EAC Ripping FLACs - Metadata

[BestPCBuilder2017]

So this is a quick question, does EAC rip metadata reliably for FLACs? I was told Windows Media Player is not entirely reliable for ripping metadata for FLACs so I'm looking at alternatives. 

[Volbet]

I was never able to make the metadata editing work in a satisfactory manner in EAC. Or make EAC work at all, for that matter.

It does allow you to use FreeDB, but it also forces you to enter an E-mail address, which is a big no-no for me. 

If I remember correctly EAC also ships with GD3 now, which is unfortunatly a paid service.

 

You could also enter all the metadata (and some non-metadata) manually, but that's too time consuming for me, but it's an option non the less. 

[BestPCBuilder2017]

3 hours ago, Volbet said:

You could also enter all the metadata (and some non-metadata) manually, but that's too time consuming for me, but it's an option non the less. 

Yeah that's what I was thinking. I'm surprised when I was ripping it didn't do that automatically. Even when I did it with VLC Media Player, it just left things like the album artwork completely blank. 

 

Is there a better option out there or is it just all left up to manual entry at that point? 

[Volbet]

6 minutes ago, NCIX Lampy said:

Yeah that's what I was thinking. I'm surprised when I was ripping it didn't do that automatically. Even when I did it with VLC Media Player, it just left things like the album artwork completely blank. 

 

Is there a better option out there or is it just all left up to manual entry at that point? 

Well, there's Foobar2000, which I also recommended yesterday. That is pretty much all I've used for ripping CDs over the last 10 years. 

Foobar is capable of fetching metadata from FreeDB or MusicBrainz and you're also free to do the editing manually. 

 

However, it won't fetch album artwork. But that's easy enough to grap on your own. 

And if you want the artwork embedded into the audio file, you can use MP3Tag.

[BestPCBuilder2017]

3 hours ago, Volbet said:

Well, there's Foobar2000, which I also recommended yesterday. That is pretty much all I've used for ripping CDs over the last 10 years. 

Foobar is capable of fetching metadata from FreeDB or MusicBrainz and you're also free to do the editing manually. 

 

However, it won't fetch album artwork. But that's easy enough to grap on your own. 

And if you want the artwork embedded into the audio file, you can use MP3Tag.

Is there a reason why when ripping using EAC or like WMP or VLC it doesn't get the metadata directly from the audio disc? 

[Volbet]

1 minute ago, NCIX Lampy said:

Is there a reason why when ripping using EAC or like WMP or VLC it doesn't get the metadata directly from the audio disc? 

No idea. Maybe they can't read the file type used for cueing the tracks. 

Also, not all audio CDs have metadata on the disc. Sometimes it's just track information. 

[SSL]

1 hour ago, NCIX Lampy said:

Is there a reason why when ripping using EAC or like WMP or VLC it doesn't get the metadata directly from the audio disc? 

 

Because most CDs don't have full metadata. I will pull in the track titles from freeDB in EAC and then fine-tune it based on the track listing provided with the CD if I don't like what comes through, which is often the case. I will then make further adjustments for missing or misformatted metadata once it is in Foobar, which has a much better interface for working with that sort of thing. 

[BestPCBuilder2017]

4 hours ago, SSL said:

Because most CDs don't have full metadata. 

Any idea why? That just seems really dumb not to. 

[Pomfinator]

57 minutes ago, NCIX Lampy said:

Any idea why? That just seems really dumb not to. 

Red Book is an old standard, it was first introduced in 1980 and made a standard in 1987.  Back then PC's weren't really popular, and MP3 players weren't really a thing yet, so the main consumption of CD's was from CD players which don't have a screen anyway (or a small one that didn't display any info). 

 

And it doesn't help that CD sales have sharply declined worldwide (except in Japan, where almost 3/4 of all music sales are physical goods), so the industry just has no incentive to change it.

[mariushm]

4 hours ago, Volbet said:

I was never able to make the metadata editing work in a satisfactory manner in EAC. Or make EAC work at all, for that matter.

It does allow you to use FreeDB, but it also forces you to enter an E-mail address, which is a big no-no for me. 

If I remember correctly EAC also ships with GD3 now, which is unfortunatly a paid service.

 

You could also enter all the metadata (and some non-metadata) manually, but that's too time consuming for me, but it's an option non the less. 

You know you can just enter a bogus email address and everything will work just fine. An email has to be used as part of the authentification to the service that gives you the data for based on some CD signature .. if you don't enter that address in a software, the software simply uses some bogus email address hardcoded inside it.

 

You could use  example.com or example.org , they're reserved domains for use in documentation and you're free to use them as you want, so you can just use something like randomtext @ example.org as an email address,without risk of annoying someone.

[Volbet]

11 hours ago, mariushm said:

You know you can just enter a bogus email address and everything will work just fine. An email has to be used as part of the authentification to the service that gives you the data for based on some CD signature .. if you don't enter that address in a software, the software simply uses some bogus email address hardcoded inside it.

 

You could use  example.com or example.org , they're reserved domains for use in documentation and you're free to use them as you want, so you can just use something like randomtext @ example.org as an email address,without risk of annoying someone.

I did not know that. I tried it and it worked. I'm now connected to FreeDB.

Now just to find a CD that FreeDB actually knows the information of. 

 

11 hours ago, Pomfinator said:

Red Book is an old standard, it was first introduced in 1980 and made a standard in 1987.  Back then PC's weren't really popular, and MP3 players weren't really a thing yet, so the main consumption of CD's was from CD players which don't have a screen anyway (or a small one that didn't display any info). 

Strange thing is, I have actually had plenty of CD decks that had screens meant for showing CD information.

I also do have a couple of CDs that does contain the artist, album, track and genre information. But most CDs that contain that information will be home burned CDs, which is probably why these kinds of displays were most commonly found in car stereos. 

 

Even stranger is that all of this information is standard on prerecorded DCC, DAT and Minidiscs. 

[Pomfinator]

6 minutes ago, Volbet said:

Strange thing is, I have actually had plenty of CD decks that had screens meant for showing CD information.

I also do have a couple of CDs that does contain the artist, album, track and genre information. But most CDs that contain that information will be home burned CDs, which is probably why these kinds of displays were most commonly found in car stereos. 

CD's do in fact have a built in metadata system, called CD-Text, but the artist/label even bothering to put anything there is extremely rare. So technically yes, a metadata system for Red Book exists, but no one uses it.  It can be read by software players and rippers, but chances are, the vast majority of your CDs will not have any CD-Text in them.

[Volbet]

19 minutes ago, Pomfinator said:

CD's do in fact have a built in metadata system, called CD-Text, but the artist/label even bothering to put anything there is extremely rare. So technically yes, a metadata system for Red Book exists, but no one uses it.  It can be read by software players and rippers, but chances are, the vast majority of your CDs will not have any CD-Text in them.

Oh no, the vast majority don't have any metadata information. 

Having played around a bit, I found that the only CDs with metadata information (that I own) are promotional CDs and label samplers. 

Probably becuase the information on those won't, or atleast shouldn't, be available anywhere else. 

There are probably also some actual CDs, but I haven't been able to find them.