Wrong CD Title and Tracks

Gracenote tries to do a match on the combination of track lengths in the CD. Sometimes you get an erroneous match, as you did with the trumpet CD. (I've seen this more often on CDs with just a few tracks.) But, no worries, just right click the song, go into "Get Info," and type in the correct information.

Windows XP

Oh by the way, in your case, it is iTunes using its memory trying to identify the CD, not Gracenote. However, the problem is the same. An audio CD (whose technology is essentially unchanged since the early 80s) does not have any built-in way to identify itself. So external programs use the pattern of tracks and times, and that is not guaranteed unique.

I have a similar problem. I am trying to burn CDs of my original music for clients, conductors, etc. Since my tracks are original, new, iTunes has no reference for them. iTunes keeps assigning CD and song titles from a previously burned project to my current project.

Where do I reset the CD and song titles in iTunes so it burns them to discs correctly? It doesn't work if I just type them into the main songlist viewing window. Help?!

I'm having a similar problem, which for me is happening only with one-track CDs. I burned a one-track CD of an original song. When I insert that CD in one of my Macs, it gives one erroneous CD name; when I put it in the other, it gives a different one. When I put it in a Windows PC, there's no CD or track name. So obviously, iTunes is taking a guess at the name. Is there any way to get it to stop doing that?

You are not alone: I too am trying to burn one original song to a disc, and it changes the playlist name and the song name to the name of another song/playlist that was deleted from the computer long ago. When I loaded the cd onto another mac it had altogether different labels for song/disk name ...

I have had this problem. I discovered a possible answer, but not solution:-

"How iTunes remembers audio CDs" using this link

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93952

My idea is that one track burned CDs are not recorded in the "CD Info.cidb" file.

Further to this, that the CD burning is not properly done. Itunes may recognise the CD, but the Mac cannot recognise the one track CD.

Yes, a two track CD seems to work OK. The CD has correct CD and track names.

John,

I know you posted a long time ago, but I think more recent posts by Peter and Bob may be on the right track. Can you please confirm or deny:

Did your CD which was showing up with an incorrect name have only one track on it?

Thanks

sonneuse,

I think more recent posts by Peter and Bob may be on the right track. Can you please confirm or deny:

Did the CDs which were showing up with incorrect names have only one track on each one?

Thanks

Yes.

There was only one track on CD.

It is as if iTunes ignored the existance of the 'burned' CD.

Hi All,

I may have a solution to help some of you...I just spent several hours testing this so it should work for most ppl.

We have 2 macs and 2 windows pc in our house. My brother was having the same problem on his mac with itunes.
Everything I tried to help him with failed. All computers would show "track1" etc. So racking my brain, this is what I did.

* Do not use ITUNES to burn your disk on Macs, until apple can figure out how to fix that.

* Get a blank recordable disk and insert it (I had errors on a re-writable) a window will pop up with a menu, make sure you click ok for the choice "Open in finder" That disk will appear on the desktop now. Double click it for now to open it (it should be blank)and move the window to the right.

* Your ITUNES music files are simply .aiff or .mp3 files so..

*Go to your itunes music folder on your Hard Disk, under:

Harddisk>music>itunes>itunes music

* Open the desired folder that contains the song (s) you wish to burn. Drag yoursong.mp3 file over to the CD disk folder we opened and drop the file. It will create an alias.

*Once you have chosen the songs, in the top right corner of the CD opened window, you will see "Burn" or Burn disk" click, a menu will pop up, at this time you can title the name of your CD of how you want it to appear when inserted.

Click "Ok" and the burning process should begin. when it's complete, eject the disk, re-insert to verify.

I did this using Plain music files that we created at home on a piano, but for protected music or music bought from itunes store, I would not know.

Hope this helps some of you.

Macx a million

"All computers would show "track1"

That is not the problem under discussion here. The tracks are named "track 1" (etc) whenever the computer does not recognize the CD and cannot look up the CD on a database such as Gracenote's CDDB. That is normal behavior under some circumstances.

