Hi.
I’m new here and don’t know much about these things. I have a Cambridge Audio Evo 150 CD player, and the problem is that some CDs display the titles but not the cover art, and others display cover art that doesn’t match the CD. The user manual says that the player uses Musicbrainz to display them. I’ve checked the versions and they’re in Musicbrainz, so I don’t know what the problem could be. Could you help me, please?
Thank you very much.
If the player is “using MusicBrainz” then that implies to me it is looking for a tag in the music file that is then looked up at MusicBrainz. Not all versions of albums have artwork.
Install Picard and load one of your albums up. Then use “Lookup in Browser” to look online at what exactly is shown for that release.
In Picard, check the tags in the files and see if “MusicBrainz Release ID” is set.
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Ahah - I read again. CD player. So not tagged files.
Bet it is missing DiscIDs. Use Picard to send DiscIDs into the system to match your release.
Drop a couple of examples here which don’t lookup cleanly. There may be a pattern. For example I expect a CD player would have trouble with a 30MB PNG file for an image. Or it plain get confused when multiple releases are offered for a DiscID and pick one without artwork.
Cambridge Audio has a support page about this at https://supportarchive.cambridgeaudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/18064472582301-Why-doesn-t-the-EVO-75-150-display-my-CD-s-album-artwork-or-track-information, but it doesn’t explain how their software tries to find a matching release. My hope would be that they compute the Disc ID and then use that, but maybe they fall back to searching by e.g. artist and title – that could explain issues like incorrect cover art. Note that multiple releases (with different cover art) can share the same Disc ID, so in some cases it’s likely impossible for the player to reliably determine which one you have.
Could you link to some of the MusicBrainz releases for which the player doesn’t show cover art, or shows incorrect cover art?
If the releases are missing Disc IDs in MusicBrainz, you could also try adding them to see if that helps. Please don’t do that unless you’re completely sure that the MusicBrainz release exactly matches the one that you have. The release documentation and style guidelines have more information.
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This one, for example, all data is correct (barcode number, catalog number, labels, date, song titles…) but shows cover art and album tiltle from “A dream imagined” album:
This one the same, all data is correct, but it also shows different cover art and album title "The Later Years: 1987-2019):
And this shows everything, songs titles, album title… But not cover art (and it is the same catalog number and barcode number):
Useful examples. My money is on a DiscID issue that only Cambridge Audio could fix.
If you put your CD into Picard and press “Lookup CD” you’ll see that your CD matches to various releases. What I assume is happening in your first two examples is the Cambridge Audio app is incorrectly selecting boxsets that include your album instead of the album itself.
With the third example the DiscID is likely matching to an album without any artwork.
A CD doesn’t have much in the way of identifying data on it. There is no “title” or “artist” in the Table of Contents. All that really can be done is create a alphanumeric code (a DiscID) based on the Table of Contents and perform a lookup from that.
When a CD appears in both a box set (The Later Years) and a stand alone release (Delicate Sound of Thunder) it is hard for the Cambridge Audio app to know which to pick. So it takes an educated guess. When we have a tool like Picard in our hands it can offer us a GUI with a selection list. Something that I think Cambridge Audio may need to implement.
DiscID details - Disc ID - MusicBrainz
Very geeky explanation of how it is created - Disc ID Calculation - MusicBrainz
On a side note - I hope Cambridge Audio donate to MusicBrainz now their expensive audio kit uses the MusicBrainz resource. Though for me it is always funny to know where my scanned artwork may end up 
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Interesting to note what happens when you look at DiscIDs on the boxset A Dream Imagined… and check the DiscID for The Great Divide - CD8.
It links to the DiscID 7SvOAkiEalbmWKb.nY5uG1Nj0YQ- and you can see the Standalone Release has no artwork. The only artwork is on the boxset.
My bet here is your CD will generate that DiscID. And the only art that can be selected is therefore from the boxset
Please do not edit the MusicBrainz database to fix the mistakes on your CD player.
The MusicBrainz database is about a document of actual releases. It is a Cambridge Audio bug you have and they need to fix it. Please don’t edit this database to fix their issue. You are literally breaking other releases to make your artwork look pretty.
I could fix the above one, but I can’t fix these
Please don’t move DiscIDs off of legitimate releases just to fix your CD player. Talk to Cambrige Audio as to how their CD artwork can be fixed. DiscIDs are not unique to one CD. They appear on many different releases.
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IvanDobsky, I am very sorry with all the problem I am causing. I didn’t understand how all this works.
With your comments I am understanding it better.
Sorry again
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Best way to learn anything is to make an utter mess of it all. 
I am glad my comments are coming across in the right way. This is a complex place, but after a while you’ll get your head around how it works around here. There are a pile of guidelines in the documentation at the top of the page on the main site. But we can also help out.
I can see what you were trying to do, but it is really a Cambridge Audio problem. Not easily fixed by just hacking through the MusicBrainz website. I doubt you are the only one with this issue and I’d poke at CA a bit more and see what they respond with.
Ultimately we are all Music mad around here and like our accurate data.
They are there on our bronze tier of supporters (although their logo has broken, whoops) 
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Yay! Good to see Cambridge Audio doing the right thing.
I like that Bronze list. Gives a little glimpse into how many people benefit from the data we add.
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