So I just did a bunch of research and thought I should pass it on to anyway who wants to know (if there's any out there that don't already know how to do it.) I mean it's not a help at all for what we're normally concerned with here, but who knows when it'll come in handy.
So the story goes like this... I recorded this bluegrass band a couple weeks ago, and they come back to me a few days ago after they've had a mixed master of the 10 songs for a while to listen to. They only want 4 of the 10 songs on the disc. It's really just a demo to help them get gigs so it makes sence they just want the best stuff on there.... but what about all my work? Those 6 tracks will dissappear into oblivion and noone will be the wiser. Unless.....
I put them as hidden tracks before the first song.... that way they get their 4 clean songs for a nice presentation and i still get to publish all my recordings. So here's how I did it....I'm working on a mac, for a PC I believe Feurio! (burning app) will allow you to do all the things I describe. First I open the six unused audio files plus the first used track in a wave editor and string them all into one big wave file. I put a little more space between them than normal because people will be rewinding to hear these songs so the bigger gaps will help identify seperate songs. I put the first official track starting at 20 minutes excatly. Next I open toast and import the wave i just made and the three more songs that are supposed to be on the disc. I arrange the disc as if to burn but then I save as cue/bin. Next I open the .cue file in TextEdit. It looks like this:
FILE "sle.bin" BINARY
CDTEXTFILE "sle.cdt"
TRACK 01 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
INDEX 01 23:29:31
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 25:55:31
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 28:44:31
After the proper changes to hide the 6 tracks it looked like this:
FILE "sle.bin" BINARY
TRACK 01 AUDIO
INDEX 00 00:00:00
INDEX 01 20:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
INDEX 01 23:29:31
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 25:55:31
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 28:44:31
Unfortunatly Toast does something to the files before burning and doesnt include the hidden tracks. The program I used for a successful burn from the cue/bin file is FireStarter FX. It is important to delete the cd text reference on the second line, or the burn won't work. As far as I can tell this is a reference for toast to use but causes errors in other burning programs. The other thing you have to do is add an index 00 00:00:00 in track 01 before index 01. Then you change the time on index 01 to the moment you want the disc to start (ie after the hidden tracks). For me I made it easy and put it right at 20:00:00. After this the listener will have to manually rewind before the first track in order to hear the hidden songs. That's it.
One thing to note... your tracks are actually not just hidden....but well hidden. CD roms can't read the hidden tracks. Car stereos can't read the hidden tracks. Most CD players made in the past 5 years can't read the tracks. The only reason I knew they were there is because I could see more than 4 tracks were burned on the disc. It wasn't until I put the disc into the first cd player my father ever bought, that I could hear the hidden tracks. Worked just like expected. See this cd player didn't just have digits for the track, it had them for index's too. I think allot of newer cd players just ignore indexing.
So there it is. If you don't want your tracks to be SO well hidden consider burning an enhanced cd and attaching them as data files...or you could just put them at the end after a long silence.
Enjoy