How does CDDB know your album content when you make the disc yourself? (1 Viewer)

[Keith Paynter]

Here's my scenario - I made single CDs of Beatles MFSL stereo albums (2 per disc) via an external recording device - no computer involved at all.

When I used Audio Catalyst to rip them to high bitrate MP3s, I tried the CDDB link and it came back with full information on both albums that were written to the CD - Album titles, track names, etc.

How does it know this when the recording was made without a digital source?

 

[Ryan Spaight]

I believe that in addition to digital "signatures," CDDB is also using some sort of analog fuzzy logic where if it can't find the exact digital match, it will look at a bit of the analog waveform and try to match it up. I'm still surprised they matched the stereo tracks, unless someone had already made the same CDs you did and submitted the track info...

What would be an interesting test would be to change the order of the songs and see what happens.

Ryan

 

[Alex Shk]

Well, I know that the CDDB database is supplied by the users, and many popular "grey market" titles are in there. I took the Beatles "Backtracks" disc and CDDB gave me more detailed track info than the cover.

It could be that the track lengths themselves were such a close match that it gave a "probable hit". There are many "grey market" versions of the first four Beatle lp's in stereo, usually on 2 CD's.

 

[Derek Miner]

The code that the CDDB uses to identify your CD comes from a combination of things, primarily the number of tracks and the lengths of those tracks. If you have used well-adjusted equipment to transfer the vinyl albums to digital and you adjusted the tracks properly, then you probably got something pretty darn close to the length of a CD that someone else already did with the same contents.

For instance, I took a vinyl copy of the Logan's Run soundtrack and recorded it to hard drive to burn a CD for a friend. When I ran a burned CD through the CDDB, it returned a listing for Logan's Run by Jerry Goldsmith with the correct track titles.

 

[Alex Shk]

Semi-related tangent:

I use Adaptec Easy CD Creator 4 to burn. This software comes with a link to CDDB which USED to identify titles and tracks. Several months back - I got a message saying my "lisence" has expired and I can no longer connect. Is CDDB a pay site? Does this have anything to do with the Adaptec to Roxio changeover? I have been using "Real Jukebox" since - but I cannot seem to import that data into other programs....