PC Music Server in The Absolute Sound for Karl Schuster
wjabbott -- Thu, 07/10/2008 - 15:32
For Mr. Schuster...
I am building a music server on my existing PC prior to investing in a new PC to be a dedicated music server. I have installed Exact Audio Copy and have encountered issues trying to use freeDB. FreeDB does not return any information on the CD in the drive. Did you have any problems retrieving information? I would normally use the online documentation in these situations, but the online help does not address freeDB and the freeDB web site does not seem very intuitive. I am a relatively sophisticated PC person and don't usually encounter this kind of problem. Do I need to manually enter the CD title and Artist name to retrieve the information? The CD in question is Beggar's Banquet by the Rolling Stones.
I would appreciate any help you could give since you have accomplished all this successfully.
Thanks in advance for your time...
Bill Abbott
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Bill,
Sorry it's taken so long to respond. Several years ago, there was a big re-organization of the freedb web site, when one of the founders left the group. Exact Audio Copy must be configured as follows to automatically download the tagging metadata from the freedb database.
From the EAC menu, select "freedb / Database Options". On the "freedb" tab, enter an email address, and copy the following text into the "freedb server" field:
http://freedb.freedb.org:80/~cddb/cddb.cgi
You can leave the default values for the remaining settings.
If you want EAC to automatically check the freedb database for metadata when you insert a new CD, then do the following:
From the EAC menu, select "EAC Options". On the "General" tab, place a check mark in the box labeled "On unknown CDs", and select the "automatically access online freedb database" radio button. It's also a good idea to check the box marked "Disable 'CD autostart' for audio and data CDs while EAC running" box, to prevent other programs from opening when you're ripping CDs.
If you have multiple CD drives in your computer, you will have to make the above changes for each drive that you intend to use for ripping.
It's always a good idea to Save your configuration changes to a customized Profile (via the EAC menu, or the status bar at the bottom of the EAC screen).
Due to the freedb changes, there's one quirk with MANUALLY accessing the online metadata (which is probably the problem that you encountered): The obvious graphic button that looks like a CD on the main screen will NOT work anymore! In order to manually initiate a database lookup, pull down the "Database" menu, and select "Get CD information from" and then select "Remote freedb", or remember to use the "Alt G" shortcut key (which has the added advantage of allowing you to select from multiple posted metadata sets, rather than defaulting to the first entry found).
That should about do it.
Thanks for taking the time to read the article. Despite the tweaky configuration details, EAC is still the most useful ripper available.