Ripping CDs: Album/Title tags disappearing

[mattr]

Hi, I seem to be unable to resolve a very strange issue when ripping classical music CDs. After inserting a CD sometimes all the correct tag information appears (album name, titles, disc# etc) only to disappear after a few seconds (showing "unknown album"). When I refresh the view (F5) many times I can sometimes get the info back. This is not related to any freedb database searches (this is disabled).
Is tag info stored on the CD itself? Why is it inconsistently showing? I would be grateful for any suggestions.

[Lowlander]

Which version of MediaMonkey?

[mattr]

Version 4.1.21.1875

[Lowlander]

Try updating: https://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewt ... =8811&sd=d

Also see: https://www.mediamonkey.com/support/ind ... -windows-7

[mattr]

Thanks, but this didn't solve the issue.
After more searching, I believe the problem is that the track info stored on my Sony CDs (as CD-TEXT) is not consistently read and used by MM. Could it be a hardware issue with my CD drive?
BTW, I could not find a cdplayer.ini file in Windows 10. Is there a different corresponding file?

[Peke]

Hi,
You should find cdplayer.ini in c:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\MediaMonkey\

[mattr]

OK, found it. Thanks. However, my problem seems unrelated to the cdplayer.ini file.
I am starting to think it's a hardware issue. I installed MM on a different PC and the CD-Text tag info is read without problems when ripping the Sony CDs.

[mattr]

I replaced the optical drive in my PC and it still doesn't work. Something must be wrong with my MM installation
Perhaps I should do a clean install?

[Peke]

Hi,
Same CD on other PC is read OK?
You used Drive from Other PC?
Have you tried to use problematic drive on Other PC?

[mattr]

Yes, the same CDs that don't work on my PC (even with the brand new Asus 24x optical drive), work on my wife's 8 year old Dell without any trouble. When I load the CD on my PC, it takes about 20s until "unknown album" is shown. After waiting (for up to 10 minutes!) or refreshing many times usually at some point the correct track info appears (only often to disappear again after a few seconds).
On the old Dell PC the correct CD-Text info is read immediately after loading and it does not disappear.
Unfortunately, I can't swap drives between the two computers.

[Peke]

Hi,
20s is very very strange and indicate that laser can't read TOC (Table Of Content). Do you hear clicks from drive during this time (in normal cases you should hear only scratch sounds of moving heads?

[mattr]

No, there are no unusual sounds, it just takes a long time and the disk seems to spin relatively slowly after loading. When I'm actually ripping CDs, the speed (slowly) increases and appears to reach full speed. This is the same with both my old and new optical drive and all CDs are the same.
I have ripped about 5000 CDs over the years with MediaMonkey and IIRC loading was initially much faster. Could it be that some internal MM database is getting too big? My MM.db file is 160 MB. I tried already to delete it but I think the loading remained slow and I lost some of my settings. I now have restored the old MM.db file.