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I have an old collection of CDs with AIFF music files I am trying to import into my music library (btw, I am using a Mac). These files are named as "1 Audio Track.aiff", "2 Audio Track.aiff", etc, so I don't have any information in the file names I can use to name them accordingly in the import process, however I know this information must be somewhere as my car's CD player displays the song name and author of each and every song. I wonder where this information is and how I can extract it, otherwise I'd be left with nothing by a bunch of untagged files, many thanks in advance.

Things I have tried so far:

I have used the command exiftool but I don't see the info my car's CD player is able to read (see below)

us@mac:/Volumes/Audio CD$ exiftool 1\ Audio\ Track.aiff
ExifTool Version Number : 10.08
File Name : 1 Audio Track.aiff
Directory : .
File Size : 26 MB
File Modification Date/Time : 2015:12:26 22:11:01+01:00
File Access Date/Time : 0000:00:00 00:00:00
File Inode Change Date/Time : 0000:00:00 00:00:00
File Permissions : rw-rw-rw-
File Type : AIFC
File Type Extension : aifc
MIME Type : audio/x-aiff
Format Version Time : 1990:05:23 14:40:00
Num Channels : 2
Num Sample Frames : 6696144
Sample Size : 16
Sample Rate : 44100
Compression Type : Little-endian, no compression
Compressor Name :
Duration : 0:02:31

I checked the hidden TOC.plist files in the CDs and they don't seem to contain this info.

Hope you can give me some tips.

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  • Thanks David, but there is an issue with this approach of using Jaikoz / MusicBrainz. When I imported the audio CD using this tool or iTunes, the songs are just named as "1 Audio Track", so MusicBrainz doesn't have much info to look for the respective song name and author in its database, besides they are very old tango songs which I doubt will be found in MusicBrainz's DB. This is why I was trying to extract the info my car's CD player is using as it is supposed to be somewhere in the CD. I tried to look into TOC.plist, but I cannot see this info at all. Commented Dec 28, 2015 at 0:28

2 Answers 2

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It took me a few days to find the right approach but finally I did it.

To extract the CD Text in Mac install following Doug's Apple Scripts "CD Text to CD info". Execute once the song are listed for import in iTunes with default names like Track01.aiff, etc. It will update song names, artists & albums info if the information is available in your CD.

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=cdtexttocdinfo

Thanks David for pointing out where the info was stored in the CD (CD Text), this word was key to search the right answer.

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I don't see the info my car's CD player is able to read

The CDs are using CD-Text. The song name and author is in the CDs Table of Contents (TOC) and allows for basic Artist, Album and Track information.

The CD burning software uses tag info to create the TOC when the CD is burned.

See below for more information. It might be worth you reading the whole thread as I've quoted bits I thought could be relevant.

How I can extract it, otherwise I'd be left with nothing by a bunch of untagged files?

  1. Import the files from your CD.

  2. Use one of the many programs that will read an audio file and pull the tags from online databases.

Notes:

  • I use jaikoz on Windows for this. There is a Mac OS X (10.7 or later) version.

    Jaikoz uses MusicBrainz, an online database of over eleven million songs and Discogs another database of over 4 million releases. Many of the songs also have an Acoustic Id provided by Acoustid, allowing a song to be identified by the actual music, so it can do a match even if you have no metadata!

  • It does an excellent job, but only supports Mp4, M4a, M4p, Mp3, Wma, Flac and OggVorbis formats, so you will have to convert your audio files first if you want to use this program.

  • Other programs may work directly with AIFF formatted files...

Editing metadata in AIFF files

When I burn an audio cd in iTunes from ALAC files, the files on the CD are in AIFF format. When I play them in my car the song title, artist title, and album title all display. E.g., I believe the format does have the ability to carry metadata. Whether it can be edited, I don't know.

...

The AIFF does not store data itself on the CD. The CD+Text information is stored in the R-W sub-codes on the disc (separate from the P&Q sub-codes).

...

I don't believe that AIFF or WAV has any actual space set aside for the full set of ID3 metadata in its headers, as well as storing images. You can do this easily with FLAC, lossless WMA, Apple Lossless, and similar files. To me, this is a prime reason not to use AIFF, but that's just my opinion.

...

As Marc described above, your CD’s are using CD-Text. This information is stored in the CD’s Table of Contents (TOC) and allows for basic Artist, Album and Track information. The CD burning software is using the tag info to create the TOC.

Source Editing metadata in AIFF files

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