A Lark Ascending Posted August 23, 2008 Report Share Posted August 23, 2008 After reading the ECM thread I dug out my LP of 'Gnu High' and recorded it to a CD-RW via my Pioneer stand alone recorder. I had it set on 'analogue' - digital always gives me too many funny options! Anyway, having 'finalised' the disc I then inserted it into the computer to 'rip' so I could make a full CD-R (cumbersome, I know, but it avoids wasting discs when things go wrong). Normally I get 'Track 1', 'Track 2' etc with the computer saving as 'Unknown file'. But this time both iTunes and Winamp jumped into action and told me it was 'Gnu High' by Kenny Wheeler! How could it possibly know? There was no digital transfer of information. It went from stylus to analogue CD-RW to computer. I can only assume that the software at iTunes/Winamp measure the track lengths and guess the album! Spooky! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porcy62 Posted August 23, 2008 Report Share Posted August 23, 2008 Don't know, but if I were you I'd always carry the credit cards with me and by no means never let them alone close to the computer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seeline Posted August 23, 2008 Report Share Posted August 23, 2008 Likely because it was pulling tags from the CDDB (CD database). Most music library software has the option to automatically tag tracks - or not. You should go into that menu in iTunes (under "preferences" or possibly "options") if you want to turn it off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Lark Ascending Posted August 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted August 23, 2008 Likely because it was pulling tags from the CDDB (CD database). Most music library software has the option to automatically tag tracks - or not. You should go into that menu in iTunes (under "preferences" or possibly "options") if you want to turn it off. Oh, I'm familiar with that when you put in a commercial CD where there is clearly some sort of encoding. But there was no way the three tracks could carry any codes. When finalised on the stand alone machine they had no names or anything. They were copied direct from vinyl. All I can think of is the checking of number of tracks/times and a rough guess being made by the software. There can't be any other albums with that particular profile. Don't know, but if I were you I'd always carry the credit cards with me and by no means never let them alone close to the computer. It really makes you think!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seeline Posted August 23, 2008 Report Share Posted August 23, 2008 I've actually had this happen with other software that has *nothing* to do with iTunes (or any store). have you tried mediaMonkey, which is a free download? (Link.) It's the only program I use now... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marcello Posted August 23, 2008 Report Share Posted August 23, 2008 The music has a digital fingerprint that is in the database, and that was recognised. Scary, huh? Like I've been telling everyone here that every kind of recorded media will be out there in cyberspace some day (on a server of some type), and be available for download to your media player of choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Lark Ascending Posted August 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted August 23, 2008 I'm not unhappy with it - saved me finding the info manually. Just amazed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seeline Posted August 23, 2008 Report Share Posted August 23, 2008 (edited) If I were you, I wouldn't use iTunes for ripping and tagging due to privacy (or lack thereof). But that's just me! Edited August 23, 2008 by seeline Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porcy62 Posted August 23, 2008 Report Share Posted August 23, 2008 The music has a digital fingerprint that is in the database, and that was recognised. Scary, huh? Like I've been telling everyone here that every kind of recorded media will be out there in cyberspace some day (on a server of some type), and be available for download to your media player of choice. Well, you can be optimistic or pessimistic about it. Now let me in. Open that f****** door, Hal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Gould Posted August 23, 2008 Report Share Posted August 23, 2008 Here's what I can't get - I extract from a commercial CD using Goldwave. While Goldwave is reading what is in the drive, Windows Media Player launches and correctly identifies the CD. I burn a CDR from the wav files created by Goldwave on my hard drive (I find that burning from the hard drive is better than having Nero burn from the disc drive, as it seems to take less time overall). I pop the CDR into the disc drive, just to be sure there are no problems - it plays, but now WMP does not identify the disc. Don't tell me its a function of extracting the files via Goldwave, because about 75% of the time, the CDR is recognized the same way as the parent disc was. Its just those few times that it doesn't that leaves me confused. On a separate note, it was this same ability of software that recognizes the disc that led to the "catching" of that British woman, the classical pianist who, it was found, ripped off other artists recordings as her own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Lark Ascending Posted August 24, 2008 Author Report Share Posted August 24, 2008 If I were you, I wouldn't use iTunes for ripping and tagging due to privacy (or lack thereof). But that's just me! I can see your point. I don't rip anything that is not in my collection on CD (to go to the iPod) or LP (to make a CD-R) but I can see how all sorts of problems might emerge. I just had the same thing happen again, having CD-RW'd Ralph Towner's 'City of Eyes' from vinyl. 