I am in the process of RIP’ing my entire CD collection and I am running into problems obtaining the correct metadata for a few of them. I have RIP’d about 60 CD’s so far, and I have had trouble with 3 CD’s so far.
Two of the problems that I have are from niche CD’s where I cannot find any metadata for them at all.
The other problem is for the 2nd of a 2 CD set that Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is marking as not part of the 2 CD set, but as part of a different set.
I am brand new to this. Can anyone please give me pointers on how best to proceed?
My current workflow is to use EAC to RIP the CD’s, and in EAC, specifying MusicBrainz as the online metadata provider. In EAC, again, I get the cd info from the remote database provider, and that is where the problems are first found. The titles of the CD’s displayed by EAC is incorrect for all three problems.
I’ve tried other providers in EAC, and they do not solve the problems.
When I try to RIP the CD’s with Microsoft’s Media Player, it gets the correct metadata for one of the 3 problem CD’s that I have, but it is not able to RIP the CD for other unknown reasons.
You have not provided the names of the CDs that are failing you, but my guess is these releases are simply not in the database. The solution is to add them to the database so they become available for your rip/tagging software. In doing so you are helping future taggers of your “niche CDs“
First off, welcome to MusicBrainz (MB). I began using EAC long ago (in the very early 2000’s) and used freeDB then cuetools as metadata providers long before MB was added (I also bought the GD3 license for EAC). I started with MB back in 2016 and nothing was easy, took me a while to learn, and I am still learning. I love to find and buy CDs from local and regional talent, then add them to MB, I have added a lot of releases to MB. Editors adding releases and other information into the database is what makes MB great, hope you will be one of them.
I have a different workflow from most and use Picard as the last step in the process. I find it much easier for “myself” to add the release from the web GUI and not Picard, each person needs to find what works best for them. I suggest reading the guides pointed out to you as a place to start. For the most part adding a single artist release is fairly easy, Various Artists compilations are more complicated and take more time because you have to pick the “correct” artist for each song. Hope to see you here on MB as a regular.
My work flow is likely a bit different from most in that the first thing I do is look up the release manually on MusicBrainz to determine if I have a copy of an existing release or whether I need to add a new release.
If I need to add a new release, I do this next. I then use Picard to attach the DiscID to the newly entered release.
I then rip the CD using whipper. While that’s happening I make sure that the release on MusicBrainz that matches my CD has all the relationships and cover art, and add anything that’s missing (including scans of cover art, booklets, media, matrix/runouts, etc.)
Once all of that is done, I load the matching release from MusicBrainz into Picard using the green tagger button on the MusicBrainz release (or by copying the URL into the search/lookup box in Picard). I then match the files to the tracks on the release, change the cover art if required, and add any new ISRCs (using the Submit ISRC plugin), and save the album.
Finally, I select all the tracks and generate and submit AcoustID Fingerprints, so that the information is there for others that use the scan functionality in Picard to match tracks to releases.
As you say, “each person needs to find what works best for them.” Much of that depends on how diligent they are about ensuring that the metadata in their music files is complete and correct, and how much effort they are willing to put in to updating the information in the MusicBrainz database.
EAC is good, but not perfect. I especially find it can get caught out on unusual singles as it is more likely to match the same track lengths on a short CD.
First, the two CD issue. This is easy. Just fix in Picard. Use EAC to rip, but Picard to tag and maybe set the filenames. I don’t think EAC ever gets the “CD 1 of 2” correct for me. And usually fails to work out the year from a date like “2020-10-09”
With the missing CDs and bad EAC matches, again flip to Picard to submit the CD’s DiscID to the MusicBrainz database. Update the new release on the MB site. Once added to the database (at least a track list, title, etc) then go back to EAC and you’ll find it can now recognise your newly added release pretty quickly.
Extras:
I always make sure I keep the EAC rip logs. These are handy as they also hold the CD ToC and can be converted to a DiscID. Useful to have with your ripped files. Especially as it also notes if there were errors in extraction.
When ripping a multi CD release in Picard, I manually make my own CD1, CD2 folders and move files after each rip. Partly due to wanting to keep those rip logs as I not found a way to uniquely name them.
A slightly geeky thing. When you have your newly ripped release in Picard, do a “Lookup CD” again. This will make sure Picard inserts the actual DiscID into a tag in your music files.
I hope you are ripping to FLAC. Don’t waste time by going to MP3. I made this mistake, took a year to rip my CDs, then upgraded my hifi and everything sounded back.
Avoid Microsoft’s Media Player… I don’t think M$ has updated that in many many years
