Re: [linux-audio-user] CD-Text confusion

On Fri, 2005-08-19 at 13:24 -0500, Reuben Martin wrote:
> On 8/19/05, Mike Jewell <mj405@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
>
> > I've been trying to understand how to get my burned audio CDs to have
> > the "Artist", "Album" and "Song" titles show up in my CD Player. If I
> > put a commercial CD in my drive it does, indeed, show the artist name,
> > album title and track names in "CD Player".
> >
>
> Have you checked though how this information is obtained? Your player
> may be checking the CD agains a CDDB data base in order to obtain that
> info. (Very few commercial CDs actually include CD-Text)
>
Thanks for the pointer. I didn't know anything about CDDB, etc. So I
did some research on Google and now I know a bit more. Then I did some
experimentation with my system. I'm using "CD Player" that comes with
Gnome. The documentation doesn't tell much but I noticed that it had a
"CDDB Track Editor" with a "Save" button. I guessed it was being saved
in a hidden directory in my home dir. Sure enough, .cddbslave has files
for each CD it has ever found CDDB info on. I removed them all and
disconnected the LAN cable and now the CDs that previously showed the
Artist/Title/Track info show "Unknown". Plug LAN back in and rerun "CD
Player" and the info is back and the .cddbslave file is re-written!

So, yes, my player is getting it from some CD Data Base on the net. I
wonder which one... Gracenote, who apparently owns the original "CDDB"
says they don't charge for non-commercial licenses so that's probably
where "CD Player" is getting it but it might be "freedb.org".

Anyone know?

>
> >
> > Does my burner not support this? It is an inexpensive burner but the
> > specs on ASUS's site say it supports the following "Disk Formats":
> > CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-ROM/XA, Photo CD, Mixed Mode CD-ROM, CD-I, CD-Extra,
> > CD-Text, Video CD, DVCD, Bootable CD
> >
>
> Just because it supports reading CD-Text, doesn't mean it supports
> writing CD-Text (although it very well may). Also, you will generally
> have better success writing CDs like this in RAW mode, if your burner
> supports it.
>
If it is possible to put this info directly on the CD, why wouldn't
everyone do it? In a production environment (or even onesy-twosy) is
seems like it would be trivial once you figured it out and had the write
hardware. So what if most players couldn't read it. If it cost nothing
to add it, what's to be lost?

Mike
Mike Jewell
One-Up Audio
Received on Sat Aug 20 20:15:05 2005