Toast 17 Titanium and Gracenote/CDDB

[Arthur Vandelay]

Just purchased v.17.4 for use with Mojave 10.14, and have been informed by technical support that Gracenote is no longer supported in Toast 17 Titanium.  Any suggestions for a workaround to another service?

[theoldarchiver]

If you import your music from iTunes, then the tracks can already have meta data from Gracenote. 

Stand-alone meta data taggers can consult Gracenote/CDDB to add the information details to the tracks.

[Arthur Vandelay]

Thank you for your assistance. I now see that iTunes retrieves the details and I have even submitted the data to Gracenote / CDDB for discs not found.  However here are three scenarios, the last being what I am trying to achieve. 

1. The disc I have locates the meta data from within iTunes and I drag the desktop mounted disc to the Toast app, and the Toast app does not respond.  I must force quit the application and restart the computer in order to launch Toast 17 again.
2. The disc I have locates the meta data from within iTunes and I drag the desktop mounted disc to the Toast app, and the tracks begin to populate the Toast window as .aiff files, however the pre-gaps are non-existent, and the title remains “Audio CD.”
3. The disc locates the meta data from within iTunes and I drag the mounted disc to the Toast app, and the tracks begin to populate the Toast window and the pre-gaps are properly displayed, and the disc title is properly displayed.

Are the first two scenarios because Toast no longer supports Gracenote/CDDB? If so, I am wondering why the the third scenario works in some cases.

Is there a way to have Toast look to another service to more consistently retrieve the metadata for my disc? Or is there a better way to accomplish the third scenario consistently?

[theoldarchiver]

The only alternative to Gracenote is FreeDB.org, but I don’t think Toast can be changed to make use of that, but some stand-alone tagger applications may be able to set such.

Does it work better if you use Toast’s Media Browser instead of drag-and-drop of the mounted disc through the Finder? That should help getting the information directly from iTunes.

[Arthur Vandelay]

Unfortunately, using the Toast Media Browser did not remedy the problem.  Although I think I may have isolated the problem.  

When I come across a disc that is not found in Gracenote/CDDB (iTunes shows no identifying data), I submit the metadata through iTunes by selecting “Submit CD Track Names…” from the menu.  I need to wait a few days for the data to be processed by Gracenote: (http://support.gracenote.com/articles/Public_FAQ/Submit-CD-iTunes-12/?l=en_US&c=Public%3AConsumers&cu=1&fs=ContactUs&pn=1)

I re-insert (or mount) the disc, then attempt the process again through the Toast Media Browser, Toast It, or dragging the disc to Toast Titanium.  Often times, the data is NOT found, and the multi-day process begins again until the data is populated in Gracenote.

Curiously, if the data is not in the Gracenote/CDDB database, Toast Titanium freezes during the retrieval process and is not accessible until I perform a system reboot.  This is too time consuming to be practical.  Time to find an alternative.

Thank you very much for your suggestions, they helped greatly in investigating further.

[hermie54]

Jaikoz gets data from Musicbrainz, for instance. The same site also has SongKong, which might help out.

 

See: http://www.jthink.net/jaikoz/

 

[Arthur Vandelay]

I will need to try Jaikoz to see if that works for what I am trying to accomplish.  Thank you for the suggestion!