from another computer, etc. in order to take care of disc repair.

Single User Mode is the easiest and most convenient way to do this. Restart the computer while holding down the Apple + S keys. At the prompt, type the following:

/sbin/fsck -fy

Press Return. When the process is complete, there should be a message to the effect that "the volume (volume name) appears to be OK." If that's the case, type the following:

reboot

Press Return. The computer should boot normally. If a message appeared to the effect that repairs were made, you should run the check again by entering the first command mentioned above. The computer should not be rebooted until the message "the volume (volume name) appears to be OK" is displayed.

Also, for what it's worth, 3rd party disc repair utilities are seldom needed for OS X. The tools provided by Apple should keep any OS X system running smoothly. One should consider investing in such utilities only after exhausting all possibilities with Apple tools. I personally think that any money spent on 3rd party utilities would be better directed to an additional hard drive to store important personal files or a complete backup of one's OS X installation.

I am having the same issue with a CD I just purchased. It spins up and down a few times, then ejects. I set the option to ignore, but it still ejects the CD. I tried another enhanced CD, and it worked fine. Any ideas?

Following is some text from one of my earlier posts here. Hopefully it will be of use to you or anyone else having similar problems. The main point is that certain discs with copy control (these are typically multi-session discs quite similar to Enhanced CDs) seem to be malicious, even to Macs.

On my PowerMac G4, I have ongoing quirks with the handling of audio CDs. However, in my case, what happens is that certain audio CDs simply won't mount; but I can still eject them normally and try again.

In the case of one particular copy controlled disc I unwittingly bought (absolutely no indication of copy control on the packaging, but only the tiny copy control logo on the disc itself), I can load it exactly one time and have it mount "properly" (i.e. with the audio CD session and the venomous malware session), eject it normally, but repeated attempts to mount the same disc are futile. The following is what I have to do every time things get squirrely, and it works every time:

Repair permissions by opening Terminal and running sudo diskutil repairPermissions /

Zap PRAM by restarting the computer while depressing the Option + Apple + P + R keys and waiting until I hear three or four startup chimes.

Once I've heard the third or fourth startup chime in the previous step, I immediately depress the Option + Apple + O + F keys until the computer boots into Open Firmware. Once there, I run the following commands:

reset-nvram
set-defaults
reset-all

As soon as I pass the last command above, I depress the Apple + S keys to boot into Single User Mode. Once there, I run the following command:

/sbin/fsck -fy

After the file system check and/or repair is finished, and the verification "The volume Macintosh HD appears to be OK" appears, I type reboot to restart the computer.

At this point, everything is reset so that audio CDs mount properly once again, at least until I work with one that breaks the normal working state of affairs.