Hi,

"freedb" is supposed to be in SF Audio Studio (see the manual) and has always been in the other Magix products Audio Cleaning Lab and Audio & Music Lab Premium. You can look it up in the manual. However, it is not mentioned in the manual for the replacement to AML Premium - Sound Forge Audio Cleaning Lab and, unless you can find reference to it in SF Pro, then it may not be there.

From the AML manual: "Click on freedb. Audio & Music Lab tries to determine the names of the tracks from an online database using the special combination of track lengths. If that doesn't work, whether you like it or not you will have to enter them by hand. Double-click on a name (album, artist, name of the individual tracks) in the middle of the window in order to change it."

This is used when ripping commercial CD's. The program tries to find the CD info from the internet using freedb.

John CB

Thanks for the info John. Sounds similar to Gracenote, which was included with some versions of SCS (Sony) Sound Forge.

Thanks for the feedback. I am using SF Audio Cleaning Lab. I used to use Audio Cleaning Lab Premium. Yes, freedb is a database of compact disc track listings, similar to Gracenote. According to Wiki, freedb was acquired by Magix in 2006. It was part of ACL Premium and when loading a CD, freedb added the metadata of the track as soon as you started loading your CD. It was convenient to have it in the ACL software. It does not seem to be present is SF-ACL. It it could be added on somehow, that would be great.

Apparently it has not been included in SF Audio Cleaning Lab. I am running the Trial. I will not 'upgrade'; staying with Magix Cleaning Lab 2016. No way am I going to manually re-enter track info for approx. 2,500 tracks.

I have been using Audio Cleaning Lab for several years, and I'm amazed. Why has Magix decided to remove the freedb lookup functionality from the program? This is especially puzzling, considering they also own freedb. But Magix has been changing there policies as of late.

Is it possible this is accidental? The help files show a photo of CD import with the track names filled in, and the

It will most likely lead me to drop Audio Cleaning Lab as my main audio processor when my active license period is up. Perhaps they may reconsider and (at least) offer it as a plug-in.)

Meanwhile, there's a very good workaround for adding track info to your output files. It's called MP3Tag. It is comprehensive and free. It can access freedb to fill in your track names, too. It's downloadable from https://www.mp3tag.de/en/

I also use MP3Tag, but mainly album art and some info edit. The CD info is not too good in my view. Today I tested NCH Express Rip. It works very well and you can customize how the file will be identified. I ripped the CDs then imported the files into SF Cleaning Lab. Express Rip is free. I'll keep testing SF for my 30 days, see how it works out.

CORRECTION - I find that EXPRESS Rip is not free. The site didn't specify (or I didn't see it), it's a limited free trial, for me about 3 or 4 runs. The price is about $40, but there seem to be special sales, as of this writing it's about $19. By the way, it links to Freedb.

IMeanwhile, there's a very good workaround for adding track info to your output files. It's called MP3Tag. It is comprehensive and free. It can access freedb to fill in your track names, too. It's downloadable from https://www.mp3tag.de/en/

Indeed MP3 is a fine tool, unfortunately it doesn't help in case you need to split a single-file-CD into its separate tracks. That's what Cleaning is (or was?) good for. So a workaround is still needed.

I use MP3Tag frequently to add metadata and image (photo) files to MP3 files. I usually do not work on previously released material so I have no experience with Freedb. (or Gracenote). MP3Tag can not edit the file's sound data.