Sunday, October 28, 2007

CDs, Introduce Yourselves!!!

Hello everyone,

Its been some time since my last computer factoid was posted.

Today we are going to discuss "CD Text".

Since September 1996, it has been part of the Audio CD Standard to add the CD artist, CD title, Track Title, and Track Artist data to audio CDs so that more accurate information can be displayed than "Track 01".

Some of you with car audio systems with advanced displays may have noticed this. Many of you probably have several music CDs with this capability, but don't know. CD burning software has had the option to add CD Text to the CD burning project for years, though it is usually an unchecked option.

Now you may be asking yourself "Shenanigans Soundwave! How can such cool features be walking among us, without anyone realizing they exist?"

I give you but one answer "Windows Media Player (including WMP 11) does not support the feature, regardless of the fact that it has been part of the standard for over 10 years!"

For this very reason, the majority of the people out there do not know of this very cool feature. But no longer! Stream Crossers, I give you the fruits of my latest internet search, a plugin that adds CD Text capability to Windows Media Player: WMPCDText.

The only little glitch that I ran into is that the first time you play a given CD with CD Text, the title won't be displayed until the second time you play it. Other than than, it worked flawlessly for me.

Download it here:
WMPCDText

Official Announcement

If you want to test it out, I know for a fact that Our Lady Peace, Happiness is Not a Fish That You Can Catch, has the feature. There are others, I just don't know of a list of all discs that feature CD Text support.

More reading on CD Text:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-Text
http://web.ncf.ca/aa571/cdtext.htm

So until next time, keep on having fun!

"bah weep graaagnah wheep ni ni bong"

2 comments:

Sal C. said...

I bought my car stereo system in 2002 and I thought the CDTEXT feature was very neat! I didn't get a hang of adding titles to my files until much later, but I think a got a better understanding than I used to.

The next step for CAR AUDIO is incorporating album covers when the disc is played. I know this can be done with mp3 files, but as for CDA files, i'm not really sure. And of course, the deck should support the feature by having a small video display screen.

Another informative post, many thanks Soundwave.

My favourite part: "Shenanigans Soundwave!"

Anonymous said...

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NICE!