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I've recently been ripping some adequately obscure—and some not and then obscure—CDs from my drove onto my PC, using both iTunes and the recent beta of Windows Media Player 11. Along the fashion, I've uncovered annoying anomalies in both apps in the way they think data from their respective CD data databases.

Over the years, I've been gradually ripping my CD collection. The situation today, when it comes to retrieving information about music CDs, is considerably ameliorate than the early on days of CDDB (now Gracenote.) Just information technology's still far from perfect.

Now that I've got a pretty good setup for broadcasting digital music effectually the firm, I've wanted to make the music more widely bachelor to other family members. This means moving a lot of the classical music CDs we take onto the hard bulldoze, since my married woman January is a large classical music buff.

For various reasons, I rip using both iTunes and Windows Media Player, using each actor's respective lossless codec. Both seem to handle CD data differently. Apple's iTunes uses the aforementioned Gracenote database. Microsoft operates its ain CD data database.

There also seem to be glitches in both, in certain cases. Have for example Gorecki's Symphony No. 3. When you starting time insert the CD, Windows Media Player 11 doesn't recognize the content. Merely if y'all manually tell WMP11 to retrieve the CD information, yous get a complete listing:

Gorecki

On the other paw, iTunes immediately recognized the CD and identified the tracks and label correctly. However, it couldn't supply album fine art. When you effort to manually get the album art, there seems to be none available:

Gorecki

Ironically, I added the album fine art to iTunes by copying the bitmap that had been stored in the Windows Media Player 11 library.

Allow's go even more obscure. My wife's aunt, Enid Katahn, is a classical pianist who has had a number of CDs published by smaller labels. I ripped a CD of Pierre DuBois compositions played by Katahn into both players. Once again, iTunes correctly identified the CD, artist and track information—but no artwork.

WMP11 was completely baffled:

What

When I manually tried to add the anthology information, WMP11'south service even so was unhappy. Then, on a whim, I tried searching for the album info by artist name:

Who

So let'southward click through the "Next" push and see what nosotros find:

Something

Clicking on the Dubois Music for Pianoforte entry and pressing next yields what we need:

Score!

Then why couldn't Windows Media Player identify the CD when information technology was inserted? Inquiring minds would similar to know.

I had similar results with less-obscure classical CDs. For example, let'due south look at Telemann: Suites Concerto in D Major:

This is Not the Right Answer!

But when I manually searched the database, the correct data popped upwardly:

Okay, This is Right

Once again, iTunes found the correct CD, simply lacked album art:

iTunes Guesses Right Again

At present let'due south dig into my checky musical past. I take a few guilty pleasures, and I'one thousand admitting to the entire world that I have a problem. Information technology'southward embarrassing, I know, just at that place it is: I have a CD of Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Works Vol. one, ane of the most pompous, overblown pieces of progressive stone from an era of overblown, pompous progressive rock. This is definitely a guilty pleasure.

iTunes Sorta Gets Works Right

Apple tree'due south software gets all the tracks right from both CDs (it's a two-parter), but I had to add the "(alive)" tag to distinguish the extra live tracks from the studio tracks. (The live tracks weren't on the original version of Works Vol. i.

Microsoft manages to mangle the CD information in a different manner:

CD2: Album Art, No Songs

That's right, nosotros have no vocal data, simply the album fine art is correct!

Really, I'k being a little unfair here. The Microsoft database recognized CD i properly, but included all the song information from both CDs, even though I had merely ripped CD1. When I inserted CD2, the screenshot higher up appeared.

I had to manually divide out the songs that were on CD2 from the CD1 list, which contained all the songs. In fact, I could take just left in one list. Simply the Microsoft database seemed to comprise data from an earlier version of Works Vol.1, since the added live tracks were unidentified. I had to manually add those.

Pointer Graphic for Fingerlinks Read most getting audiophile sound wirelessly throughout your home.

I can certainly sympathize the difficulties inherent in the sort of pattern recognition needed to ID CDs properly, since music CDs don't take metadata information stored on them. Only y'all'd think that the record publishers would actually supply the right information to Gracenote or Microsoft… merely then, maybe non. The curmudgeons at the RIAA probably think that this encourages piracy.

Those are but a few of my problems. There was the time WMP10 ripped a Marking Knopfler CD (Sailing to Philadelphia) and proceeded to create v or six different entries, with 1 or ii songs, for each of the different artists who worked with Knopfler. So if you searched for "Marking Knopfler," y'all'd merely find two songs from that album.

What's the name of that song again?

This Calendar week on ExtremeTech
I'yard taking off on vacation for the next three weeks, heading out to England and Scotland with the family unit. So I'm leaving the inmates to run the asylum while I'm gone. Merely we've got some great stuff coming up.

Jeremy Atkinson has been spending quality time with some cracking extensions for Photoshop, and shares his findings. Jason Cross attempts to respond the question: What exactly is DirectX 10? Meanwhile Victor Loh takes on yet another NAS storage device. Finally, nosotros'll exist announcing the first weekly case mod winner this Fri.

Be sure to check out ExtremeTech'southward weekly podcast. And speaking of inmates in an aviary, don't forget to watch the latest DL.Idiot box, with those nutty guys, Patrick Norton and Robert Heron.