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I recently spent three weeks ripping a large collection of CDs using abcde (Ubuntu 24.04). I've just discovered that none of them ripped with track metadata, so I can't play any of these albums electronically.

When I search the web, I can't find anything for both "abcde" and "metadata," even though I expected this would be a big topic. There's virtually nothing in the abcde documentation for "metadata". Does abcde not rip track number metadata by default? Is there a way to make it?

Can I use abcde or one of the databases it queries to script a way to add track number metadata to all of the files I've just ripped, or am I going to have to spend weeks more doing that manually?

Darien Marks
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2 Answers2

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Take a look at the man page and /etc/abcde.conf (and/or ~/.abcde.conf, if any).

Apparently the default method is to use MusicBrainz, which requires some modules to be installed for the perl installation in your system. You can take a look at this AUR meta package for reference.

In other words, for Ubuntu you should get these packages:

It seems that at least the latter two are pulled in by abcde in the Ubuntu official repo though. So maybe you should make the program more verbose and see what might have went wrong (e.g. by specifying -V twice).

If you want to use a FreeDB instead, uncomment and change the value in the CDDBMETHOD line in your conf (and maybe also the CDDBURL and HELLOINFO lines; not sure if their default values still work though).

Tom Yan
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The answer to your question is that the CDs probably do not contain any "metadata". While CD Text is a real format, it is not required in the Audio CD spec, and the vast majority of audio CDs are written without it. While my own collection of audio CDs was relatively small for someone who grew up in the 80s and 90s and 00s, of the couple hundred CDs I've owned or possessed that originated from a legit store, only a very small handful ever had actual CD Text written to the discs.

Discs I'd burn my self nearly always had CD Text, but store-bought CDs don't.

All that to say: The problem isn't that abcde is not ripping the metadata, it is that what metadata the disc contains is not Track Title or other information. Even back in CDs heyday, ripping software queried online databases for this information when ripping. For a modular, open source product like abcde, you should make sure it is configured to query whatever online databases are current for track information that it can then append to the ripped track data.

music2myear
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