I just bought a 6 CD set of Georges Thilll’s Grands Airs d’Operas. It’s an EMI label. There is no metadata! No album title, no artist, no track info. Which means I will have to hand enter the track information by hand. There are approximately 15 tracks per CD, so about 90 track entries. Even worse, it’s all in French, a language I am not conversant with.
How does this metadata system work? How can it happen that metadata does not get added in where it should be? Is it up to the manufacturer to pass on metadata to the proper places? Is there any way an individual can add it in?
I suggest you try software that does track lookup using gracenote / cddb. Dbpoweramp does this I think. Of course if the data is not there then nothing will be found. It’s true some cd discs are embedded with cd text but that’s not always the case. Track data is often matched using the number of tracks on the cd, and the lengths of those tracks, which allows simple data like artist and track names to be returned.
Thanks, I’ll try out both suggestions as both Song Kong and dbPoweramp are on my radar for other reasons. From further looking I doubt I will find the metadata as no vendor or other interested party on my google search shows track info. I was optimistic to begin with simply because EMI is a well known provider, but no longer, and I am left wondering why.
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I’ve never heard of George however I looked them up and saw that he was a world-famous tenor back in 35.
Anyhow I found you notes for all 6 disc
Go to
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Hi Janet the metadata lookup in the Core comes from three databases (Rovi, Musicbrainz and Freedb) and normally it’s the CD publisher (EMI in this case apparently) job to add it. But quite often for some CDs they either don’t at all, or do it only partially. Sometimes enthusiasts will themselves add it to Freedb but this is a non-trivial thing to do if you aren’t familiar with how to do it.
Your alternatives are to edit it in yourself using the Naim app, or to either 1) copy the rips to the Core downloads folder and then delete the rip in the music store using the Naim app or 2) delete the tips using the Naim app and rip afresh on a PC, editing the metadata using one of the software/lookup suggestions made by others above and then add the finished product to the downloads folder of the Core.
Or you can keep the edited rips on a USB stick or whatever and have the Core index that as a music share.
In any case, it’s not a Naim shortcoming. It’s EMI’s fault.
Best
David
Gordon,
You are an enterprising fellow and I do thank you. Unfortunately, what you found is an overview and not a complete directory of each aria sung on each track. I do have an insert that came with the compilation that actually does lay out in great detail all the information for each track. Rather than spending money to perhaps find this info online, I have assigned myself the task of entering the track information for one CD per day. There are 15 tracks on CD 1. It’ll only take me six days to do all of them. Theoretically! I’ve already lagged behind on my deadline, having entered only 10 tracks when there are 15 on CD1. Oh well, it’s not like there is a real deadline.
Here’s one of the easier to spell examples of a typical track entry.
MEYERBEER: Les Huguenots. Ah! Quel spectacle enchanteur … Plus Blanche que la blanche hermine (Acte 1)
Incidentally, Georges Thill’s name often appears on a list of the greatest tenors of music recording history. On French lists of greatest tenors he would always have the honor of first place. He had an exceptionally beautiful voice and I decided to invest in this compilation to discover for myself whether he can join my own short list of favorite tenors.
Hi David,
As always a very comprehensive response, and thanks.
I don’t think I will find the metadata anywhere online, so I’ve decided to manually enter it. It’s not the first time I’ve entered track data manually. I would really like to also add it into Freedb, but whether I have the mental stamina to learn how to do it is questionable.
I’ve assumed all along the absence of metadata is the fault of EMI. It just surprises me that a major record label would overlook doing whatever is customary for metadata.
What I do when faced with large numbers of entries in a foreign language is recognise that I’m not going to ever look at all of that detail, so I do a first edit that just identifies the works in question and then later a second edit adding some more detail if I feel it worthwhile.
It depends whether you can control your own level of OCD though!
Best
David
That first pass/second pass is a very good idea. For a first pass I can enter
Composer:Title
For a second pass I can add
Name/Title of Aria/Song
Definitely a good idea. Thanks for that, David. I think that ought to put my OCD on pause (lol).
If you tried searching online using exactly what you wrote in your OP, then you might have had a problem due to the extra ‘l’ you added to the singer’s surname. It’s Thill, not Thilll.
You may find some of the metadata you want at these three free music metadata online databases. All of them have information about several Thill recordings. I didn’t see any reference to your box set, but it was probably compiled from several previously released CDs.
The 6 cd album is not there, though there are quite a few aria/song titles I could copy / paste into the track info which would save me the work of manually entering them. Thanks!
No, I didn’t misspell Thill in my search, and even if I had google corrects for that. The album, for some reason, is just not on the radar in the usual ways.
I’m glad to hear that those links have proved to be useful 
BTW, those 3 online databases (plus a couple of others that you can’t access directly via a website) are used by dBpoweramp’s CD Ripper, a program I highly recommend. Among other benefits, it allows you to create detailed profiles that will automatically create suitable new folder names for storing the rips. Even if you depend (as you should) on metadata for browsing your collection, it is always useful to have a properly organised physical file storage structure.
Thanks all a lot for all the good tips !!
I did get all the manual data entered. Wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be.
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