The problem described by in the original post, and by others, including myself, is this: The Mac displays an INCORRECT title for the CD and the track - that is, the title shown is a real title of a real track which the computer has previously seen, but is not the correct title for the present CD. (Example: I insert "Giant Rat of Sumatra" and it shows up on the Desktop or in iTunes as "Bozos" - it does playback correctly as "Giant Rat.." - and the Time and File Size are correct for Giant Rat - only the title of the CD and the track on it are incorrect.

In my case, both the recently inserted CD and the incorrect title are CDs with only one track on them (multiple track CDs work fine), and the problem occurs even when I use software other than iTunes to burn the CD, so it is NOT a problem with the way iTunes BURNS the CD, but rather is a problem with the way the Mac RECOGNIZES CDs.

To get a better understanding about how Macs (and Windows) recognize CDs, please follow the link posted in this thread by Bob the Driver (July 12).

I'm sorry if my topic was wrong as you stated but I thought this was the Apple.com > Support > Discussions > iTunes for Mac > Importing & Burning in iTunes for Mac board.

I should have explained in the beginning of my posting that, yes, our Cd's also came up with a different name of CD and Title of song, other times just blank but it has never happened before, even with one song. In regards to that link http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93952

I simply removed that file and the CDDB file Temporarily to see what would happen, restarted the computer. and was able to burn a CD and One song with all the correct song titles and CD title. Played in other computers and everything was ok. The CD burner is supposed to burn that info onto the disk itself so it can be read correctly in other computers.

The fact that on the mac, the CD Info.cidb file was corrupt.

As I stated in my other post as what I did I said , _*It may work for some folks_*

Never had any problems with the mac not being able to read the proper info off a disk until recently. Something is corrupting the CDDB file.

MaxaMillion,

Thanks for the clarification - it looks like we are working on the same problem, after all. Many people believe seeing the generic -"track 1" - "track 2" - titles on a CD indicates some kind of failure by iTunes, so when I read your post, I (mistakenly) thought you were confusing that "problem" with the not-generic-but-not-correct-title-problem already under discussion in this thread. I apologize for any misunderstanding on my part

Like you, I believe the problem is probably a corrupt "CD Info.cidb" file.

And like you, I am trying to understand how this process works. However, we seem to understand the process - differently.

You say:
"The CD burner is supposed to burn that info onto the disk itself so it can be read correctly in other computers."

That is contradicted in the Apple article: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93952 which says:
"The CD and track names are not burned anywhere onto the CD itself."

Yet, you also say you were able to burn a CD which: "Played in other computers and everything was ok." - Which I interpret to mean you burned a CD on computer A which had a track named "xyz", then put the CD in computer B which correctly showed the track as "xyz" - is that correct???

. . . so I am trying to reconcile these contradictory statements - you seem to have succeeded in doing something which Apple (and many others posting to these discussions say is not possible.

I believe I may have an explanation for your apparent success. The method you used to make the CD - that is, using the Finder and NOT iTunes - makes a DATA disc - not an AUDIO CD.

If you selected an .mp3 file - and it was still an .mp3 file on the new CD, that would be significant - and would prove my theory. Standard audio CDs always have only type of files on them - .aiff.

If you had used iTunes to burn the CD, then iTunes would have converted the mp3 file to the .aiff format in the burning process, and the finished CD would conform to the audio standard (which your data disc does not). When Apple says: "The CD and track names are not burned anywhere onto the CD itself" - they are talking about audio CDs, not data CDs.

Data discs do have the track names burned to the disc and those track titles can be read by any computer - but the files cannot be read by many older audio units - like the one in your car or home stereo system (if it does not say "MP3 Compatable" on the front of the deck, I doubt if your data CD will play).

Does this make sense?

It seems like those of us having this problem are typically trying to record single tracks: I am a VO artist who is constantly making demos and single track disks to send out.

I can't speak to the fix, but a simple work around (for me, anyway) has been to include a 1 second track of silence on the disk after the relevant track. It doesn't take up much room, and the person playing the disk won't hear anything or even notice that their player went to track 2 for all of 1 second.

Until this is fixed, it seems like a simple way to avoid the issue.

Just like the rest of my life, avoiding the issue.