How do hidden tracks on CDs work?

Answer 1

There are a few ways to accomplish "hidden tracks": 1) Lets say the last song in the CD, on Track #14 for instance, is 04:00 (four) minutes long. to insert a "hidden track" (whose length is 02:00 [two] minutes) you would insert 3 minutes of silence (or any other amount of time) right at the end of the last song (but still in Track #14)and right after the slince you will insert your "hidden track". At the end, Track 14 will be 09:00 (nine) minutes long because we have [4 minutes music] + [3 minutes silence] + [2 minutes hidden track] An example for this method can be found on Korn's "Life Is Peachy" [see: http://www.answers.com/topic/antichrist-superstar] 2) Another method is similar to the method above, just that instead of putting the "hidden track" at the end of the last song concatinated with some preceding silence, there are "buffer tracks", each of which with a few seconds of silence, and the "hidden track" is really the last track of the album but to reach it you have to go through some silence or skip a few tracks manually. An example for this method can be found on Marilyn Manson's "Antichrist Superstar" [see: http://www.answers.com/topic/antichrist-superstar] 3) Different media segment. In our days a CD might not only contain audio data - it might as well be a regular computer CD containing other types of data. In that case, it is possible to have a "hybrid" CD that once put inside a CD player will function as a regular music album, but when insereted to a computer can function as a regular PC-CD and contain more music, info and sometimes even videos. An example for this method can be found on Korn's "Life Is Peachy" [see: http://www.answers.com/topic/antichrist-superstar] 4) In the happy Vynil days some albums have been reported to contain hidden tracks that can be heard when playing the record backwards at certain speeds (33\45)...