Accurate CD track points

WaveLab
#1

I have a question about CD time markers. I’ll use Tom Petty’s “Full Moon Fever” as an example. It has an audio track between both “sides” of the album which jokes about how vinyl and cassette users would have to get up and flip the LP or tape over. The audio is in the pre-gap (index zero) before Track 6.

Standard (i.e. old) CD players would not play the clip if you programmed just Track 5 or Track 6, but you would hear it if you let Track 5 play straight through to Track 6. On my first CD player, after Track 5, you’d see Track 6 Index 0 along with the time code counting down (and you’d hear the humorous clip here) until the time reached zero, then it would change to Track 6 Index 1 and the next song would start.

Modern CD players seem to ignore this - they just include the clip as part of Track 5 - and WaveLab does the same. I think this is because the CD’s TOC only contains the starting point for every track. If I make an Audio Montage of the CD there is no marker where Track 5 actually ends, there is only a marker where Track 6 starts.

This becomes a more noticeable problem for a CD like Sigue Sigue Sputnik’s “Flaunt It” where the band sold ad space and put short commercials in the Index 0 gap between every song.

Is there a way to make WaveLab extract all the timing points from a CD? If not, does anyone know of software that would do this? It would be even better if the software could scan for where the index points are since I have a bunch of CDs with those as well.

#2

I think Wavelab was able to do that with certain CD drives in the past.

Exact Audio Copy can do it with most any CD drive. Options for saving as wav files or continuous wav/cue.
With all indexes, 0 and 1.
From EAC: “By using the command “Detect Pre-Track Gaps” it is possible to detect all gap-lengths by reading the sub-channel information.”

If you’re on Mac you can use XLD, which has similar capability.

#3

Audio in-pauses mode will do this if I remember right !?

https://steinberg.help/wavelab_pro/v9.5/en/wavelab/topics/audio_montage/audio_montage_audio_in_pauses_c.html

even check pdf WL manual page 302-303

but you also need a good cd reader to grab the cd like the Plextor’s was
this days I’m not sure what to buy ?

regards S-EH

#4

Audio in-pauses mode will do this if I remember right !?

It grabs the pause, but don’t set a marker at between the pause and the body.

Philippe

#5

I don’t know about the players, but the CD Redbook spec absolutely has CD track Start and End markers - and WL still has them too. A general CD player reads the TOC info and uses this info to - for instance - be able to count down toward the end of the track. The TOC is written first, so in the old days if your burn failed you could end up with complete CD information for all tracks but only audio for part of the tracks.

In your montage example you should not use the CD Track Split marker, but the Track End and Start markers for Track 5 and 6. That way you can define the space inbetween differently and players will count down toward the actual start of Track 6 after passing the end marker of Track 5. Audio in Pauses should be used to burn like this. Very useful for live CDs (audience cheers and talk between tracks) - but beware of the effect if you want to render separate CD tracks for online or streaming use.

#6

Years ago this was fun to do, but the way the iTunes, Spotify and the streaming services handle track markers, now we just have to put this hidden info at the end of the previous track and call it goo.

I’m sure WaveLab can still do it if you wanted to just for the CD format, but for the media player and streaming world, I do not think it’s really possible.

This is why I always use the CD Track Splice Markers in WaveLab instead of a proper end and start marker that can have a space between them, also known as negative time.

WaveLab recently added an option to include this negative time on the previous track or next track when rendering WAV/mp3 files of each track, but I just avoid this situation by using the CD Track Splice Markers which are brilliant.

#7

If by that you mean Index 2 and up, I’m pretty sure EAC does that as well, from my past testing. You could test it by ripping the CD to continuous wav/cue in EAC, open the cue file in a text editor and see if the higher indexes show up.

#8

But having said that about programs that do this with any drive, I don’t ever find the need to retrieve the index 0 location or index 2 and higher, and find the cd import in Wavelab to be perfectly fine for anything I need.