Vinyl To Cd & Gracenote

I have a unit that copies vinyl to USB or SD.
Done it with quite a few albums although I split into separate tracks on the PC as it's too fiddly on the unit itself.

Albums are then transferred to IPOD or PS3 so I rarely burn to cd .

I've done it a few times but today I got a shock when I put the burned cd into the PS3 and it came up with "Multiple CD Info Found".
This has happened before and usually relates to some obscure unknown cd .
However today it actually had the correct cd and track titles.

So I had a 1967 vinyl album - copied to USB , edited on PC then burned to cdr and yet the PS3 found the info:confused:

I always assumed the cd's had some kind of digital flag encoded in them which is how the databases read what the cd was , and of course my home copy won't have this.

Although I am aware that the PS3 actually uses another database and not Gracenote , my Pioneer dvdr/hdd also found the cd info (with one track name wrong) and that does use Gracenote.

Can anyone explain how this works?

Thanks in advance.

Comments

  • Nigel GoodwinNigel Goodwin Posts: 58,335
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    I always assumed the cd's had some kind of digital flag encoded in them which is how the databases read what the cd was , and of course my home copy won't have this.

    No, there's no information on the CD's - it works by reading the number of tracks and the track lengths, and comparing this to CD's listed in the database.

    It's common for you to be offered a number of possiblities, you just select the right one - or reject them all.
  • tomfoolery1tomfoolery1 Posts: 662
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    No, there's no information on the CD's - it works by reading the number of tracks and the track lengths, and comparing this to CD's listed in the database.

    It's common for you to be offered a number of possiblities, you just select the right one - or reject them all.

    Thanks for that.
    This is the first time I've ever had it happen on a home burn.
    I also have quite a few commercially available discs that the database cannot find.

    It must be pure fluke this time as I divided each side of the album manually on the PC so for all 12 tracks to be the exact right running time is a real fluke.

    Glad I did the lottery today
  • Nigel GoodwinNigel Goodwin Posts: 58,335
    Forum Member
    Thanks for that.
    This is the first time I've ever had it happen on a home burn.
    I also have quite a few commercially available discs that the database cannot find.

    It must be pure fluke this time as I divided each side of the album manually on the PC so for all 12 tracks to be the exact right running time is a real fluke.

    I don't think it has to be exact, there's a certain amount of tolerance allowed.
  • chrisjrchrisjr Posts: 33,282
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    I used to have a CD cataloguing program that linked to the Gracenote database. You could put a CD in the drive and it would read the table of contents and produce a number that it then used to search the database.

    I suspect this number was derived from the number of tracks and track durations in some way.

    There is an extension to the "Red Book" spec for CDs called CD Text. This can store details like title and artist but obviously would not apply to a home produced CD unless the burning software supported it. And I suspect you may have remembered entering the album name and artist :)
  • tomfoolery1tomfoolery1 Posts: 662
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    Entering data on the PC for cd's makes no difference on the PS3 which does not display the information although it does if you transfer it to the PS3 as an MP3 from USB stick which is what I usually do
  • emptyboxemptybox Posts: 13,917
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    No, there's no information on the CD's - it works by reading the number of tracks and the track lengths, and comparing this to CD's listed in the database.

    It's common for you to be offered a number of possiblities, you just select the right one - or reject them all.

    Well you learn something every day. I always assumed there was album information on the CD.
    When you play a CD on the computer it almost always gets the info spot on. :cool: (it occasionally mixes up import editions etc)
  • Nigel GoodwinNigel Goodwin Posts: 58,335
    Forum Member
    emptybox wrote: »
    Well you learn something every day. I always assumed there was album information on the CD.
    When you play a CD on the computer it almost always gets the info spot on. :cool: (it occasionally mixes up import editions etc)

    As mentioned above, there is a thing called CD Text, but it was a very late addition, and most CD's (and all the older ones) don't have it.

    Interestingly - if you have a CD player that displays CD Text (my daughters Sony one does, as does my Sony car player) - and you copy an old CD, the copying program (Nero or whatever) downloads the track details from Gracenote and adds them to the CD. So when you play it you get the track names etc. - whereas you don't on the original.

    Not that it matters now, I bought a tiny 16GB USB drive, and that fits almost invisibly in the front of my car stereo - so loads of space for MP3's now :D
  • mark_bmark_b Posts: 854
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    There is a way of using the waveform from a small portion of the song and comparing it to other songs in the Gracenote database. SonyEricsson use it in their amazing TrackID application.

    There is further discussion on how this works here
  • tomfoolery1tomfoolery1 Posts: 662
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    mark_b wrote: »
    There is a way of using the waveform from a small portion of the song and comparing it to other songs in the Gracenote database. SonyEricsson use it in their amazing TrackID application.

    There is further discussion on how this works here

    I have TrackID on my phone and its been great over the years in finding out the details of music usually used as background in documentaries.
    It can also pick out background music that has dialogue over the top .
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