Hello,
I’ve used Sound Juicer to digitize my CDs in the past and found MusicBrainz very helpful. Lately though, I’ve had almost every disc turn out with a slightly mismatched TOC (e.g. 1-2 tracks with 1-2 s difference) and therefore needing a new disc ID to be added to the entry. I’m wondering if this is a known issue with Sound Juicer or there is some explanation for why this keeps happening.
Sometimes it’s more plausible, like the first track of an audiobook is ~10-30 s longer, suggesting the pressing has a slightly different intro track. (I should double check the release metadata otherwise matches I guess). In that case I could believe that the rest of the discs might have a 1s inconsistency somewhere.
But sometimes it seems more likely the inconsistency is from something else.
Can you compare with MusicBrainz Picard Tagger computed Disc ID for the same CD?
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Mismatch to what? To the TOC read with a different application?
The TOC is a column of numbers at the beginning of the CD. If it can be read, it should produce the same table with every application¹. Or do you try to generate a disc ID from ripped files? That could well lead to a different disc ID, but you should not do that.
If the TOC read from a CD is different to one stored in an already attached disc ID on MB, then it’s probably a different disc (with its own, different disc ID).
¹) although sometimes presented differently, but that’s usually not about seconds
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Hmm, okay thanks. I thought the TOC was read from the track starts, not as a metadata header.
It looks like the disc I have in hand is a different ISBN, but it’s clearly the same underlying recording. So I should add a new release and put the new disc ID there?
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The TOC on the CD contains essentially the starting positions of each track. This is what allows a CD player to jump.to the correct track. This can slightly differ due to manufacturing differences.
The difference can be subtle. If you have a difference of 1 or more seconds for individual tracks this hints to a separate release, though. It’s not uncommon that re-releases of an album have small changes to the gap in between tracks or sometimes even adjustments to the fade-out of a track, making it a bit smaller or longer.
Keep in mind that it is well possible that your release is already in the database but without attached disc ID, or even with wrongly attached disc ID that actually belongs to a separate version.
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Audiobooks often get reissued a lot over the years. Which leads to new releases and therefore new DiscIDs from different production. So yes please, enter a new release but reuse the previous recordings.
If the ISBN has changed then I expect a closer inspection of the rear case and CD will show changes of copyright owner and maybe label too.
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