'Gracenotes' recognised it immediately on inserting in the PC! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjzee Posted August 24, 2008 Report Share Posted August 24, 2008 The music doesn't have a "digital fingerprint" per se. CDDB recognizes an album by 1) the number of tracks on the album, and 2) the length of each track. It turns out that that combination allows for a great specificity of which album it is; you'd think there would be many albums with that combination, but there aren't. At times when CDDB isn't sure, it'll ask you to choose, and present you with a list (in my experience, it's usually 2 different releases of the same album). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Lark Ascending Posted August 24, 2008 Author Report Share Posted August 24, 2008 The music doesn't have a "digital fingerprint" per se. CDDB recognizes an album by 1) the number of tracks on the album, and 2) the length of each track. It turns out that that combination allows for a great specificity of which album it is; you'd think there would be many albums with that combination, but there aren't. At times when CDDB isn't sure, it'll ask you to choose, and present you with a list (in my experience, it's usually 2 different releases of the same album). That's what I guessed. Though the initial recording of tracks is done manually (I have to press a button to tell the recorder to start a new track) so the timing of each track will be slightly out of synch. But I image it goes for a 'best fit'. The only other thing I could think of was if it recognised the contours of each track in a graph format - peaks and troughs, like you see on a monitor. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
medjuck Posted August 24, 2008 Report Share Posted August 24, 2008 If I were you, I wouldn't use iTunes for ripping and tagging due to privacy (or lack thereof). But that's just me! I can see your point. I don't rip anything that is not in my collection on CD (to go to the iPod) or LP (to make a CD-R) but I can see how all sorts of problems might emerge. I just had the same thing happen again, having CD-RW'd Ralph Towner's 'City of Eyes' from vinyl. 'Gracenotes' recognised it immediately on inserting in the PC! This would explain why every so often I get a disc mis-identified. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John L Posted August 25, 2008 Report Share Posted August 25, 2008 The music doesn't have a "digital fingerprint" per se. CDDB recognizes an album by 1) the number of tracks on the album, and 2) the length of each track. It turns out that that combination allows for a great specificity of which album it is; you'd think there would be many albums with that combination, but there aren't. At times when CDDB isn't sure, it'll ask you to choose, and present you with a list (in my experience, it's usually 2 different releases of the same album). That's what I guessed. Though the initial recording of tracks is done manually (I have to press a button to tell the recorder to start a new track) so the timing of each track will be slightly out of synch. But I image it goes for a 'best fit'. The only other thing I could think of was if it recognised the contours of each track in a graph format - peaks and troughs, like you see on a monitor. mjzee is correct. CDDB recognizes an album by number of tracks and the length of each track. I doubt that there are any other tricks. Usually, the process that you describe (analog-digital) would create fairly significant discrepancies in the track times that would prevent CDDB from identifying the album. This time, purely by chance, it must have come out extremely close. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Niko Posted August 25, 2008 Report Share Posted August 25, 2008 (edited) The music doesn't have a "digital fingerprint" per se. CDDB recognizes an album by 1) the number of tracks on the album, and 2) the length of each track. It turns out that that combination allows for a great specificity of which album it is; you'd think there would be many albums with that combination, but there aren't. At times when CDDB isn't sure, it'll ask you to choose, and present you with a list (in my experience, it's usually 2 different releases of the same album). there are, for instance, 120^10=619173642240000000000 different possibilities for cds with 10 tracks between 3 and 5 minutes and if you say you take a rougher measure, say, think in units of 3 seconds to make up for small discrepancies, you still have 40^10=10485760000000000 different possibilities (and we're only talking about cds with 10 tracks here) the key is of course to have many tracks, for less tracks there are much less possibilities, like with two tracks between 15 and 25 minutes it only 600^2=360000 possibilities... Edited August 25, 2008 by Niko Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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