Ripping a pre-gap hidden track on a CD

Does anyone know how to rip a track that's hidden before Track 01 on a CD? I have Autechre's EP7, which has a bonus track in the pre-gap that you can only hear by loading the disc and pushing the rewind button as far back as it will go. It only works with some stand-alone CD players, and as I found out, neither of mine will do it. As for doing this on a computer, I have an iMac with OS X, and it won't even recognize that there's any data there.

I've looked around on the web and found all sorts of information for Windows users, but nothing for my situation. Does anyone have any tips? Thanks.

 

I don't have a Mac, so I can't vouch for its abilities.. but I would try Max.

 

I really hate it when artists do this kind of goofy stuff. One of my favorites, Chuck Brodsky, has such a hidden track on his second album that I've found no way to rip so far. I'll have to look for those windows sources.

 

I would use Toast, "Save As Disc Image", then open the image in Peak and crop out the track.

 

Sorry, I didn't make it clear in my original post. The track isn't visible in OS X, and no app that runs under OS X can see it.

 

I can see and rip them with a freeware version of a program called IsoBuster, and I think (not sure) that they have a Mac version - you might look into it, since it's just a matter of selecting the track (marked as Track 00) and telling it to rip a wav file. For Windows, it's a piece of cake - I've mentioned it several times here and nobody else has indicated they use it for this, which amazes me considering how easy it is.

 

It was possible in OS 9 too. Something changed in OS X though. I think I'll have to find someone with Windows who can do it for me.

 

Wouldn't playing back the disc in the computer while recording its data stream do?

 

EAC will record the pregap.

What's actually happening is, the audio actually starts in the beginning of the CD but the "cue" file is telling the player that track 01 starts at something like 00:41, etc.

www.exactaudiocopy.de

 

If you rip the disc as an image it shouldn't matter. The apps that won't let you access the track directly are looking for it in the disc's TOC (where it's flagged as Track 1 Index 0, which lots of software -- and some hardware -- simply ignores). If you're pulling all the audio data off the disc as a single image there's no need for the apps to look at the TOC in the first place, so you should get the whole disc.

That's how it works in Windows-land, at least.

 

Ship the disc to me, and i will do it for you for free with my very old Sony player.
Digital out to DAT->CDR.

 

That's how I thought it should work. But Toast can't do it. Apparently the drive itself ignores anything before Track 1.

 

You would expect nothing less from Autechre

 

What about doing an analog rip from the CD player into the sound card, like a needle drop? I had to do that once on a CD that my computer wouldn't read.

 

I can't believe my eyes......
Is digital clone not better?

 

I think Feurio can handle this.

http://www.feurio.com/English/index.shtml

Trial copies are free - and you don't have to pay
until you decide that the annoying message saying
"dont you wish you didnt have to read this message"
is annoying

I know I've CREATED a disc with this pre-gap thing.

I was copying the Bowling for Soup dualdisc - and I
discovered a hidden track on the DVD side - that
was a big long joke... laced with profanity... so
i figured it would be better off it was hidden in the
area in front of the first proper song

I highly recommend Feurio. I learned about it here
on this forum.

Feurio is very powerful feature wise - especially the "index 0"
thing - which is great for live albums - and basically
the reason that you can hide something before the
first song.

Basically every track has an "index 0" area. Usually
its two seconds of silence - but it doesn't HAVE to
be silence.

If you skip to a track - the "index 0" area is skipped.

When you start a CD - most (all?) players start with
"track 1 - index 1" - and then continue through to
"track 2 - index 0" thru to "track 2 - index 1" thru
to "track 3 - index 0" thru to "track 3 - index 1"
etc.

That pre-song talk or audience applause between
songs on a live album - that you never want at
the beginning of a song (or the end of a song)
fits real nicely in the "between" area....

When you look at the CD player - its counting
from a negative number to 0... (usually -2, -1
of silence) until it gets to index 1.

Sometimes my live albums have a count that
lasts for 60-90 seconds (-1:30, -1:29, -1:28,
... -3,-2,-1,0) while the band is talking
to the audience or the crowd is cheering
for an encore.

 

OK, really late to the game here, but this was the exact problem I had and the best thread I found on Internet to help point me in the right direction.

