HTOA

Introduction

Some audio CDs we buy can have hidden audio within the first track of the disc. In order for some hi-fi CD players to playback this audio you would start playing track 1 (at the beginning) and press the rewind button.
But when we come to back-up/transfer our audio CDs to the PC this hidden audio can become lost. This is because not all PC CD/DVD Rom drives can successfully retrieve this audio.

This feature is easy to test for. All you need is a CUE compliant burning app, the files that are available here for download and a spare CD-R/RW.

How To Test

  1. Download the zipped files: hidden_song_test.zip.
    sha256sum: 4c144f254c610e44494bb25d9ef85d07ea8d27e6fe059e41199ee54b6d33c295 hidden_song_test.zip
  2. Extract the contents of the zip file. The contents are:
    • hidden_song_test.cue
    • hidden_song_test.wav
    • sha256sum.txt
  3. You're now ready to burn the file to disc. To do this you should use a CUE sheet compliant burning app such as EAC. You must select the CUE sheet and not the .wav file when burning your disc.
  4. Once the image has finished burning you can return to the main EAC window. EAC should display only one track, but that track should be in red. This means that there is a hidden track or TRACK 01 INDEX 00.
  5. To extract the audio you should again use EAC and use EAC's Copy Image and Create CUE Sheet feature or ALT+F7.
  6. Once EAC has finished it's job playback the wav file in any audio player. If audio starts playing immediately your drive can retrieve the HTOA.

Further Reading