Poofread This
Posted on | March 16, 2007 at 5:42 am | 10 Comments
More and more commercially available compact discs are using the CD Text system to identify their contents these days. CD Text is data embedded into the CD which identifies the artist, album name, and track name of each track. It’s a nice feature if your CD player is capable of extracting and displaying this information. It’s also useful for cataloging and ripping CDs, as the player/ripper doesn’t have to go to the Internet (Gracenote, freedb, etc.) to identify the CD and acquire the song titles – it can just read them directly off the CD. The after-market JVC player in my Acura RSX is capable of displaying this information (albeit in a limited all-capitals scrolling display that only shows 8 characters at a time). My dad’s Toyota Prius (which I am currently driving and which I will buy from him once I sell the Acura) displays the CD Text info on the Audio screen of the central information console display (see pic). It has more room to display the whole song title without scrolling, although the title still gets cut off if it’s too long. Strangely, it displays the album (disc) name but not the artist.
This would all be very cool if the CD Text was actually accurate. Very few discs don’t have at least one mistake – usually some kind of typo in a song name. (One exception is Mitch Easter’s new Dynamico disk, which has perfect CD Text.) Some of them will get the song name outright wrong (mixed up with another track on the disc). I think I’ve even seen one where all the info was from some other disc. Obviously, no one in Quality Control at the record labels is very diligent about proofreading the CD Text. It’s really a shame.
I was reminded of this when I played the new Legacy Edition of Blue Öyster Cult’s live album Some Enchanted Evening in the Prius. The album name displays as “Some Echanted Evening” (sic). It bugs me so much looking at it, that I have to turn off the Audio screen in the Prius when playing the disc. (Strangely, the also-just released special edition of BÖC’s Spectres does have all correct CD Text, even on the bonus tracks.) One example is the Ted Leo album Shake The Sheets, which has the title song listed as Shack The Streets. It also has a misplaced apostrophe in the title for the song The Angels’ Share (guess where).
I’ve noticed that some CD-burning programs will automatically put the CD Text onto the CD-R when making a Mix CD. Sometimes the person making the mix CD doesn’t even notice this is happening, as it is made automatically from their playlist, and doesn’t make sure that all the titles and artists are correct. This can result in some interesting displays.
I’m sure this matters little to people who only listen to MP3 players, since they have this identification feature on every song anyway. But for those of us still mired in outdated technology, CD Text is very cool. (And yes, I do have an iPod. I am even going to integrate it into the Prius’ sound & audio control system – stay tuned.)
So, in summary:
CD Text = Good. Want to see it on more discs.
Proofreaders/QC People at record companies = Bad. Get with it, people!
Mix CD-R Makers = Good, but need to pay more attention to what gets written to the CD Text.
People who only play MP3s or are too young to know what a CD is = Hip!
Latre.
Comments
10 Responses to “Poofread This”
March 16th, 2007 @ 5:51 am
Is there CD Text on any of the 125 Records stuff? If so, I had no idea it was there. I certainly wouldn’t stand for misspellings! I’m glad Dynamico is flawless…
March 16th, 2007 @ 8:07 am
Is there CD Text on any of the 125 Records stuff?
I think so, on one or two discs – I’ll have to check.
Can’t you just put the discs in your Prius’ CD player and check it out? Or did the older ones not have that feature (mine’s a 2005)?
March 16th, 2007 @ 9:02 am
Actually, I’m just remembering now that the LF/Ant has CD Text, and that there are a few issues. There are no quotes or anything around “Rocks Off” in Song About “Rocks Off” (a limitation of CD Text?), and Flow Thee Water is Flow The Water. There might’ve been one other error too.
March 16th, 2007 @ 11:10 am
Our Priuses (Prii??) are totally different. The car was completely redesigned after 2003, and ours is a 2002. We’re kickin’ it old school.
March 16th, 2007 @ 9:59 pm
OK, help me keep up here – first you’re all for ‘expandifying the language’ (and for your example you pick something which happened a rock-throw from where I work these days, so I took it to heart) and now you’re up in arms about spelling errors? You’re a flip-flopper!!
I wonder, are these errors persistent or are they just random glitches that change each time you insert the CD? Because CD-audio as a format has a very different error-correction system than CD-ROM’s specification. I don’t claim to know how CDtext works but unless they’re encoding some sideband or an out-of-spec data track, then it’s inline with the lossy, fault-tolerating CDaudio data stream and I’m not at all surprised if single-character glitches show up regularly. Maybe a better pressing of the disc or a cleaner read lens on your player would reduce the rate. Is this a generally-known problem amongst music listeners?
March 16th, 2007 @ 11:36 pm
are these errors persistent or are they just random glitches that change each time you insert the CD?
Oh, they’re persistent. You get the same errors on every CDText-capable player and computer drive. And you can tell it’s the same error on every pressing of the same disc (unless they happen to correct it for a later run), because I’ve seen it on multiple copies of the same disc. Plus, they sometimes make it into the Internet disc databases with the errors, which can only happen if people are submitting the titles directly from the CD Text on the disc (which you can do with some players).
The explanation I’ve heard is that the CD Text comes from some shmoo at the pressing plant, who is using an unofficial playlist (read from the liner notes or whatever) to refer to the tracks, rather than by some concerted effort by the record company to provide accurate information.
March 17th, 2007 @ 10:24 am
Well, that’s just dumb then.
(but FWIW I didn’t really think you’d misinterpreted some random glitch as a systemic problem)
March 18th, 2007 @ 7:27 am
I get errors from Gracenote all the time too. I have one Patty Scialfa album and one Patti Scialfa album. I have to go fix the ID3 tags to make it right. The CD Text sounds like there is no budget for it in the production process. Lame.
March 20th, 2007 @ 7:06 pm
Get the DICE now.
March 20th, 2007 @ 9:16 pm
Get the DICE now.
I’ve had it for a couple of weeks. Just haven’t had time to install it yet. Plus, my iPod is a 3G, which I don’t think works as well with it as the newer ones.