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I was just making a couple of new CD compilations and I noticed that about five CDs (all from Rhino) could not be recognized by my Sony DVD-ROM drive. On a few of them, it would get as far as identifying the CD, but it wouldn't rip. I then tried a few other Rhino titles - some were OK and some weren't. The ones that wouldn't read were all manufactured by WEA mfg. I tried the problem discs in my other drive (Lite-On) and they worked fine, but I don't like to use this drive because it reports too many read errors. Is this a common problem where a drive has trouble reading discs from a certain manufacturing plant and is there anything I can do to get around it? Thanks.

Drives and firmware can effect reading abilities,my Benq DVD writer has problems with some audio CD's while my Lite-On reads anything.
Lite-On and Plextor are the best at ripping copy-protected audio CD's,also turn off autorun(or hold the shift key when inserting) because some audio CD's install copy-protection.If your drive cannot see the contents of a CD use Isobuster to rip:
www.isobuster.com

Sounds like some weird copy protection issue or something... the discs aren't heavily scratched or dirty, are they?

No, they're not scratched and I don't think they're copy protected either because sometimes it is able to read them.