A standard situation: I click "get tags"... the disc is not found in the db.
Everything is damn easy, if it is a pop album. I know an artist and album name...
BUT! Most of my music is classical. And here I find great problems.
E.g. I have "Il Barbere di Siviglia" on one CD, 11 tracks. How should look for it, if it is not found in the database automatically?
Freedb gives thousands of Rossini’s discs, hundreds of “Barberes”… I’m completely lost!
I'm nearly sure, that the problem is in that: most of my CDs are licensed for Commonwealth of Independent States, that's why they are merely a poorly made copies of original CDs. That makes everything even more difficult. But, I don't have the access to original CDs, licensed for Europe.
So, what should I do to actually find tags for them?
Sometimes, tags are found automatically, sometimes not…
P.S. I use Tag and Rename also... However, no tags were found with the help of it from allmusic.com...

I use freedb successfully with classical discs. Which freedb are you using? I use the US and German ones with success.

You could give CueMaster a try. http://cuemaster.host.sk/

I'm sure, there are other freedb-frontends out there, but this is the one I use.

---

Maybe this matches your dics layout?

TITLE "Il Barbiere di Siviglia"
PERFORMER "Gioachino Rossini"
REM ** Generated by CueMaster v1.6 **
REM Time : 52:35:00
REM Length: 3155 seconds
REM Genre : Classical
REM DiscID: 970c510b
FILE "Gioachino Rossini - Il Barbiere di Siviglia.mp3" MP3
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Sinfonia"
PREGAP 00:02:33
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "Piano, pianissimo, senza parlar"
INDEX 01 06:48:47
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "Ecco, ridente in cielo"
INDEX 01 09:55:60
TRACK 04 AUDIO
TITLE "Mille grazie ... mio Signore"
INDEX 01 15:24:55
TRACK 05 AUDIO
TITLE "Largo al Factotum della città"
INDEX 01 17:44:57
TRACK 06 AUDIO
TITLE "Ah, Ah! Che bella vita!"
INDEX 01 22:29:27
TRACK 07 AUDIO
TITLE "Se il mio nome saper voi bramate"
INDEX 01 25:18:17
TRACK 08 AUDIO
TITLE "All'idea di quel metallo"
INDEX 01 29:52:22
TRACK 09 AUDIO
TITLE "Una voce poco fa"
INDEX 01 37:28:72
TRACK 10 AUDIO
TITLE "Sì, sì, la vincerò"
INDEX 01 44:27:27
TRACK 11 AUDIO
TITLE "La caluniia è un venticello"
INDEX 01 48:24:07

freedb.freedb.org

No, it's not it. Mine has 56:13.693 time, the second track is "cavatina Figaro"

I suppose it is not so important, what frontend you use, if they don't have your CD in the database... Tag & Rename is quite handy... but.

No results by German and US also, of course!

This is what I do: Download Player which has built in CDDB support. Use its "Export CD Info to cdplayer.ini" feature. EAC would automatically recognize the disc (if not do Get CD Info from cdplayer.ini).

CDDB usually has way better track names and a thorough database. freedb is usually full of spelling mistakes too.

BTW, I would rather want to extract the files offline, and then tag them online... And I really think that the easiest way is just to type all the tags manually in. I don’t know what to type, however. I don’t have the discs any more… So, everything is so bad!

I have read, that there are at least 2 more db:
1. CDDB 2
2. MusicBrainz
3. CDDB 1 (?)
How to get access to them? I agree to use a separate program for everyone. And with freedb everything is easy. Foobar and Tag&Rename supports it!

SO nobody knows the apps that support the above mentioned DBs?

I believe you are correct. There are several CDDBs. If someone says "use CDDB" it would seem reasonable to ask "which CDDB?". The prorams referred to by atici uses the Gracenote CDDB which they call CDDB2.

I don't know all the CDDBs or all the programs that use them, but here are a few.

Gracenote
I have used two apps from Creative Labs. They are intended for or supplied with thier MP3 Jukebox products so they may not be available to everyone. The first one I used, Play Center, made MP3s that had burst of noise in them, stay away from it.
ITunes uses Gracenote, at least the first two versions for window did. I found it slow and it only filled in version 2 ID tags. Have not tried the newer versions.
Winamp 5.03 also used Gracenot. I have only used it a few times, it seemed OK. If I had to rerip my collection I would probably use Winamp. To rip to MP3 you have to buy the plus version.
The Gracenote web site has links to numerous rippers and tag editors. I tried a few of the rippers, did not like any of them. They were either/or slow, did not fill in the tag fields after they found the info, provided no control over where to put or how to name files, or just did not work.

Freedb
In addition to the apps already mentioned there are many rippers and taggers at tucows.com. I also tried some of those. They had similar problems to those found on the Gracenote site. I think there must be some good rippers that use freedb, it seems very popular.

MusicMatch has its own CDDB and does MicroSoft Windows Media Player. I used MusicMatch to rip my collection after I had the problem with the Creative Lab app. At the time I did not know about some of the others. The MusicMatch database is pretty poor for classical music.

For classical music I would recommend the Gracenote CDDB. A week or two ago I ran an experiment. I took a sample of my CD collection and tried each on 4 CDDBs using the following apps.
Gracenot via Winamp
Freedb via Foobar2000 and lots of mouse clicks
MusicMatch via MusicMatch plus 8.1
Microsoft via Windows Media Player 9.0

I tried 55 CDs
Gracenote found all 55
FreeDb found 51
MusicMatch found 43 but 3 of those were the wrong info
Windows MP found 52 but many were wrong or only had the artist or ablum

There are other factors than just found or not found. As I noted some just get it wrong. Another problem is that there is often a lot more information than is practical especially for the track titles. People tend to put in what kind of music it is, what instrument it is for, composer etc. Some will put the title of the piece in the composers language and again in english. This often too much information to display in a player on a PC and certainly too much for a portable device or car player. MusicMatch was the worst for excess verbage, Gracenote has the least.

As for typing the information in yourself, unless you only have a few CDs, I would recommend trying a little harder to get one of the CDDBs working. Even if you have to edit some of the excess verbage, its faster than typing it. I found this particulary true when the titles were in a language I do not know.

Hope this helps.

I suggest using a combo of freedb and gracenote.

EAC ist considered as the best ripper out there, which uses freedb. If you rip into an image with cue-sheet you can mount it as a virtual drive with Daemon Tools or similar, you might then re-rip the disc using iTunes and accessing the Gracenote information.

However, especially for classical recordings, I have to edit track and album information all the time using either database.

bobwood
Thanks! That really helped. I would use Gracenote CDDB via Winamp. The problem for me was to find an app that uses this particular (Gracenote) CDDB for already ripped music files. Is it able to tag ready APE files? Or I should have original discs?

I have "Ivan Susanin" by Glinka. I haven't found it in freedb (there is one, but not mine recording). Will try to use Gracenote...

Is it able to do it? Or Winamp is able to tag CDs only?