Adding "hidden" tracks to a CD.

[Ice Man]

Okay, well a band I'm putting an CD together for asked if I could hide tracks amongst the core songs. Basically they want the option to skip to say track 4, and track 4 plays, but skip to it and press rewind, and you get audio in the negative minute/second range. How is this accomplished aside from just making the song before it longer with a silence and then adding the clip at the end of it?

Thanks!
Daniel

 

[TerribleTones]

Haven't Rammstein already done that?

 

[JeffTD]

Haven't Rammstein already done that?

Lots and lots and lots of bands have done this; iTunes has effectively killed this kind of 'hidden track' business, though.


I'm 95% sure you can do this in WaveBurner and similar type "redbook" burning programs.

 

[jarenare]

Yup, Rammstein do that in the Reise Reise album.
AFAIK, that kind of hidden track can only be before the track one, not between tracks.

Just found this:

Just to reiterate an earlier post, you can do this in CD Architect by placing a hidden track before track 1. The included help explains how to do this.
There's a couple things you should keep in mind before you try this approach:

1.) Your CD burner has to support this, and

2.) Including a hidden track technically takes the disc out of Red Book specs (the Audio CD standard jointly created by Sony and Philips back in 1982)

I haven't heard of any reports where a CD with a hidden track doesn't play properly, but I guess it's remotely possible. The Queens of the Stone Age album "Songs for the Deaf" includes a hidden track before track 1. It's obviously a popular album, so you'd probably be OK doing it that way.

 

[KeithTidd]

you can do it in wavelab, but i cant remeber the exact name of the tags. Something with an I maybe. one of the tags tell the burner that this is where to start playing the file, and the other says where the track starts, so if you overlap tracks, you can hide stuff in negative time.

 

[Ice Man]

Thanks a ton for the replies, guys! I'm going to try to see if any friends of mine have any of the noted programs and see if I can get it done!

Best,
Daniel

 

[Lodge]

There must be a way to do after the first track, remember the hidden track on Ghost Reveries? It was Atonement I believe, and it was in the middle of the cd.

 

[KeithRT99]

ok i looked it up in my bob katz book:

PQ Coding.
Index 0 is an optional mark between the tracks which defines the end of the previous track; the cd player's time display begins to count backwards up to Index 1. This is called pause time.

 

[XnaySaturo]

Opeth did this in Ghost Reveries. Reverie/Harlequin Forest. When ripped it plays after Atonement though if I remember correctly.

 

[Matthias King]

CD Architect allows you to do it, and the way it's done in there, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it remains within redbook standards.

 

[Suicide_As_Alibi]

The only way to properly "hide" tracks is in the pregap - that's before the first index point of the CD, (so before the first track). The link tells you everything you need to know, and lists a bunch of CDs with examples

Basically when you stick a CD in a player, it looks for index 01 in the TOC - however there is an index 00. Usually it just contains silence, but you can put a track in it (the QOTSA track for instance).

That's the only place you can do it though - you can't do the same thing on track 4, because track 3 would have the index 03, then track 4 would be index 04; it's impossible to put an index in the middle that the CD player wouldn't see, it just reads from 01 to 99. So if you had a track containing two songs and a minutes gap, if you put the 04 marker at the start of the second song, the first song would just be seen as part of 03

Like someone else said, it stops your CD conforming to the proper Redbook standard, but it still works on most modern CD players.

Although "Reverie" on Ghost Reveries is technically in the pregap of track 5, it just gets played at the end of track 4 on any modern CD player - so the CD player will display 'Track 4' until "Harlequin Forest" starts. However if you go to track 5 and press rewind, it will go into negative numbers and "Reverie" starts at around -1:05, and will be displayed as track 5. Basically it's a pointless exercise now as all CD players will play it in the normal sequence of things - all it does is confuse the display (and the people looking at it). The 00 pregap is the only one that gets ignored.

Steve

 

[BLUElightCory]

In CD Architect you can simply put the adjacent tracks' start/end markers on either side of the "hidden" audio and the CD will register the audio as a negative/hidden track.

 

[greyskull]

used to do it in vegas.... essentially cd architect by simply putting things between the track markers.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

You can do that in Toast Titanium. I love Toast.

The new version of Toast has blue ray recording built into the program as well, not that it would be a seller for me.

 

[JBroll]

... smack them for me. Stupid trend that needs to die.

That aside, pre-gap hidden tracks may not play for people who don't like sitting there looking like a dumbass with their finger on a rewind button. Other 'hidden' tracks stay about as hidden as tits on a stripper and just make displays look stupid. 'Hidden' tracks at the end of an album... just stab yourself in the eye and save me the trouble of flying up there to do it for you.

Jeff

 

[Suicide_As_Alibi]

... smack them for me. Stupid trend that needs to die...

Haha, spot on. I own around 9 of the CDs listed on the Wiki pregap page, and every single one of them plays normally anyway - I had no idea they were supposed to be "hidden" tracks, so it's a totally wasted effort.

Besides, why bother recording something and putting it on a CD, but deliberately trying to make it so that not everyone will hear it? It's a pretty backwards idea.

Steve

 

[JonWormwood]

of course jeff killed my boner

 

[JBroll]

You do still have that picture of my glorious pigtails, that should get you perked up in no time.

Jeff