Revealing hidden CD tracks

January 5, 2011 8:43 AM

How do I play/rip CD tracks with negative indices?

I recently purchased a music boxed set including 7 CDs. The first 2 CDs have 2 tracks each which are shown as -1 and -2 on provided track listing information. I am unable to play these tracks using Winamp, Windows Media Player or VLC. I do not have access to a standalone CD player. Is there any way to see/play/rip these tracks using commonly available software in a windows environment?

posted by breakfast_yeti to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: Exact Audio Copy will do this. You can use this tutorial that will show you how to properly set various options to the correct values for your optical drive. Exact Audio Copy also includes an AccurateRip component that you can set up with 2-3 reasonably common retail CDs that will allow you check your rips against existing ones by CRC value; this is particularly valuable where you have a complex ripping situation as above.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 8:59 AM on January 5, 2011 [2 favorites]

Thanks Inspector.Gadget! I was reading about these tracks the other week, and apparently the only way mentioned was to have a much older CD player that would let you hold the rewind button to access them- everything else had been updated to ignore negative tracks.
posted by yeloson at 9:12 AM on January 5, 2011

Best answer: I'll just add that not all drives have the ability to rip hidden track one audio (HTOA). This database may help determine if your hardware is up to the task. EAC will display the first track of a CD with HTOA in a red colour, so you'll know which albums have it without testing them one by one manually.

If you do single image file + cuesheet rips in EAC, the HTOA will be automatically included (provided your drive is capable of doing so); if you prefer to rip your CDs as one file per track, here are some simple instructions for extraction.
posted by Bangaioh at 10:09 AM on January 5, 2011