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How CD pregaps gained their hidden track superpowers
Pondering the compatibility issues and complications of a clever element of the audio CD hidden track boom: The before-album pregap.
About a decade ago, a user on the Hydrogen Audio forums found pregaps on albums as diverse and well-known as Beck’s Mellow Gold, Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I & II, Nirvana’s Nevermind, and, um, the score to Schindler’s List. As The CD ROM Handbook explains, the Red Book spec lets CD-makers add two-second audio pregaps between each track, though they’re optional, as proven by the fact that your favorite albums aren’t loaded with giant pauses. — A Billboard piece from the fall of 1995, mere months after the magazine was home to the showdown between Justice Records and Course of Empire, discussing the rise of the Enhanced CD, a standard that aimed to bring music albums to the PC and Macintosh.
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