Thanks!
Thanks again! And the time a CD player counts backwards is the offset of track 1?
So if you convert CDs to digital media, the original TOC will be lost. (?)
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In general yes, as you only end up with individual files. But this is why cuesheets exists. If you have a CD burning software and a bunch of ripped audio files + the cuesheet with the TOC data in it you can in theory reproduce the exact disc layout (leading to a disc with identical disc ID).
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Oh, at least I know now what they are good for - never created them. But thanks again!
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Very likely. Unless someone in manufacturing did something to change a gap between the tracks, or slightly altered the sector it started on.
I don’t have all the correct terms, but it is very common that the a copy of the master the European disk is printed from is then sent to the US for printing the initial run. You get some occasions where a CD may say “EMI JAPAN” in the matrix but it is actually printed in the US on a US production line, but from a Japanese master.
This is why you’ll see the old members nagging for good scans. Many people who use Musicbrainz don’t care for these details and “just want to tag their music”. In these cases they may even have just thrown a random image up as a cover. That is basic heresy. Images are here for identification, and not for tagging. 
Same here - and that expands to a wider knowledge of music. I love it. 
An unexpected side effect of this place. Gets even better when you start adding the musicians and chase off down some tangent of working out who it was playing the maracas in the background of track 2 and are they the same person who player tambourine on that other band’s performance…
You know when the addiction is taking over when you start searching Amazon and Ebay for an obscure release just so you can place it on your scanner and upload it! I’ve done that at least a dozen times now 
Now those are some fine examples of subtle differences from @highstrung. Discogs gets even deeper as they insist on new Releases for Matrix details too.
Oh it is certainly about the music. If we didn’t have the music, then we’d have nothing to make a database about. I have rediscovered so many of the CDs on my own shelf that I had forgotten about over the decades.
I have also seen those manufacturing errors. And then the plain intentional manufacturing changes.
Some of the Pink Floyd remasters cut up releases very differently (especially Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall). Subtle differences only the true collector notices. And we here at MB then neatly document (and argue over).
Yay!! Here come the experts with more details… Hi @outsidecontext and @jesus2099 and every one else joining in.
Haha… you made the mistake of asking for the details… We’ve drawn you in… there is no escape. 
And readable scans. Nothing weirder than finding someone uploaded 300x300 pixel scans in full fuzzy vision.
When I rip CDs I use EAC. The EAC log is what I quoted above with the TOC in it. It is not as good as a cuesheet for re-burning the CD from the files, but then I still keep my CDs.
There is a handy little website that can be used for pasting an EAC log into and it will upload it as if it is the actual CD.
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I use K3b on Linux, so EAC is no option, but I will generate and keep cuesheets from now on, in case my CDs become unreadable. (although would only be necessary if there is an offset on track 1?)
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I use K3b on Linux, so EAC is no option, but I will generate and keep cuesheets from now on, in case my CDs become unreadable. (although would only be necessary if there is an offset on track 1?)
By now I only bought some albums I like from first hand stores, but I can see the direction… 
Regarding scans - I’m very unhappy with my scanner. It produces huge shadows if the cover isn’t absolutely plain on the glass. And even then on rounded edges.
Worse: on reflective ground, it adds strange patterns to the original image. That’s a huge problem with CDs. (it’s an Epson V370, relatively cheap model)
Has anyone a model to recommend?
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Cuesheets will also know the gaps between one track and a next. This is important for albums like Dark Side of the Moon with is gapless and flows from track to track. The average CD Burning program tries to insert two second gaps.
Your Peter Gabriel concert CDs will be similar. They would be odd with gaps between the tracks.
Even before coming to MB I had a large selection of second hand music. The city I lived in as a student (in the previous century) had a dozen second hand record stores. I used to plot my route in to town to walk through as many of them as possible. Large chunks of my CD and Vinyl came from there. And heaps of bootleg cassettes. I’d rather the profit goes to those little stores than the big mega stores.
Nothing better than flicking through lots of vinyl looking for treasures. 
Then rushing home to play it. Before the days of YouTube making all music available for nothing and spoiling all the surprises.
MB lets you know what is missing from your collection…
This last decade it is now “direct from the band” websites or Amazon and EBay. I kinda miss the days of finding surprises in the second hand record racks. EBay can be excellent. So many cheap bargains and surprises to be found. I also have the habit of picking a dozen items from one person to “combine the postage” 'cos I am it of a cheap-skate and see how many £2-£5 CDs 
I can get into one level of postage
I know there are MB members who take MB with them on their phone to search the second hand record stores.
Scanner - can’t help much there as I have “all in one” devices. Just know that my Brother scanner gives better colour than the OKI. If I was to pick up a scanner I’d choose Canon as they also produce cameras so understand more about colour than Epson.
