Hidden Tracks

[d6jg]

What do people think is the best way of dealing with hidden tracks i.e.those that appear at the end of an album after X mins of silence?
Assume that we are trying to end up with a lossless format track(s) with no silence.
I read somewhere that editing a FLAC with Audacity isn't advisable but unsure why.

[Wombat]

What do people think is the best way of dealing with hidden tracks i.e.those that appear at the end of an album after X mins of silence?
Assume that we are trying to end up with a lossless format track(s) with no silence.
I read somewhere that editing a FLAC with Audacity isn't advisable but unsure why.

Just a few days back i had mentioned elsewhere how i like it

I like the idea that if i simply play back the album it behaves the way it was meant.
To have more control over it while i actively listen i prefer to be able to skip the silence, play the main track in loop without silence or play the hidden track directly.
I split the last track in 3 parts like Main Track, (Siilence) and Hidden Track with a wav editor i trust.
Be sure to split at cd frame boundaries or fix it for the 3 resulting files with something like SBE fix in Little Traders Helper.
The last track will now consist of 3 files and 3 indexes in the CUE.
Grigory Chudovs CUEtools interprets this correctly and can verify the cd as before against the AR database
EAC can write it fine with the new CUE and indexes.

Example for Placebo (2000) Black Market Music
...
TRACK 11 AUDIO
TITLE "Narcoleptic"
PERFORMER "Placebo"
INDEX 00 03:42:33
FILE "11. Narcoleptic.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 12 AUDIO
TITLE "Peeping Tom / Black Market Blood"
PERFORMER "Placebo"
INDEX 00 04:21:37
FILE "12. Peeping Tom _ Black Market Blood.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
--------------------------------------------------------
Becomes:
...
TRACK 11 AUDIO
TITLE "Narcoleptic"
PERFORMER "Placebo"
INDEX 00 03:42:33
FILE "11. Narcoleptic.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 12 AUDIO
TITLE "Peeping Tom / Black Market Blood"
PERFORMER "Placebo"
INDEX 00 04:21:37
FILE "12. Peeping Tom.wav" WAVE
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "13. (Silence).wav" WAVE
INDEX 02 00:00:00
FILE "14. Black Market Blood (Hidden Track).wav" WAVE
INDEX 03 00:00:00

Edit: I have not tested how LMS treats this when you use CUE based playback.
Edit2: You may also leave out the silence file and zip it away for restoring later easily with CUEtools. And one pointless thing i do is looking at the other songs of the album searching for a pattern to have similar times where music starts and ends. But that is at the edge me wondering how wacko...

[kbeast]

I personally use audacity to split up the tracks as song / silence / hidden track or whatever needs to be done, export them as flac again and tag them to match the rest of the album. I then take the original flac and rar it so i have it preserved.

If you use cue sheets you could techincally just make seperate times and different tracks..

If you're saving the file in a lossless format such as flac, there is no issue in quality loss.

Edit: sorry didnt realize this was from 2015...

[emalvick]

I personally use audacity to split up the tracks as song / silence / hidden track or whatever needs to be done, export them as flac again and tag them to match the rest of the album. I then take the original flac and rar it so i have it preserved.

If you use cue sheets you could techincally just make seperate times and different tracks..

If you're saving the file in a lossless format such as flac, there is no issue in quality loss.

Edit: sorry didnt realize this was from 2015...

I wonder now, how some of the streaming services handle these tracks. I usually just leave them as they are (i.e. one whole file), but that is mostly out of laziness. In the rare cases where I really love that hidden track, I will use Audacity to save off the hidden track separately.

But I generally still get the thrill out of listening to an album and having the silence at the end be punctuated by some added music. It was part of how I enjoyed the albums before, and I like to keep it that way (nostalgic and probably silly).

I am more curious at how people deal with Track 0's. I have a couple of albums with those. It is a royal pain to rip those tracks. Perhaps it has gotten easier with better technology but about 5+ years ago, the last time I tried to rip an album with a track 0, I don't think I could ever fully succeed. I got the track, but it was through grayer methods. And, often times, listeners may not even know the track is there.

[w3wilkes]

I believe DBPowerAmp will rip a hidden 1st track. I think it will be unchecked by default, but all you have to do is check that track and it will be ripped with the rest of the CD.

[emalvick]

I believe DBPowerAmp will rip a hidden 1st track. I think it will be unchecked by default, but all you have to do is check that track and it will be ripped with the rest of the CD.

I'll have to check on that. I think the issue is also a hardware/driver issue, at least that is what I recall. But, those types of CD's are rare to come by and the last time I tried to rip one may be before I started using DBPowerAmp. I used to use EAC, which didn't directly have the option, but in theory could be coaxed to. Unfortunately, at the time, it seems to be that the drivers or the drive I was using essentially forbid looking in front of the TRACK 1 index point.

I might give it another try and see. If anything I need to check to be sure I am not missing out on any Track 0's that may be missing. I don't often think about that anymore.

[w3wilkes]

I think there's a wiki that lists CD with hidden tracks. Spoon (author) on the DBPoweramp forum says that v16.3 handles them, wasn't clear on prior versions if it was just missing tag info or wasn't able to rip the tracks.