Drive won't read CD-TEXT

I would like to read CD-TEXT from my CDs when ripping, to keep and to use. However, my drives can’t seem to do it. I’ve tried Exact Audio Copy and mediatools on two Windows 10 PCs, and cd-info and python-audio-tools on a Linux laptop. There’s usually no problem extracting ISRCs. I’ve tried updating firmware when possible.

I don’t have any CD that I know for a fact has CD-TEXT, but I’ve tried several. Is CD-TEXT actually not very common? If someone could tell me a release that they know has CD-TEXT and that I could get at a Swedish library, that would be very helpful.

I used to think my drive could read CD-TEXT, but now I realize that might just have been automatic freedb imports or something. Or it stopped working, I’m not sure. Does a freedb entry like this one mean the disc has CD-TEXT?

To summarize, I need

  • help concluding if any of the discs I tried is likely to have had CD-TEXT in the first place
  • if they did, some guidance on what to do to get CD-TEXT working on one of my drives.

Thanks for all the help I can get!

Related to How to get all track metadata from Audio CD?

CD-TEXT was rarely used on the several thousand of CD’s I have, when it was there EAC extracted it as a binary file. I started to write a parser but I did not have enough examples to use as I could find no spec on the file contents. IMO its not worth the trouble. I stopped looking at CD-TEXT about 8 years ago, others may have a different opinion.

1 Like

Check my tags starting with cd-text.

2 Likes

Looking over jesus2099 cd-text tags I realize some companies are still encoding CD-TEXT on CDs. Its been 10 years since I gave up on it and never went back to look at it again. I found the following links:

Wiki page

Unofficial CD Text FAQ
http://web.ncf.ca/aa571/cdtext.htm

3 Likes

Turns out one of the CDs I was ripping did have CD-TEXT, and worked as expected for the drives I tried. Would’ve saved a lot of time if I tried that one first, or if EAC had an actual error message.

I guess I learned something about the prevalence of CD-TEXT, and something about the nature of the data in freedb and of the data EAC autofills. Thank you both! The tag would have been very helpful if I hadn’t found one by chance.

1 Like

Nearly all (if not all) of my ripped CDs (only about 40 so far) have had CD-TEXT on them. Most released within the last 5 years.

Just of interest what are you using to read the CD-TEXT and is there much more information than the standard title/artist. Most of what I have are older albums and my new purchases are mostly bluegrass or “oldtime”. A article I was reading says Sony continues to encode CD-TEXT on their releases.

1 Like

I’m using EAC to read CD-TEXT. The only info I get is title/artist of the CD itself and all the tracks. My CDs are all electronic music, most are released in UK & Netherlands, no idea if that has anything to do with it.

1 Like