Duplication Centre

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Archive for August, 2020

Gracenote CD Database & CD Text: August 27th 2020

Thursday, August 27th, 2020

Gracenote CD Database and CD-TEXT

We live in an age where all things exist on the cloud, but this is only partly true for the text information’s we see when playing CD-Audio disc.

There are in fact two ways to add track text info to a disc:

In the beginning, not long after CDs were released in the 80s, an update was made so small amounts of text could be added to a CD. This text lives in sub channels of the disc so it won’t effect playback, but a CD-TEXT enabled player can read and display the information. Nowadays these players are less common, but still used in most car stereos unless you’re driving one of a few higher end vehicles.

A common assumption is that most computers read CD text, however this is not the case; iTunes, Windows Media Player etc. do not use CD-Text at all. They use a more modern system, the GraceNote – Compact Disc Data Base (CDDB). With this system none of the text used is actually stored on the disc, but all saved on the internet.

When you insert a CD and view through iTunes for example, the computer identifies the disc and then looks it up on the web. If it cannot find a match it will not display the text information, or may display a close match (from another artist!). So even if you have a CD which has CD text, but is not registered with the CDDB, its unlikely the text will show up on a computer at all.

We have customers who have experienced this problem and fortunately its very easy to correct.

We recommend using iTunes as it’s one of the easiest ways to upload your CD information.

The below link will show you how to do this in just a few minutes:

http://support.gracenote.com/support/pkb_Home?l=en_US&c=Public%3AArtists_Labels_Publishers

Once submitted it can take a couple of days to update but that’s all you need to do.

Call us: 20th August 2020

Thursday, August 20th, 2020

We take  your calls directly here at our office and production rooms.

This means you  can  speak to experienced and knowledgeable staff straight away .

We have found this more hands on approach in the company has led to us getting to know our customers needs and requirements more, and so provide an even faster response when you most need help .

We love to advise and help with new customer enquiries, sharing our wealth of experience  to help you get the right product.short haired lady ,enormous smile with headset ready to chat

Call us on 01702 530 354

We can also help via live chat or email:

una@duplicationcentre.co.uk

We also provide answers to some of the most frequestly asked questions in our FAQ here:

https://www.duplicationcentre.co.uk/faq.html

Why do Colours sometimes look different on my Monitor & Printer:July 13th 2020

Thursday, August 13th, 2020

Why is it that your printed colours look different to what you see on your monitor? Everything looks great on the screen but the prints come out subtly different.

The truth is you will never see a perfect match between images on the screen and images on paper, they are simply put, two very different entity’s.

Colour Space, RGB and CMYK

You monitor image is made us from pixels, these are thousands of tiny lights, and each of these lights can produce around 16 million colours, which is more than our eyes can recognise! These lights are know as  the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) colour space.

A printed image is made up from dots of ink splashed on a piece of paper. We use 4 ink colours for this, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key black. These 4 make up the CMYK colour space. The first three colours are used to reproduce colour, in a similar way to your monitor, the final ‘Key black’ is needed for practical reasons, but its not so important to this topic.

When light hits an colour ink splash on the paper, only the same colour light is reflected, which is a small part of the light which hits is. In contrast the same dot of colour on screen it a light source itself and much stronger than a reflection. So it should already make sense why printed paper would not be as bright on screen, they exist in a smaller range of brightness!

There’s also another restriction on printed images which is because the reflected light is relatively small they only produce a relatively small range of colours, perhaps a few thousand at the most. This is a big reduction from the 16 million available on your monitor! Now you don’t need to worry about this too much, our computers and printers are very good an handling these difficulties, but you should try to keep in mind the subtle details in images can be lost, for example, dark grey text on a black background that is only just visible on screen, will probably as solid black.

You cannot print light!

The next experiment, take a printed image and hold it next to the computer monitor. Now turn the lights off, which one can you see!

The fact is you cannot print light to a piece of paper. So the bright and florescent Reds, Pinks, Yellows, etc which which have so much energy can only be produced with a light behind them. The moment you convert them to print they will be much duller. There are techniques which might help a little when converting them, but really is no fix for this one. If you are designing artwork for print the ideal solution is to use the CMYK colour space from the beginning. This way there are no surprises at the end.

Other factors

The reflection of an ink splash on paper is only a close approximation of the intended colour. Even the type of light bulb in the room your in can affect the colours you see! The same is true for the type or paper you are printing on. So imagine if the the papers are different, or one of them is not paper at all, perhaps a plastic CD. Or maybe the printers are made by different companies, or use different printing technology. Variation is the prints will be expected.

Again, this is not something you need to look at fixing yourself, printers and the things they print on are carefully ‘tuned’ so they produce images as accurately as possible.

The Proof is in the pudding

So you’ve carefully designed some art, keeping in mind all the possible variations, but have you done it right?

You could ask us to check, we’re the experts right? Well yes, but even experts can make mistakes but more importantly this is the first time we have seen you art. We have no way of knowing what effect you are trying to achieve, we don’t know if you have a golden Sun tan or an orange glow, we don’t know if the car in the background should be Green or Blue, or if there way supposed to be the outline of a cat in the shadows.

So who is best placed to check this then? Easy, the same person who knows exactly what the artwork should look like…. You!

I know, we’ve gone full circle, but the solution to this problem is a proof print. Proofs are very common in the print industry and will show you exactly how the print comes out. They are not always necessary, especially if your experienced enough to know what you might receive but if this is you first venture into print, and the details for this one need to be perfect then a proof is definitely the way to go.

You can have a free hard copy proof before we print your full run ….just ask for this in the notes when you order and we will print & send you a proof copy to check and approve before we print the full run.

You can read about this here in our artwork section on the website:

https://www.duplicationcentre.co.uk/artwork.html

 

 

 

Will my song titles show when I play my CD in a computer?6th August 2020

Thursday, August 6th, 2020

Computers use an online database to display CD information, the most common one is known as Gracenote, a more detailed article on Gracenote can be found here Gracenote CD Database and CD-TEXT.

Tunes and Windows Media Player DO NOT read and CD-Text embedded on the actual CD, at all! This is common for all computer CD player software.

When the CD information is displayed on a computer, the info is coming from an online database. The database is usually Gracenote (the more common) or AllMusic.

The Gracenote database serves CD information to: iTunes, WinAmp, Quintessential Media Player, and Finder (Mac OS). The AllMusic database serves CD information to: Windows Media Player, Rhapsody, and Real Music Player.

Registration on these databases must be completed by you, the client, rather than us as no extra information is added to the CD for them to work.

You can find further information on how to submit your CD on the below links.

Gracenote Database

AllMusic Database

 

 

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