Anyways, I just thought I'd let any future searchers know that "X Lossless Decoder" (aka XLD) on Mac solves this problem, with a little work. Here's how:

- Download and install XLD (duh): http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23430/x-lossless-decoder
- Open it and tell it to output to WAV in the General preferences. You should also take this opportunity to tell it to save ripped audio to your Desktop or someplace you'll be able to find later (under "Output Directory").
- You'll probably want to set the bit depth to 24-bit so you don't dither the audio more than once for the subsequent steps. Or not, if you don't care to get that anal about it.
- If the Audio CD window isn't open select "File > Open Audio CD > Audio CD" from the menu bar.
- In the Audio CD window make sure the option "Include pre-gap for all tracks" is selected.
- Uncheck all the tracks except Track 1 (you'll understand why in a moment). Note the 09:58:00 pregap.
- Click "Extract". Wait 40 or so minutes. I don't know if I selected some incorrect options, but whatever. 0.4x ripping speed! :O I can only assume it's a fairly accurate rip.
- Once the file is extracted to your computer, open it with your favorite sample editing program (Peak, Quattro, whatever).
- Split the tracks, save to different files, and you're done!

As an aside, the technical term for this is "HTOA Pregap". HTOA means "Hidden Track One Audio", and it's in the pregap information for track 1.

 

Please help : i'm going crazy !!!
I want to rip the pre-gap hidden track before track 1 on Public Enemy's Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess-Age album but it doesn't work !!!!!!!!
I have a macbook pro with mac os x. I use the last XLD version (145.0). It detects the cd and the pregap before track 1 appaears with 02:22:60 lenght.
I do exacly what is said on the post above this one with 4 different cds of the album and i have the same problem with each one : ripping blocks at 16,2%. Why oh why oh why ????
Am I the only one who have this problem with this track ? Does it work fine for you on xld ? Does it work fine on Pc with Eac ? If it works for you, can someone rip it for me on flac ? That would be nice.
I possess this album and love it. I am ripping my whole collection and this track is part of the album so if i rip it, i must have it. For the first time in my life i tried to find on internet (i know it's bad) and i found no rip of the album that include this track. Only a youtube video.
Please helpppppp !!!!!!!!!

 

Do you have access to a Windows computer to do the rip?
I don't have a Mac so I'm not familiar with how to do it on a Mac. Here's a process that has worked for me to rip a hidden track using a PC and Windows. I ripped the CD "Glide" by Jerry Douglas that has a HTOA (hidden track one audio).

The ability to rip a pre-gap HTOA track does depend on the CDR drive used. Some drives can do it, some can't. I used a Plextor PX-W1210A drive to rip.

My process:
Rip with EAC to a single WAV and CUE
Then use CUETools to split the CUE to separate tracks
You need to configure CUETools to keep the HTOA track. You need to go into the CUETools settings and set gaps handling to "Gaps Appended + HTOA". Split the CUE to separate tracks and you'll end up with the hidden track named HTOA along with the rest of the tracks for the album.

But this does depend on the capabilities of the CD drive used to rip. Perhaps to get it to work on the Mac you need to try a different brand/model of CD drive?

 

Thanks. I don not have a pc but i know people who have one. If someone has a solution on mac, please help

 

What's the name of the song?
Edit-Ferocious Soul?, with hard to rip songs, I do as above stated, cd player into mac/pc

 

Yeah that's Ferocious Soul.

You got this album ? If yes can you rip this track in flac or wav for me ?

 

Unfortunately not, I had the cassette of it years ago, never knew it had a pre track, kinda neat

 

Waking up this old thread to see if there's a better way to rip prep hidden tracks as we near 2016. I'm trying to rip the Password from Kylie Minogue's Light Years CD. It's in the pregap to the first track. XLD shows the pregap length at over 3 minutes so it's there but when I rip it doesn't include it. I'm on a Mac so any suggestions?

 

There's a version of dBPoweramp that works with Macs these days, it also has the ability to rip hidden tracks. I've used it myself to rip Password and a couple of other pre-gap hidden tracks before, but....and it's a big but, it does have a habit of chopping off the first millisecond of the song.

I don't know if there's any possible work around for that behaviour by maybe changing the drive offset or something? Anyway I think they have a trial version you can use for 21 days so it shouldn't cost anything to check it out.