Getting pregap hidden tracks off CD

**Epaphras** · 11-06-2009, 11:24 PM

I found out today that Dashboard Confessional's 2006 album Dusk and Summer has two hidden tracks placed before the first song on the album. Apparently you put it in a CD player and rewind it to hear them.

I can't find on Google or otherwise figure out how to get these two tracks off the CD onto my iTunes (I'm on a Macbook if that matters). Any pointers?

doulos14 · 11-07-2009, 02:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Epaphras

I found out today that Dashboard Confessional's 2006 album Dusk and Summer has two hidden tracks placed before the first song on the album. Apparently you put it in a CD player and rewind it to hear them.

I can't find on Google or otherwise figure out how to get these two tracks off the CD onto my iTunes (I'm on a Macbook if that matters). Any pointers?

I know that an old Reliant K cd that i have has a hidden track at the end of a song, and it just made the song abnormally huge, with a gap in between the main song and the hidden song, but I'm not sure how that works for a beginning.

Have you already imported all the songs? perhaps the first song is longer and the information is right there for you.

Jonodude · 11-08-2009, 12:24 AM

Rather simple to do with Exact Audio Copy, but it's a Windows-only application. If you have access to anyone's Windows machine you should give it a try--pointers can be given as necessary, as it's a somewhat complex program to set up initially.

**Epaphras** · 11-09-2009, 02:15 PM

Hmm, so it doesn't sound like there is an easy way to do this then. Bummer.

Jonodude · 11-09-2009, 10:50 PM

In case you haven't thought of it, another cumbersome method, but doable, is to take any CD player you have that has a headphones or line-out jack (preferably line-out), feed that into your computer's microphone or line-in jack (again, preferably line-in), pull up your sound recorder program of choice, then start recording and playing the track from the CD player. It's cumbersome, but it's something.

This is, incidentally, also good if you find your computer can't rip a CD because of errors, but the CD plays fine in normal players, which is due to CD players having certain error masking routines that computer drives don't have.

**Sean.thomson** · 11-09-2009, 10:56 PM

Just crop it with Audacity?

ApparentlyNothing · 11-10-2009, 12:05 AM

XLD is the comparable Mac app to EAC. Might be your solution, though I don't know for sure.

X Lossless Decoder: Lossless audio decoder for Mac OS X

Jonodude · 11-14-2009, 10:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApparentlyNothing

XLD is the comparable Mac app to EAC. Might be your solution, though I don't know for sure.

X Lossless Decoder: Lossless audio decoder for Mac OS X

Ooh! That looks tasty. Well, if excluding pregaps or including them on the previous track are the only gap options (according to screenshot), ripping track one's pregap as a single file isn't going to be possible, but it looks like ripping the entire CD as an image then manually cutting--which, rereading the OP, apparently was going to be necessary anyway since they put two tracks into the one pregap--will be doable.