Solved Bonus/hidden tracks

[danny.guitar]

I remember reading a post on here pretty recently where someone was asking how to add bonus/hidden tracks but can't seem to find it. Anyone here know how to do this? I own CD Architect but would be willing to get another program if I need to.

 

[cusebassman]

Aren't hidden tracks on a CD simply not listed on the CD casing?

Or do you mean in the scenario where the "hidden" track is added at the end of another song, with some silence inbetween? I'd imagine you could do thje combination in your DAW software pretty easily.

 

[danny.guitar]

I've heard of some people putting in tracks where you have to rewind from the first track to get to the (bonus) track before it, and other things like that. I don't know how this is done or how it is possible.

 

[TerraMortim]

every hidden track I've ever seen just has a big silence between the last track and the hidden track.. just insert a few minutes of silence on the last track and burn it as one.

 

[Massive Master]

I've heard of some people putting in tracks where you have to rewind from the first track to get to the (bonus) track before it, and other things like that. I don't know how this is done or how it is possible.

You can have very serious issues doing that... It's totally out of spec. I've seen CD players that won't even *open* after such a disc was inserted.

I'd avoid it like the plague.

Other than that, I'm not sure if CD Architect will allow it.

 

[Farview]

The thing about having a hidden track as the last track is easy. Just add the hidden track like you normally would, move it down the timeline a couple minutes, and delete the markers between the two songs.

You will end up with the CD displaying a 15 minute track length for the last song. The CD player just treats the last two songs as one long track.

 

[tarnationsauce2]

Danny I think you're talking about putting a song in the Pregap, or otherwise known as burning from Index 0.
It's a neat trick, here is a list of commercial CDs with this done to them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregap

As Massive already said, there are dangers of hardware getting confused by a CD with music in the pregap. I've never seen it, but imagine it is possible since most older CD players were designed with much more strict RedBook compliance. To be fair, some of those old CD players won't even play burned CDs either.
Be sure that the replication or duplication service you use can accommodate your CD.

You won't be able to do this with Nero (not sure about CD architect), But Exact Audio Copy and Furio support it.

Here is Furio's definition: http://www.feurio.de/English/faq/faq_vocable_index0music.shtml

Other ways of making a "hidden" track:
--Combine the last track with silence, and then the hidden track. Like Farview said.
--Similarly, you can split the hidden track from the last track, but still have a bunch of silence before the hidden track.
--Create many small silent "tracks" and after so many of them, have the hidden song play. You are limited to 99 total tracks on a CD and the silent tracks can be a minimum of 4 seconds.

One last thing, if someone ever ripps your CD to MP3 using any of these methods, they may be a bit annoyed with either: Not bieng able to rip from index0, have a very long last track wasting megabytes, a very long last track with nothing but dead air, or a bunch of small 4-second tracks to delete.

 

[danny.guitar]

Thanks for the responses, that's good info tarnation. I don't want to mess up any CD players so I may just put it at the very end of the CD and delete the marker as Farview said, I know CD Architect can do that.

As for annoying someone ripping my CD to MP3s, that's another good point. I wish there was a way to do it without deleting the marker but just make the last track "hidden" or something, but I guess not.

Anyway, thanks again.

 

[Farview]

As for annoying someone ripping my CD to MP3s, that's another good point. I wish there was a way to do it without deleting the marker but just make the last track "hidden" or something, but I guess not.

You can always just not mention the last track on the cover. That would be more of a 'suprise track' than a hidden one, but it could be cool.