CD-Text Album Genre

Looking at CD Text in DDPs made in Wavelab and Reaper, and CD Text on major label commercial CD releases (where they generally do the CD Text themselves), it seems like there are two ways the Genre is generally done. GenreCode 0 (un-used), as done by Wavelab and Sony Music, and no Genre key at all, as done by Universal and Warner. The one thing they have in common is that they all apparently never code a real Genre in CD Text.

I’m guessing Triumph is using no Genre key at all to appear without Genre column in Hofa, because that’s what I get in Hofa when I do the same with Reaper DDP using no Genre key (no Genre column in Hofa). Reaper is entirely manual (and therefore difficult), but it can be done with Genre key or not.

But it seems like both methods are valid and widely used, so should both be accommodated by the Hofa player IMO, as they both appear to be accommodated by the Sonoris player.

These are the tools I used:
http://ddp.andreasruge.de/
http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/support/helpdesk/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=121

Hi!

To explain the different behaviour in HOFA DDP Player, let me give you some technical background information:
There are two ways, how a genre can be stored in CD-Text. It can be saved as an ID code or as plain text.
When using the ID code, you only have the very limited choice of the 26 genres that you could see in the selection list mentioned above. It is not likely that this list will ever be extended and if it would, most CD players on the market would not be able to show the new entries. The only advantage of this method might be that some CD players could show the genre in different languages, but I’ve never seen a player that really does this.
To overcome that limitation, CD-Text also allows to use plain text for the genre entry. Using that method you can write anything you want.
It is also possible to use both the ID code and plain text, so that you could use one of the predefined genres and extend this with your own text.

The CD-Text binary file in a DDP image consists of several data blocks for the different entries. It only needs to contain the data blocks that are really used. For example an image can contain data blocks for the “Title” and “Performer” entries but not contain any data blocks for “Songwriter”, “Composer”, etc.
Blocks that are not used are normally left out, because on the CD there is very limited memory space that can be used for CD-Text.

It seems that Wavelab always writes an empty data block for the “Genre” entry which would not be necessary.
DDP images from HOFA CD-Burn & DDP, Triumph, GearPro, Sequoia, Soundblade or Reaper do not contain that empty “Genre” data block if genre is not used.

So what about that “unused” flag?
If a data block for “Genre” exists, it will always contain the space for the ID code and for the plain text.

  • When using the ID field only, the ID has to be set to the desired value and the text field remains empty.
  • When using both, the ID has to be set to the desired value and the text field is filled with the desired additional content.
  • When only using the text field, but not the ID field, the ID field has to be set to 0, which means “unused”. But this only means that the ID field is unused and that the genre should be taken from the following text field. It does not mean that the whole data block is unused, as this would not make any sense.

Wavelab sets the ID field to 0 and leaves the text field empty. For HOFA DDP Player this means:

  • The “Genre” column is activated because the data block exists
  • The genre has to be taken from the text field, because the ID field was set to “unused”
  • The text field is empty, so an empty genre column is displayed.

We will discuss if we should always hide the genre column if it is existing but empty. Maybe this will become an additional option in DDP Player Maker.


Regards,
Gregor Pogatzki
HOFA-Plugins

Thank you Gregor …

Your valuable input is much appreciated.

But, I just retested … again with DDPs that contained CD Text (Warner Label release) and two without. The HOFA Player did not display genre.

DDP created in WL on Windows 7 Professional, tested on OSX.

Hi Paul!

Maybe you can send me the CDTEXT.bin files of these images to plugins@hofa.de and let me know if you are using the latest DDP Player version (1.0.14).

Regards,
Gregor

Will do (edit: email sent). I am not using the latest version. Mine is V1.0.9.

Hi Paul!

You’re right. Version 1.0.9 did not read genres stored as ID codes correctly. Because of that bug, also the empty Wavelab entries were not shown. This has been fixed in later version.
If you are only using Wavelab DDP images, you might be fine to go on with V1.0.9. But if you use images created with different applicaions I recommend to update to the latest version.

Regards,
Gregor

Hi Gregor …

Thank you. Appreciate you taking the time to review this.

We have updated our machines to the latest version.

Hi,

I only use Wavelab to produce DDPs and use HOFA Player Maker to distribute for client approval. The bug in v1.09 worked great for me! Can I request that HOFA ignores empty columns? If this can be better handled in Wavelab then I would like to request this too!

So, is there no way for a future Wavelab to leave this field completely empty like it does with other fields when no text is entered like songwriter, composer etc?

Yes please

FYI, I have requested some insight about this to Gear, which is specialist on the topic.

Some more information: It may be that this is not only a WL issue.

I assist a well known replication company with technical issues. In this context, I received a DDP prepared from Sequo*a by another professional mastering engineer.

That had CD Text, but some fields were deliberately left empty … for example, track artist and track message are deliberately blank. However, the latest version (V1.0.14) HOFA player displays those columns (ie some blank/empty R-W subcodes). Genre was not displayed.

For commercial confidentiality reasons, I cannot pass on specifics like screenshots or CDTEXT.bin files of anything to do with this this DDP.

Hi!

To me that empty Genre entry still makes no sense as it is not necessary. The total memory space that can be used for CD-Text is pretty small, so in cases where you have a lot of text, this useless entry could make the difference if it fits on the CD or not.

As we want to minimize any confusion for the end users and as we don’t know if this will be changed in Wavelab, we have decided that with the next update of HOFA DDP-Player any empty columns will be hidden in the tracklist table.
It will take some time until that update is available, but I will post it in this thread when it is released.


Best Regards,
Gregor Pogatzki
HOFA-Plugins

Hi Gregor,

Thanks for following up on this. I think it will be great that if the Album Genre field is either truly empty, or just marked as unused like WaveLab currently does in a DDP set, that the column will not appear at all in the HOFA DDP Player for clients.

I send every project to clients with the HOFA DDP Player for approval because it is so stable and easy to use/install. Even if they don’t plan to make CDs, it’s the best way to hear the album in sequence and view all the titles before we move on to making the other master formats. Plus, they have an easy option to export each song in what is still the most standard format for digital distribution (unfortunately) which is 16-bit/44.1k WAV.

I suppose that in the future, master files higher than 16-bit/44.1k WAV will be more widely accepted but for now it’s a handy scenario.

Thanks again for a great product and customer support.

Hi!

We have now released HOFA DDP Player and DDP Player Maker V1.0.15.
This version will hide the empty Genre entry that is always present in DDP images created with WaveLab.


Best Regards,
Gregor Pogatzki
HOFA-Plugins

Great!

Yes, this and some other minor workflow improvements make the HOFA DDP Player Maker even better after this update. Excellent software and support.

Thank you.

Thanks very much. Works great. One less thing for the confused client to stress about!

Exactly, though surprisingly I had very few clients email me about why the genre was blank. It’s still nice to have this cleaned up and show only the entered info.

Good day! I have just joined the forum, thanks to all for having me. I’m using WL 8.0.5 and I want cd’s I create from montage to display CD Text when played back on other cd players. So far I’ve been unsuccessful. I’ll appreciate any feed back available. Thanks in advance.