Recently I was rather surprised, because the display on my car stereo headunit showed me the titles of the CD I was listening to. That way I learned that my car CD player is CD-Text capable. However, it appears that I have only one CD with CD-Text on it. I wonder why so few CDs are released with CD-Text. I would assume that it is minimal effort to add CD-Text during the preparation of the CD.
The basic problem is that CD-TEXT is a Sony invention, and like most Sony inventions...they pretty much stay to Sony. I'd bet that the one CD you have that's CD-TEXT enabled is from Columbia Records or one of the other Sony Music labels. My Sony SCD-XA777ES has CD-TEXT ability and I really like it. In fact when I made all of my Needle Drop Beatles CDs, I made sure to burn them with CD-TEXT enabled. It's very cool. I use CD-TEXT on all of the CDR compilations I make as well. I find it most handy there, because after a month or so, I forget what the hell I put on the compilation CD in the first place!
I have several decks around that do CD TEXT. My JVC El Kamelion does it too. It's not just for Sonys, but the majority of them, especially the 100 CD changers, it is and quite useful!
It's a real shame that more CDs don't come with text - beats me why. I make all my CDRs with text - have done for ages. Now that I've finally got a player that reads the text I'm really glad I went to all the effort! Its the same with "index". My first CD player had the ability to find index points but since then none of my players had any mention of index. The last CDs I bought that used the index feature were in the Beach Boys Good Vibes box (1993!). Now that my new player also has the index feature, I can finally jump to the parts I want to again!
Malc S, I know what you mean. I haven't had a CD player that had index since I got rid of a cheap Fisher CD changer I had back in 1994! every CD player I've had after that has not had the feature, and I still miss the ability to use the index points on some of the CDs I have like the MoFi Eat a Peach and a recording of the Benjamin Britten Cello Suites on BIS. Oh, well.
Somewhat related to this is copies of CDs that have been burned on a computer. I was surprised to see iTunes on a friend's new iMac read the disc, go out to CDDB, and then display the album and song titles in the window. The only CD I have (that I know of) that has the CD Text feature is the new Dylan album... but then, most of my recent purchases have been SACDs.
Well, Like you. most of my recent purchases have been SACDs as well, but as far as redbook CDs are concerned, the only one I have with CD Text are all mainly Sony CDs. The Bob Dylan disc, Pete Yorn, Miles Davis japanese Plugged Nickel and 'Round About Midnight CDs. I also discovered that the Fiona Apple When The Pawn disc has it.
