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Pete's Corner

Pete's Corner will be a semi-regular column by our resident CD Burning specialist, Pete Calkins. Look for Pete's Corner to cover in-depth technical issues regarding CD recording, labeling, online music and other points of interest. In his first column, Pete uncovers some of the mysteries about CD-Text and how it can benefit you.

August, '02

CD-Text Revealed!

Everything you wanted to know about CD-Text

The ability to read playlist information from the CD is one of the best new features in SureThing CD Labeler version 3. SureThing has two methods for retrieving playlists: 1) Connect to the internet to try to make a match from an on-line database, or 2) Read the artist, title and track information directly from the CD. Since the first choice only works if you have burned a copy of a retail CD and have an internet connection available, it is very important to understand how SureThing reads the information contained on the CD itself. This information is stored in a format defined by Sony and Phillips, called "CD-Text." CD-Text is an extension to the audio CD standard (a.k.a., "Red Book"), and is currently the only way to write artist, title and track information to the CD itself. If you have a car stereo or multi-CD player you may have noticed that certain CDs will display text information on the player's front panel. Although CD-Text is widely supported in newer home and car CD players, most retail CDs (Sony CDs past April 1997 being the exception), do not contain the information. Older audio players will not handle the extra features of CD Text discs. They will play the audio, however. If you have a large CD changer or even a jukebox you probably already know this. You may have been forced to manually enter the titles with a tedious remote control interface or had to blindly search through un-labeled entries for the CD and track you are looking for. The fact is, most retail CDs do not contain CD-Text. Computer-based players such as Windows Media Player, WinAmp, etc., also have a conspicuous lack of CD-Text support. (Some even claim to support the feature when they do not!) Fortunately, the companies who make CD burners and CD burner software have addressed the problem by allowing you to write CD-Text when you burn your CDs. When CD-Text is used in conjunction with SureThing CD Labeler and/or your multi-CD player(s) you will find it to be a huge time-saver.


The image on the left is the SureThing playlist database as it appears when a CD contains no CD-Text. The artist and title fields are blank, and will remain so until you edit them. When a CD contains CD-Text (right), SureThing reads this information and inserts it directly into your label designs.


So why isn't CD-Text more popular?

CD-Text is such a useful and simple standard that you have to wonder why there is so little software support for it. There are many good reasons for this. The first and foremost is Windows 95, 98, 98se and ME. These operating systems do not include a method for ripping tracks or for reading CD-Text — at least not a documented method. This is where ASPI comes in to play. ASPI is an ingenius, device-independent SCSI interface designed by Adaptec. Windows 95, 98, 98 SE, and ME install this interface out-of-the-box. Ripper programs (programs designed to import CD tracks to your hard drive) were the first to exploit the "ASPI layer" to communicate with the CD-ROM drive at a low level. This allowed them to give instructions to the drive that were not included in the Windows CD-ROM interface. The problem is that ASPI was never intended for this purpose. The early versions of the layer would often crash when trying to perform these unintended operations. These versions (1.0) do work, but can be problematic. Often crashes will occur when trying to perform any unintended operation like reading CD-Text or ripping tracks. Adaptec released a more stable version of ASPI, (version 4.60) but somehow it never got included in Windows 95, 98, 98se or ME. Microsoft addressed the problem in Windows NT, 2000 and XP, which include their own methods for performing these operations. (For details on troubleshooting your ASPI layer see this web guide) Given these problems you can understand why most, if not all, software-based music players do not support the CD-Text standard. A basic tenant of software development is to ease the burden of the support department. (Support time costs money.) During the development of SureThing CD Labeler version 3, we made a conscious decision to bite the support bullet in order to deliver this very useful feature of reading CD-Text.

CD-Text vs. CD lookup services

In a way, the lack of CD-Text support has created a new industry based on collecting computer user's media habits. CDDB was the first service (that I know of) to provide database matches. (It is now called "Gracenote.") While some privacy advocates worry that collecting this information can lead to an invasion of privacy, there is no information to suggest that any database lookup service connects your information with other personally identifiable data. They are not interested in your personal listening habits, but the habits of thousands or millions of users. This data is a valuable commodity to the media industry. In fact, Gracenote statistics have been quoted to support the RIAA's (Recording Industry Association of America) various political efforts. Microsoft also keeps its own lookup database for use with its media player, and it has been reported that a DVD lookup is also included. (This is odd because most, if not all, DVDs already include chapter and title information.) The RIAA and Microsoft get a lot of bad press and are often touted as being just plain evil. My opinion: Their motivations are economic, plain and simple, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. They have no interest in playing "Big Brother"; they just want large amounts of data for their marketing and sales departments. (Or to sell the data to others...) The latest version of Windows Media Player (XP) still does not support reading or writing CD-Text, even though the Windows XP operating system does have methods in place for exactly this purpose, so there does appear to be a financial incentive to not proliferate the use of CD-Text.

If you still think Bill Gates or Hillary Rosen are the spawn of Satan you may want to stop using internet lookups and start using CD-Text exclusively.

Whether you choose to use CD lookup services or not, you will still want to use CD-Text for your multi-CD changer in the car or at home. If you have one of these changers you may have experienced the empty CD case phenomenon. You go to put in a certain CD and you find the case is empty. "Oh, it's in one of my 50-disc cartridges.... now where is that one?" The solution: Burn backup CDs for use in your CD-changer cartridges. While you're at it, be sure to burn CD-Text and the player will pick up all the titles and tracks. No more empty cases, and no more complicated filing/indexing systems.

SureThing CD Labeler v3.1 supports CD-Text

We first introduced CD-Text support in v3.0, but have expanded and improved on it in 3.1, and included a number of new features to help with the problems associated with CD-Text:

  1. For NT-based systems (NT, 2000, XP) the program will use the more stable NT method even when ASPI is available. (v3.0 checked for the existence of ASPI and used it before trying the NT method.)

  2. Windows XP users will be able to print playlists directly from Windows Media Player XP. Just go to File > Print Label. This is a workaround since this player does not support reading or writing CD-Text.

  3. If both CD-Text and the internet lookup fail, the program will still import the track lengths so that you don't have to manually type this information.

  4. A method for detecting ASPI layer crashes has been built-in to the program. When an ASPI layer crash is detected the "Enable Reading CD-Text" option is turned off to prevent further crashes.

On-going development

We are also busy recruiting burner software companies so that we can import the CD and track data directly into SureThing from the CD burner software. This will bypass the need to wrestle with ASPI drivers on machines that are having trouble reading the data from the CD.

I hope this article has helped to clear up some of the questions you may have had concerning the great CD-Text standard.


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