What are C2 errors? What do they say about disc quality?
(2004/05/20) When people talk about “C2 errors” they are usually referring to the rate of uncorrectable errors found on a CD. For an overview of error correction, see section (2-17). For a more detailed look, see section (2-43-3). These values are returned by “surface scan” tools. There are two flavors of C2 errors, and not all drives are capable of reporting both. Uncorrectable C2 errors indicate data that has been lost. On an audio CD the missing sound samples will be smoothed over, and on a CD-ROM the errors may be corrected by an additional level of error correction, so the flaws may not be noticeable. Correctable C2 errors indicate data that is whole but will be lost if the disc degrades any futher. Some applications now differentiate between the two by referring to uncorrectable C2 as “CU error”. The fewer errors of either kind, the better. The results you get are the combination of the writer and the media, and in some cases may be influenced by the quality of the device used to
When people talk about “C2 errors” they are usually referring to the rate of uncorrectable errors found on a CD. For an overview of error correction, see section (2-17). For a more detailed look, see section (2-43-3). These values are returned by “surface scan” tools. There are two flavors of C2 errors, and not all drives are capable of reporting both. Uncorrectable C2 errors indicate data that has been lost. On an audio CD the missing sound samples will be smoothed over, and on a CD-ROM the errors may be corrected by an additional level of error correction, so the flaws may not be noticeable. Correctable C2 errors indicate data that is whole but will be lost if the disc degrades any futher. Some applications now differentiate between the two by referring to uncorrectable C2 as “CU error”. The fewer errors of either kind, the better. The results you get are the combination of the writer and the media, and in some cases may be influenced by the quality of the device used to read the CD.
