CD-Text Album Genre

Where is the Album Genre determined in the CD-Text area?

I’ve been noticing that when I make a DDP image in Wavelab, HOFA DDP Player will just have an empty column for Album Genre. Normally, if I don’t enter data in a field, like songwriter or composer, Wavelab leaves it blank and HOFA DDP Player doesn’t even show the column as an option which is great. I’m wondering why Album Genre is different.

If I make a DDP in another mastering DAW, I don’t enter the Album Genre, and the Album Genre column does not even show up as an option in HOFA DDP Player which is expected behavior.

What I want to know is if Wavelab is putting something invisible in the Album Genre field causing HOFA DDP Player to make the column yet have no text there.

Here’s a screen shot of the same DDP in both the HOFA DD Player, and Sonoris DDP Player.

Where is the CD-Text Album Genre even entered in Wavelab? I can’t find it.

Hmmm … I just tried this with 3 DDPs created by WL. One had CD text.

I could not replicate this in the HOFA Player (V1.0.9)?

WaveLab does not allow to edit the genre, which is set to “unused” on the CD.

Well this explains why I can’t find it! I don’t really ever use it but it would be nice if an empty Album Genre didn’t appear in a DDP Player to alarm clients so they think about it.

I heard from HOFA and they say “for some reason, Wavelab always creates an empty Genre entry. So that is why you see that column with an image from Wavelab.”

Their player is pretty smart and leaves empty column invisible. For example, I don’t fill in the songwriter and composer field in Wavelab CD-Text and that doesn’t show up in HOFA DDP Player which is good. Is there something different about how Wavleab leave Album Genre empty vs. other fields?

Could you see if Wavelab is somehow adding an empty Album Genre field? Here’s a side by side image of a DDP created in Triumph vs. Wavelab

The top DDP Player with 6 songs was made in Wavelab and is causing the player to show a blank Album Genre field.

The bottom 3 song DDP was created in Triumph and HOFA ignores and doesn’t even display the Album Genre field which is ideal:

WaveLab stores the value “unused” for the genre. Which is the most common setting.

Thanks. Could there be a way to fully omit the value so it doesn’t show up as a blank field on some players and situations?

It is not possible. The value is always there (no choice afaik). But it is '0" hence “unused”.

Thanks. I was hoping that it could behave like the songwriter or composer CD-Text where if there is nothing entered, it doesn’t appear as a blank a column in the player.

Somehow apps like Triumph are able to not trigger an empty Artist Genre field on the DDP Player. It just gets ignored like other unused fields when nothing is entered.

PG, genre is a binary value ?

Does that mean Triumph is doing it wrong?
Can it be null?

Does Triumph allow you to fill in anything in Genre?

Triumph references the binary codes on their site and the manual. HOFA says that in their DDP creator software, they support both the binary codes or you are free to type any genre you’d like.

I just want to see if Wavelab can leave that section as blank as if you don’t fill in songwriter/composer fields so it doesn’t generate empty columns and fields in a DDP Player.

Not a huge issue but something to consider for the next update.

Also, here is a picture of what the options in Triumph are. I think that they give you the names associated with the digits so you don’t have to transpose, but notice that the first option is –

That is what I have used to make the handful of DDPs I’ve ever done in Triumph, and it never makes the DDP Player display a blank column, it’s just non-existent.

With the Triumph picture it would seem those are the only available Genres for CD Text?, because those were the only ones coded for CD Text? And that won’t be expanded in the future?
There are many more available options for Genre in ID3 file, many more catagories.

You say Hofa allows non-coded genre, but can those actually be encoded in CD Text on a CD if not available in the codes, or only in ID3 genre in file?

Sorry, I guess my question is, Wavelab is using 0 for that empty position, and Triumph is using null for that empty position?

That sounds like what’s happening.

There seems to be way more ID3 options for genre than CD-Text, they are not related in any real way.

I would like an option for Wavelab to null the Genre so that it doesn’t trigger an empty looking field in some/all players.

Sorry, sorry, just saw Paul’s post. Even if null is possible, it doesn’t explain Paul’s result, unless somethings different in different HOFA versions or different Wavelab versions.

I’m not sure what to make of it. I’ve been using HOFA DDP Player Maker since it was released, and the Wavelab DDP sets always gave me a blank Album Genre column instead of totally omitting it.