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I didn’t know any trustworthy second hand shops in Vienna, so I spent all my money in very profit-orientated first hand stores (mainly one). And the records I purchased circled among my friends. So some of them are in no good shape now (probably worse than your second hand albums). From my friends I borrowed their albums and copied them. Cassettes are long gone, most of the copied CDs as well, some refused to make it on HDD, but sometimes I scanned the covers to create my own “original” covers, including booklet. I kept all those but some of them may have a quality like your 300x300 image. Maybe they will be useful nevertheless.
But I still have many original CDs, not in MB and not on hard drive. It’s quite troublesome to tag them manually. I added one of them today. It wasn’t trouble-free, but I think I’ve made a timing error. 
I should have 1. added to MB and 2. ripped the CD with information from MB. Without file names and tags, Picard has serious problems to get a match. 
There are two possibilities:
- The release and its Disc IDs were added pre-NGS (before 18 May 2011, it’s the case here), when (among other things) all editions with same tracklist would share the same release onto which each edition had its release event (one date, one country, one label, one catalogue number and one barcode) and, thus, the shared release had many Disc IDs.
When the NGS migration was done, all release events were converted into proper release but, as there was no link between Disc IDs and release events, there was a decision to either drop undeterminable Disc IDs or keep all Disc IDs on all split releases. The latter was chosen and almost all pre-NGS releases (those with no uncommon tracklists, with no bonus tracks) have several Disc IDs.
Or:
- People added their Disc IDs on existing release without noticing the difference with their edition.
But an edition, an MB release should IMO contain only one Disc ID per medium.
So always feel free to create your clean MB release with all edition disambiguation details and with your Disc ID alone.
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But then, where do the current track times come from?
I don’t want to produce duplicate entries, but I think this one is clear. There’s no other matching release, though one of the undeterminable Discs share this ID.
It’s much like the training I desired earlier, thanks to all! 
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I have done so multiple times after discovering that my copy differed from the listed ones. Is it safe to then remove the matching DiscID from the other releases in the group? Perhaps from the releases predating the NGS? I’d love to see some SOP how to handle the insane number of DiscIDs attached to certain releases.
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Yup, MB is a great learning experience and for me, it never stops. Regarding TOC’s, Cue sheets & scans for my cd’s in hand, I now create a sub folder in each release folder. I simply call it “Art & info”. I cut and paste the cue sheet and all the scans I submitted into this folder. Should I ever misplace the A&i folder, all I have to do is open it and put it where it belongs. Unfortunately I started this only two months ago and now I have to match over 1k scans to their appropriate release. [Huge DUH on me].
When submitting art, I include a scan of the hub to include some matrix, IFPI info that can’t be seen on the scan. Hopefully MB will add a section for Ed’s to officially place this info. I’m not really happy with throwing it in annotations. As others have said, prepare to go quite mad 
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One of the Disc IDs or manually set, like today.
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When I clone a pre-NGS release to have a clean representation of my edition, I only have my Disc ID on it, I don’t remove this Disc ID from the big NGS loose release.
When I don’t want to make a clone, because an existing release is super precise and 100% the same as my edition, I will make sure everything from CAA to catalogue numbers to manufacturer, etc. consistent and then I will remove the other Disc IDs, as they are usually present on all pre-NGS split release due to NGS migration, they will not disappear so it’s safe.
Nowadays, I tend to almost always clone, to limit my impact on other editors’ collections, etc.
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No, it isn’t in general. As discussed above it is totally normal for the same disc ID to appear on different releases on the same release group as the disc ID is based on the layout of track on the disc.
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That is a very conservative approach. I was hoping there was some way to prune some of the more excessive releases:
In the annotation field you can still see a desperate editor trying to get a grip on the collection of discIDs, but that was eight years ago, with no follow-up.
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Sounds reasonable, but would we also expect numerous discIDs associated with the same release? I genuinely have no intuition whether that is something we’d expect.
BTW, seems like I am hijacking the thread. If the powers that be feel like it, they may split this diversion out.
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I wonder if we could narrow it down for this release group…
I still don’t understand. Randomly one of the DiscIDs? What means “like today”? I read the editing history of both releases, there were no changes lately. Releases were merged and TOCs added in 2018. When was the upgrade to NGS?
Do we know the overall number of CD releases in this release group? There are 4 releases now, 3 before I added mine. So in fact there were 4 Disc IDs from 3 reconstructed releases…
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Sorry, what’s “the hub”? And where do I find IFPI? I’m not used to this term.
As @jesus2099 pointed out, it was either to drop them or keep them together. But my suspicion grows there might be no benefit in keeping them, as especially these releases are not well documented. No chance to compare them with your release on other basis to be “100%” sure.