Has anyone tried out the CD Player built into Win2K? You pop a CD in and it logs onto a server and retrieves the artist name, title of the CD and name of every track. I spent an hour in a drunken haze rummaging through my CD collection trying to find a disc to stump it to no avail. A BBC collection of Rimsky-Korsakov and Modest Mussorgsky, it knew. The soundtrack to the Atari Jaguar game Tempest 2000, it knew. A sound effects CD, a Warner Bros. Hot Hits CD I came across in 1993, The Jerky Boys, every time it knew the artist, CD title and every track name. At first I though it must be getting this information off the CD itself, but if I went offline and clicked cancel when Windows prompted to go online after putting in a CD, it would just list default terms like “New Artist” and “Track 01”. How can it recognize such a wide range of obscure titles and what information about the CD does it send to the server to identify it?
idont know how it works, good question
but winamp does the same thing… pulls song titles off the net.
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Just a WAG, but I think it may have something to do with the number of tracks and length of each. This seems like it would be the easiest way to tell cd’s apart without listening to them.
check it out. you can download players for win98, etc.
many of those players allow you to upload cds that aren’t in the database. it uses a formula based on cd time and how many tracks the cd has, and maybe even track time. supposedly, getting cds that have the same info is rare. however, i’ve got a bunch of one track and 3 track promo cds that bring up really funky entries. a pitchshifter cd i had came up as amy grant. weird.
and don’t upload info from cds you’ve burned. that’s just dumb
I believe that commercial music CD’s actually have a serial number burned into them. At least that was my understanding of it, having looked at the file from one of my old CD players that had the ability for the user to input the tracks and such on his own. (Which I much prefer over my system going onto the net every time I put in a CD.) The file stored the data in the format of a long string of alphanumerics, followed by the disc name, then the track names. I guess the string could have been built from other information and looked like a serial number.
>>Being Chaotic Evil means never having to say your sorry…unless the other guy is bigger than you.<<
—The dragon observes
I haven’t used the Win2K CD player but I have used the CDDB feature before- possibly with Winamp. We tried playing “stump the CDDB” as well with no luck. Most surprising was that it recognized my brother’s Band of Gypsies III CD- a bootleg CD from Italy only available overseas.
Yeah, it logs into that database and matches up the amount of songs and their lengths with what they have on record, and their records are mighty impressive. That said, I have stumped it.
I put an advance CD or a local band’s product in the player (I use Winamp, but it also works with Real Jukebox). Usually it will give a few choices that are close in it’s mind, but the stuff ON the CDs are usually NOT close.
The funniest thing was when I put in a bootleg that a coworker burned me of Iron Maiden. It actually HAD THE INFORMATION from this CD! Turns out, somewhere, it was a legal release. Go figure!
Yer pal,
Satan