Adding CD-Text to Audio CDs that don't have CD-Text already

[eastbayarb]

Not all CDs have CD-Text in them. How would I add CD-Text data to Audio CDs that don't already have CD-Text data? I know the first step would be ripping to my PC (I want to transfer CDs with CD-Text data from my Sony CDP-CE525 CD changer to my JB930 MD deck via Control A-1). Preferably, a CD ripping program that supports CDDB to get album/track names so my resulting burned CDs have CD-Text data.

Any reccomended software would be appreciated.

[sfbp]

1. Sonic Stage.

But make sure you rip to Atrac Advanced Lossless, not WAV

2. EAC will interrogate online CDText databases, just not as comprehensive as Gracenote/CDDB which SS uses.

3. M-Crew but it won't help you burn the information or rip to files. It will make MD's with the right title info for you, and uses Gracenote. You can copy and paste from M-Crew into Nero or something like that, but it's quite tedious to do.

[eastbayarb]

I would prefer a solution to where I can rip a retail CD to an image file (like .bin/.cue), and add CD-Text to it, so I can then burn to a CD-R, so I can transfer it to an MD in realtime with my CDP-CE525 CD changer/JB930 MD deck utilizing Control A-1 for titling. Why would I need to rip a CD to ATRAC lossless with Sonic Stage, if I ultimately want my CDs on CD-R with CD text?

[Azureal]

This may be something you can do using one of the Nero tool sets. I don't know if the CD data can be captured via GraceNote, but at a minimum, I would think you could manually edit the contents of the image file to add the text. I could be wrong. You should check out the latest Nero tools package and see if there is any mention of being able to perform editing of an image file. Isn't it also true that creating single file images of Red Book Audio disks is difficult to do? I could be wrong there as well.

Stephen's suggestions regarding using SonicStage to perform the task are certainly worth trying as the tool is freely available. Ripping the entire disk to ATRAC lossless should allow SS to grab the track info via GraceNote and associate it with the tracks which you should be able to turn around and immediately burn to a CDR with no loss of sound quality, CD text included.

I have never been able to get A1 to transfer text for me. This is from my DVP-ES9000 to my MDS-JA20ES or to my MDS-JB940. It may be the DVP unit which is the problem. If your objective is to get a nice optical SP recording, I certainly understand, the sound is hard to beat! I mainly use my MXD-M400 now which is a combo CD/MD which makes pretty good SP recordings and also transfers CD text data if it exists.

Good luck, let us know how things work out.

[sfbp]

Why would I need to rip a CD to ATRAC lossless with Sonic Stage, if I ultimately want my CDs on CD-R with CD text?

For some reason ripping CD quality using SonicStage doesn't work very well. The other point is that it's very easy to set metadata. Once you convert to WAV files, the metadata is gone, and you have to add it all in (not just titles) again.

[eastbayarb]

Azureal, The link below made me really feel that successful CD to MD with CD-Text data for titling was very possible through Control A-1. I have a JB930 MD deck with Control A-1 II/CDP-CE525 with Control A-1...I moved recently and haven't everything up yet):

sfbp, I would prefer to rip my retail CDs to an image file (like .bin/.cue) to keep them as much like the original as possible (some CDs have gap less playback, so I want to retain that). The only thing I want to do is rip to an image file, and somehow add CD-Text info to it, and burn to CD, so the CD-Text data transfers over to my MD recorder deck in realtime.

[sfbp]

Whenever I see the words "just" (I know you said "I only want" but it seems equivalent) and "somehow" I always smell a rat. Unfortunately I'm thinking there are some problems doing what you want. I don't think you can keep an image AND edit its metadata. It's not like there's space for CD-Text reserved in an ISO image. You can make a CD (from individual tracks) with no gaps easily enough, though I agree SS may not be the way to do it.

[eastbayarb]

Well perhaps is there a CD ripping program that rips to an image file with CD-Text data? if so, I could use that to rip my CDs to new image files, and burn those to CD-Rs. Or in the case of existing image files of CDs (I archived a lot of my retail CDs this way), I could mount the image files to a virtual CD drive (I have MagicISO with virtual disc add on), and hopefully rip to a new image with CD-Text data.

[Azureal]

eastbayrb, that's a great demo. I need to test it out again. I would love to be able to get mine ti work like that too. I was wondering if the versions of A1 being different may be the cause as well. I think, like in your setup, one unit is A1 and the other is A1 II (version 2). I'll try it again and see if I have any success.

[eastbayarb]

eastbayrb, that's a great demo. I need to test it out again. I would love to be able to get mine ti work like that too. I was wondering if the versions of A1 being different may be the cause as well. I think, like in your setup, one unit is A1 and the other is A1 II (version 2). I'll try it again and see if I have any success.

I stumbled upon that video during a Google search. I just moved, and once I get my decks and everything ready, I want to test this setup and report my results here. I know many people use a PC to output to MiniDisc, but I want a standalone setup without using a PC to dub from CD to MiniDisc.

[John W]

Plextools will add CD-Text to the PXI image file format.