I recently downloaded the trial of Wave lab 9 purely to fill one desire, to enable adding digital meta data (like a commercial disc you buy from HMV) that will be understood by “ANY” library music player eg) windows media player AND iTunes for instance.
I will purchase it possibly if I can figure out this problem I have.
Wanting to start this venture I did a bit of research and found there Is this REDBOOK slandered for compact discs although what isn’t clear to me is weather this has the data information or just allowing CD’s to be understood by all players
I noticed there wasn’t an option for that directly in WAVELAB but I selected the option that close matched it ASCii
Anyway I added all the meta data to my track even had a ISRC code from a track I have uploaded to REBEAT and then I burnt my CD. I checked my code worked by looking myself up. You can see for yourself it worked as on iTunes now search “insert.play.smile” and my 1st track I released “Fluorescent Lake” has come up.
However as soon as I tested my burnt CD in Windows media player it saw nothing at all. I guess I need to know what I am doing wrong.
I saw all the other formats I could use like iTunes etc… but I fear that if I select AAC or something it will just be specific to certain library players only like iTunes only.
I really hope someone can shine some light on what I need to do. Is this something only top record labels can do or something?
Compact Discs can contain CD-Text, but the don’t contain metadata that mp3/AAC files can contain that you would buy from a digital/online store.
When you insert a CD into iTunes or Windows Media Player, the apps reference the CD by how many songs it has and the length of tracks to find a match in their database. Only then will it know the CD information.
iTunes and Windows Media Player can’t read CD-Text.
WaveLab does allow you to add metadata to mp3 and WAV files but for CDs, all you can do is CD-Text.
It can get confusing. Red Book refers to the basic technical specifications which govern the properties of a digital audio compact disc. WIkIpedia has a good explanation of this. And Justin’s article (above) is, in my opinion, a ‘must read’.
Hi thanks for the replies everyone. I looked at the article, it was great. I think I finally got my head round it.
I can add the data to grace note database and everything should be fine. I may add it to windows media player too as they seem to have a different database… There should be a standard one for ALL players doesn’t make sense… But that is the same of a lot of software I guess.
Seems odd they never added a feature to read CD text to these players must be some weird technical limitation that I clearly know nothing about : /
Yes, iTunes and Windows Media do use different databases. I don’t know much about WMP but for iTunes, somebody did make a script that you can install so that iTunes will read the CD-Text and convert it to CD info/metadata:
Most consumers wouldn’t use the script but what I use it for is to submit CD info the Gracenote database. It saves me a lot of manual entry.
I burn a CD-R from the approved DDP master, then I put the CD in the CD drive and open iTunes and run Doug’s script. This will transpose all the CD-Text to CD info and then with one click, you can send this info to Gracenote. Now when other people insert the CD to an internet enabled computer or CD device, they will get the titles and info.