How CD pregaps gained their hidden track superpowers
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Re: How CD pregaps gained their hidden track superpowers
#2I read this whole thing twice and I now know what pregaps are and the history but still have no idea why people would put them on a CD or why they’re useful for hidden tracks.
Re: How CD pregaps gained their hidden track superpowers
#3I read this whole thing twice and I now know what pregaps are and the history but still have no idea why people would put them on a CD or why they’re useful for hidden tracks.
Oh good, so I'm not the only one that thought the article failed to actually state what the superpower was. Some lame ass patent was granted?
Re: How CD pregaps gained their hidden track superpowers
#4I read this whole thing twice and I now know what pregaps are and the history but still have no idea why people would put them on a CD or why they’re useful for hidden tracks.
Basically cd audio tracks have a base sector and a start specified. That allows sectors representing audio before timestamp 0:00 to be represented the track. The reason for this originally was probably to allow the drive to get synchronized before the track started. Enterprising cd masterers put actual hidden audio data in that area which would allow you on some CD players to rewind past 0:00 and then play the hidden audio at the negative timestamp.
Re: How CD pregaps gained their hidden track superpowers
#5I read this whole thing twice and I now know what pregaps are and the history but still have no idea why people would put them on a CD or why they’re useful for hidden tracks.
As the article says its like an easter egg, putting a hidden song before the first track of a CD. If the song wasn't in the pregap it wouldn't be hidden. It's just for fun.
(Sometimes songs can also be hidden in tracks at the end of the CD like 99, but that feels less mysterious.)
Re: How CD pregaps gained their hidden track superpowers
#6I read this whole thing twice and I now know what pregaps are and the history but still have no idea why people would put them on a CD or why they’re useful for hidden tracks.
As the article says its like an easter egg, putting a hidden song before the first track of a CD. If the song wasn't in the pregap it wouldn't be hidden. It's just for fun. (Sometimes songs can also be hidden in tracks at the end of the CD like 99, but that feels less mysterious.)
Sometimes CDs would have a long piece of silence at the end of the last song and then another song on the same track.
Other CDs really experimented with the shuffle feature. They Might Be Giants’ Apollo 18 had a bunch of very short tracks that would usually play between songs when shuffle was used.
Re: How CD pregaps gained their hidden track superpowers
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
As the article says its like an easter egg, putting a hidden song before the first track of a CD. If the song wasn't in the pregap it wouldn't be hidden. It's just for fun. (Sometimes songs can also be hidden in tracks at the end of the CD like 99, but that feels less mysterious.)
Sometimes CDs would have a long piece of silence at the end of the last song and then another song on the same track. Other CDs really experimented with the shuffle feature. They Might Be Giants’ Apollo 18 had a bunch of very short tracks that would usually play between songs when shuffle was used.
I had that CD and remember the short tracks but never thought of playing it on shuffle that way.
I think it was nine inch nails' Broken EP that had the hidden tracks on 98/99 rather than after a long silence, but I could be wrong.
Re: How CD pregaps gained their hidden track superpowers
#8I recall a CD of mine had hidden audio before track one circa 1997, a coffee table jungle breakbeat on a Symphonic Black Metal album:
https://www.discogs.com/release/373044-Arcturus-La-Masquerad...
Also on the topic of trying to push the compact disc to its limits a Grindcore group who had a bonus track where "All efforts were made to exceed typical limitations of 16 bit linear digital technology compression, limiting, and equalization curves have been created to deliver maximum gain structure"
https://www.discogs.com/release/4305023-Exit-13-Ethos-Musick
I had a period of bad luck in my youth where I believed all these new enhanced CD's and shaped CD's were damaging the tracking of the lens on my CD player so I gave Exit-13 a swerve and started to listen to safer music ;)
Re: How CD pregaps gained their hidden track superpowers
#9What's the "A.C." band?
Re: How CD pregaps gained their hidden track superpowers
#10I've been using https://github.com/whipper-team/whipper to digitize CD's, and it supports identifying Hidden Track One Audio (HTOA) when it exists and is not blank.
Add in MusicBrainz Picard and Navidrome and you have a really nice solution.