iPod Title confusion

[Howard Brazee]

I just bought the CD "The #1 Opera Album" and ripped it to iTunes.

But iTunes shows the songs in:
Greatest Opera Show On Earth [Disc 1]
&
Greatest Opera Show On Earth [Disc 2]

I can change this - but why did it happen?

 

[mkrishnan]

The way iTunes works is by taking length data from the disc and then sending it to the GraceNote database. It's possible that two things can happen. One, technically, two albums can be exactly equally long with the same track structure, etc. This is rare, because the length is down to 1/44100th of a second (total number of samples). In this case, GraceNote has no way to tell which it is.

The second thing that can happen is that more obscure CDs -- collections, compilations, where it is not "first source" material -- are sometimes sold under multiple names, or entered into the database incorrectly.

Actually, if you look at Amazon.com, it indeed does appear that the same CD was also sold under the name GraceNote pulled up:

http://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Opera-Show-Earth/dp/B0000042I1

 

[dejo]

One, technically, two albums can be exactly equally long with the same track structure, etc. This is rare, because the length is down to 1/44100th of a second (total number of samples). In this case, GraceNote has no way to tell which it is.

I don't think GraceNote keeps track of that much accuracy. I think they just store the CD length down to the seconds.

 

[mkrishnan]

I don't think GraceNote keeps track of that much accuracy. I think they just store the CD length down to the seconds.

Mmm, no, if it were seconds there would be a lot more instances when you see erroneous duplicates. My understanding is that it's a fuzzy match to the table of contents on the disc, which indexes positions based on samples -- that's where the 1/44,100 figure comes from (cds are sampled at 44.1kHz). The TOC on the disc is not in "realtime." It wouldn't make any sense for it to be. Rather, it's in disc positions, which code back to the sample rate.

Source.

 

[Howard Brazee]

Thanks. That makes sense.