A low-priority, and probably impractical request:

freedb is commonly used by CD ripping software, and unfortunately it returns results which are inconsistent (especially Artist Name) with CDDB. This creates a lot of cleanup work before attaching CT records to audio tracks. It would be great if CT could somehow be integrated with one or more CD-ripping programs (such as EAC or CDex) so that the results between the two were consistent.

(I did not discover auto organize until after I had loaded and ripped my collection; if it makes this request moot then I withdraw it!)

Hi UncleBoo,

First I want to add my "hello". I've been reading your posts along with Ken's replies.

What you can do, if the CD has already been scanned by CATraxx, is FILE > EXPORT > CDPLAYER.INI

CATraxx will put the album and track data into the CDPLAYER.INI file and EAC will pull the data from there instead of FreeDB.

I recently started do this and my data/tags are so much more consistent.

Uncle Boo

I think you'll find the source of data that CATraxx uses has been the subject of much debate over the years. Some people favour cddb, some freedb and there are other data sources at hand that all have their adherents. There's also been the suggestion of using multiple sources and allowing the user to select whatever is nearest their needs (I nearly said 'most accurate' - but accuracy tends to be in itself a subjective issue!)
Fredrik (the CATraxx author) has chosen cddb as his source. One of the consequences of the cddb licence is that "thou shalt have no other other data source than me". So if you use cddb you can't simultaneously use other sources in the same application. If freedb were to be chosen as the data source we would therefore have to go without cddb.
I honestly don't know enough of the implications of all this for a software developer and what would push you towards one decision or another. All I can say is Fredrik has a very good track record (oh, pun - brilliant ) in producing his application and I'm prepared to go along with him on this issue. I find all external data sources have their problems and you'd be swapping one set of imperfect data for another.

Ken

Once again I notice, that some/many/all? users create data in CATraxx based on the tags.
The data in the tags may come from various sources, many of which are not especially accurate.

I do it the other way around.
Fill the data into CATraxx from CDDB.
Then correct the data if necessary.
Then rip the CD with no tags written.
The update the tags (using CATraxx or HAPupdatetags).

I fail to see that it should be more efficient to manipulate tags outside CATraxx.

All, thanks for your responses. I see that I didn't state my request very well, so I'll try to clarify.

First, Ken, I agree, I'm quite happy that CATraxx uses CDDB, and I'm not trying to suggest it do otherwise. (Although IMO freedb is sometimes more "accurate" than CDDB, I prefer CDDB results overall).

Second, hamsen, the problem I'm having doesn't involve tags in general, just artist name and album title. (Although your tag comments are appreciated, which is why I'm so interested in your utilities!)

Third, Ken has made me realize my issue is with the ripping software, so my request should really be directed to the EAC and CDex authors, but since Fredrik is so responsive, I'll try to put the burden on him.

Here's the situation. I like to store my mp3's in a folder structure of the form
...\<basefolder>\<artist name>\<album title>\...
where <artist name> is in the form <last, first> i.e., the CATraxx Artist SortBy value. I think I'm not alone in this, correct? And since CATraxx since seems naturally oriented to this structure, so far so good.

The problem is that freedb returns results to EAC/CDex that are incompatible with this structure. freedb usually (but not always!) returs an artist name of <first last> rather than <last, first>. The result is that, for example, the ripping software puts the tracks to album "Kind of Blue" in the path
...\Miles Davis\Kind of Blue\... rather than ...\Davis, Miles\Kind of Blue\... (To make matters worse, the album title often varies, too!) So right now, I have a lot of manual cleanup to do (sometimes before rip, sometimes after, but that's a different story).

My (probably impractical) request is that I'd like CATraxx to be somehow integrated with the ripping software to the degree that CATraxx can force the tracks to be ripped into a structure of
...\<CATraxx Artist SortBy>\<CATraxx Album Title>\...

(Note that I don't care if the track names don't match, because CATraxx Attach Audio Files works even if the names don't match. Nor do I care if track tags don't match; I'm using whatever CATraxx imports from CDDB.)

I hope that clarifies things. Feel free to "rip away" at this clarified request. I'm very open to alternate solutions, especially ones that would utilize the software as is. In that vein, Doug, do you still think your CDPLAYER.INI suggestion will work?

Again, thanks for all your thoughtful responses. You guys are great.

Cheers,
Uncle Boo

Hi Uncle Boo,

Yes, I think it will, as then EAC relies on only whatever data is put into the CDPLAYER.INI and hence only what is put into CATRAXX and further hence, , only the data you give it.

The way I do things is to download from CDDB. Make all the edits and updates in CATraxx, then export to CDPLAYER.INI.

Then, when using EAC it will pull the data from the CDPLAYER.INI and create the file name and tags from the data in CDPLAYER.INI.

One thing I do that might be a "little" bit different is all newly acquired files, whether from EAC or other sources, is to initially save them in a "_NEW" folder. Then I have CATraxx AUTO-ORGANIZE them to their appropriate folders.

Hamsen's idea of not relying on outside taggers is probably the best, but I haven't grasp fully implementing it into my work flow. Maybe over time, but not right now..

Hi Doug, (sorry to but in on the conversation here UncleBoo), forgive me, it's been a while since i used CATraxx (dare I say it!) and I've started my library afresh with a new DB. I'm following your way of doing things (as above)...

I've added CD's to CATraxx, then I scanned my media folder for three album's worth of FLAC files, I now have duplicates, of each of the three albums. Is there an easy way to say to CATraxx, that instead of importing the media files as a new album in the library, just attach the media to the existing album?

Errr..., Audio > Attach Audio Files ?
Rather than Audio > Scan Folders: Add Audio Files

The convention in all the CAtraxx menus (Album > ; Track >; and Audio > ) is that when you see the word 'Add' you're requesting to enter a new record in database. To sort of, errr..., add it.
Don't worry I fell down that hole once or twice in the early days!

Ken

Sorry that was a really stupid question, thanks Ken!

Apologies for the double post. Doug, I've tried to do the CDPlayer.ini thing, but on both occasions it's giving me the following error...

"0 CDs added to 'CDPLAYER.INI'. 0 CDs updated. 1 CDs skipped (no valid discID)."

Any ideas?