Is there a chance that my custom metadata presets with all the @ symbols referencing CD-Text could be triggering something more happening on my DDP renders?

I don’t have access to a DDP fileset right not, but maybe you could make test copies of the Triumph and Wavelab DDPs and look at the files in the DDP filesets that contain the CD text, to see what the difference is between them. The cdtext files might be plain text, or if not, maybe some obvious difference can be seen if opened in TextEdit anyway.

It’s interesting you brought this up, because looking at the Triumph page it indicates the genre codes could be used by a player to apply EQ, which seems like maybe a really bad idea, and maybe why one might never want to code Genre in CD Text. Maybe this is why PG has basically disabled CD Text Genre in Wavelab. (?)

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/support/helpdesk/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=123

I’ll try to find time to analyze the CD-Text file of a Triumph DDP and Wavelab.

Yes, having a player add EQ based on genre would certainly not be ideal.

I guess my main point of this thread is to not have Wavelab DDP files trigger an empty column because then the client starts to think about genre and what to put there, and of course Wavelab doesn’t technically support genres which is fine with me.

I would just like to get it off the radar.

I’ll reconnect with HOFA as well and see if they can find a work around to omit genre columns in the way Wavelab is handling it.

Looking at CD Text in DDPs made in Wavelab and Reaper, and CD Text on major label commercial CD releases (where they generally do the CD Text themselves), it seems like there are two ways the Genre is generally done. GenreCode 0 (un-used), as done by Wavelab and Sony Music, and no Genre key at all, as done by Universal and Warner. The one thing they have in common is that they all apparently never code a real Genre in CD Text.

I’m guessing Triumph is using no Genre key at all to appear without Genre column in Hofa, because that’s what I get in Hofa when I do the same with Reaper DDP using no Genre key (no Genre column in Hofa). Reaper is entirely manual (and therefore difficult), but it can be done with Genre key or not.

But it seems like both methods are valid and widely used, so should both be accommodated by the Hofa player IMO, as they both appear to be accommodated by the Sonoris player.

These are the tools I used:
http://ddp.andreasruge.de/
http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/support/helpdesk/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=121

Hi!

To explain the different behaviour in HOFA DDP Player, let me give you some technical background information:
There are two ways, how a genre can be stored in CD-Text. It can be saved as an ID code or as plain text.
When using the ID code, you only have the very limited choice of the 26 genres that you could see in the selection list mentioned above. It is not likely that this list will ever be extended and if it would, most CD players on the market would not be able to show the new entries. The only advantage of this method might be that some CD players could show the genre in different languages, but I’ve never seen a player that really does this.
To overcome that limitation, CD-Text also allows to use plain text for the genre entry. Using that method you can write anything you want.
It is also possible to use both the ID code and plain text, so that you could use one of the predefined genres and extend this with your own text.

The CD-Text binary file in a DDP image consists of several data blocks for the different entries. It only needs to contain the data blocks that are really used. For example an image can contain data blocks for the “Title” and “Performer” entries but not contain any data blocks for “Songwriter”, “Composer”, etc.
Blocks that are not used are normally left out, because on the CD there is very limited memory space that can be used for CD-Text.

It seems that Wavelab always writes an empty data block for the “Genre” entry which would not be necessary.
DDP images from HOFA CD-Burn & DDP, Triumph, GearPro, Sequoia, Soundblade or Reaper do not contain that empty “Genre” data block if genre is not used.

So what about that “unused” flag?
If a data block for “Genre” exists, it will always contain the space for the ID code and for the plain text.

  • When using the ID field only, the ID has to be set to the desired value and the text field remains empty.
  • When using both, the ID has to be set to the desired value and the text field is filled with the desired additional content.
  • When only using the text field, but not the ID field, the ID field has to be set to 0, which means “unused”. But this only means that the ID field is unused and that the genre should be taken from the following text field. It does not mean that the whole data block is unused, as this would not make any sense.

Wavelab sets the ID field to 0 and leaves the text field empty. For HOFA DDP Player this means:

  • The “Genre” column is activated because the data block exists
  • The genre has to be taken from the text field, because the ID field was set to “unused”
  • The text field is empty, so an empty genre column is displayed.

We will discuss if we should always hide the genre column if it is existing but empty. Maybe this will become an additional option in DDP Player Maker.


Regards,
Gregor Pogatzki
HOFA-Plugins