We have already about the surprises that vinyl records contain. It was 1901 vinyl, Pink Floyd and The B-52's, small programs and even optical experiments.
We liked your feedback. and we decided to expand the topic. Let's look at both vinyl and other formats - and talk about new "Easter eggs" hidden on a variety of albums.
Photo
Due to the fact that the records are a "mechanical" format, they do not allow you to fully hide the tracks. An attentive glance will easily find an additional track, and a curious listener will immediately try to reproduce its contents. If we talk about CDs, they can be used to play a more subtle "game" with fans. One of these methods is calledpre gap».
It works according to the standard for "burning" digitized sound onto CDs, which is called "Red Book". By the way, it became the "Red Book" after it entered the general set of specifications for CD under the even more interesting name ""(and it seems to us that this topic deserves a separate habrapost, what do you think?). Moreover, “Red Book” is often confused with CD-ROM, but just in case, it’s worth clarifying that it is still CDDA (Compact Disc Digital Audio).
Photo /
So, the "Red Book" requires that each track on the disk be preceded by at least 150 empty blocks - this pause, according to the specification, lasting about two seconds, is listed in the "table of contents" (TOC, Table Of Contents) as zero ("index 00") the index of this track ("index 01"). When mastering and preparing an album for “burning”, it is possible to record “musical Easter eggs” in these blocks.
An example of a CUE sheet showing the hidden track:
PERFORMER "Bloc Party"
TITLE "Silent Alarm"
FILE "Bloc Party - Silent Alarm.flac" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Like Eating Glass"
PERFORMER "Bloc Party"
> INDEX 00 00:00:00
INDEX 01 03:22:70
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "Helicopter"
PERFORMER "Bloc Party"
INDEX 00 07:42:69
INDEX 01 07:44:69On the other hand, it will not be so easy to listen to a hidden track - a standard player simply will not see anything unusual or refuse to play sound with an error, but when playing a regular track and rewinding (namely “seeking”) to its beginning, the hidden recording is still can be heard. In the simplified diagram (image below), it is represented as cutoff "0".
Picture /
This approach has been used for various purposes. For example, as an additional "intro" to your work. Just some editions of Rammstein's 1999 live album into such a pre-gap with a jubilant audience at one of the band's concerts. Of course, there are other examples as well.
So, on the legendary emo-album "The Devil and the God are Raging Inside Me", known for its gloomy mood, Brand New was placed in pre-gap from overlapping telephone conversations. And the album» Brits Unkle foreshadows a hidden mix of the songs that inspired them to record the record (video below).
"Pre-gap" can also be used to place the usual hidden tracks - remixes, outtakes and compositions that for one reason or another do not want to be put on the album's official playlist.
This is what most bands and performers do. For example, in the anniversary re-releases of the albums "Murmur" and "Reckoning" REM are hidden , recorded in the 80s to promote the original record on the radio. By the way, the albums of the 83rd and 84th years contain hidden "untitled" tracks. The first one is in the form between "Shaking Through" and "We Walk", and - between "Camera" and "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville", but already on the album "Reckoning".
In the late 90s, pre-gap tracks began to be placed in the software part , but this is another story, to which we will return in one of our next materials on Habré.
Additional reading from our Hi-Fi World:
Source: habr.com