How to Create Virtual CD Drive to Fool iTunes so it will do a GraceNote Lookup?

[john2in3]

I posted this on a mac forum but have no useful responses, so I thought I would ask the experts here.

 

I legally own a number of albums on vinyl, which I have digitized to my Windows PC and edited on my windows PC in aiff or wav (removing pops/ clicks and so on). In addition I have a number of legal CDs that have sufficient read errors to prevent foolproof rips using itunes, so I ripped them using Exact Audio Copy on my PC to aiff or wav; which gave a better rip.

 

Now I'd like to import these files into my mac (OS 10.5.8) itunes library. The problem is that itunes will not add title/ track metadata from Gracenote to anything that is not imported from an actual CD into iTunes.

 

Is there a way to create a virtual CD drive on the mac to which I will "burn" these files into, creating a virtual audio CD which itunes can see as an audio CD and thus import as an audio CD, looking up track names from GraceNote?

 

Note- You will be surprised- GraceNote will find correct title/track info for analog recordings more often than you think. I burned a set of wav files from an analog LP record to audio CD format and it found the correct info; however I don't want to create actual CDs for all these albums and waste the CDs; and go through more potential read errors. I'd rather go the virtual CD route if possible. And I don't want to use media monkey or other metadata programs.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi John - Good question. I just created a CD image cdr file and iTunes won't mount it. I'll continue to look into this one. Let us know if you find something that works.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi John - Will this app work?

 

http://www.burningthumb.com/virtualcdrw.html

 

[john2in3]

Hi Chris, thanks.

 

It looks like the real answer lies in either creating the virtual disk or getting something with an improved ability to name the unknown tracks. I know I said no media monkey or other database app but not sure now.

 

Like-

http://www.tuneupmedia.com/index.php

 

What we really need is an application/ plugin for iTunes (or your metadata program of choice) that does metadata and does not rely on an auto-detect. Something that you tell it the Album and Artist and it inserts the track names, year and so on. I know what albums I'm ripping and I am willing to enter this in, but all the other stuff (track names/ year/ etc...) should be able to be automatically done given the album name. And this should work for both analog and digital versions no matter how much noise/ pops/ clicks/ or how badly the rip. So long as you have the same number of tracks as the database it should be able to name all tracks and provide all metadata.

 

Any other ideas out there?

 

 

 

 

 

[garybx]

I use Toast Titanium to do this job. Drag the files into Toast like you're going to burn a CD, but instead of burning, click the "Save As Disc Image" button and it saves the tracks into an image file. Then use the Toast Utilities menu and select the Mount Disc Image option. Open the saved image and voila... it's just like inserting a physical CD.

 

[Audio_ELF]

Can you not get EAC to create Apple Lossless files with the correct metadata?

 

iTunes should import these from a data CD / memory stick and you can then convert to AIFF (or WAV) if you prefer.

 

Eloise

 

[john2in3]

Garybx- thank you that does work. iTunes is fooled into looking up the track info.

 

Just so everyone knows, select "Audio" from the Toast icons on the top left; then select "Audio CD" and drag your songs into the file area on the right. I don't think it matters what format the songs are originally in as Toast will create an Audio CD from any format. (I used .aif successfully.) Click on "File" and "save as disc image" to save an image of an audio CD. Then from the "utilities" menu click "mount disc image" and select the image you just made. A CD will appear and this will behave just as a real CD would behave to iTunes, only its a lot faster and will not have any read errors.

 

iTunes sees an audio CD and looks up the metadata from the Gracenote library. It imports the virtual CD at about 128x, takes about 10 seconds.

 

Good advice just what I wanted to do. Thanks again.

 

Audio_Elf- since I am moving from EAC on Windows to a Mac the metadata does not carry over (except track names). Also when digitizing vinyl a side at a time EAC would not know enough to do a lookup and much of what I am doing involves vinyl LPs. Again, Gracenote is actually pretty good about recognizing Vinyl if you digitize the entire album with tracks ordered like they would be on the CD with about the same track lengths.