metadata for CD pauses between tracks

[cedricl]

Is there an application that will tell the time of the pauses between CD tracks so that when I import them into QLab I can set the pre waits correctly? Toast does it, but, it has to import the tracks as if it was going to make a new CD and it takes forever. I run shows for dance performances and sometimes they pause after tracks and sometimes they roll through to the next track. Most of the CDs are timed according to the choreography so they put the time they need between tracks to fit the dance. This works if I'm running it from a CD player but not if I'm running it in QLab. I need to know the time between tracks.

[Chris Bakos]

Have you tried Audacity? It may do what you want but is not really designed for that. It is, however free and just upgraded to version 2.0.

[Cedric Lathan]

Yea, I have the updated Audacity for Mac. I couldn't see where that data might be derived from. There has to be an application that reeds a CD in your drive and gives all the info about that CD including the gaps between the tracks. I found that Toast isn't reliable because it also includes the silence at the end of the tracks which are part of the total time for that track. With burned CDs for dance shows, sometimes they'll add :06 of silence to the audio file rather than adjusting the gap when they burn it. I never know what I'm going to get.

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 2:54 PM, Chris Bakos <christop...@gmail.com> wrote:

Have you tried Audacity? It may do what you want but is not really designed for that. It is, however free and just upgraded to version 2.0.

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[Jeremy Lee]

I haven't tried it for ages, but I think Peak, Toast and Jam all allow you to rip a CD into a single image file that delineates the tracks with markers or regions. This would allow you to see everything you want. I'm pretty sure that it's also entirely possible to have audio in the gap between tracks, so it would be important in your case to get that too.

Jeremy Lee

- A thumb is a terrible speller. Please forgive my trespasses.

[Chris Bakos]

Peak might do that, but that seems like a pricy solution at $500 US. Toast will give up the gaps between songs, but not the "6 second of silence at the end of a track" problem; but you already know that. I'm not sure you could ever find an easy solution for the "6 seconds of silence at the end of a track" problem without some level of tech. I'm guessing that time to too tight to work this out with the performers?

[Cedric Lathan]

If I'm running the show off the CD and they just roll through, it's not a problem. When they have stops and starts and some roll throughs, I load them into QLab. When the music rolls through in QLab, I need to make the roll throughs consistent to being played off the CD player. That's why I need the exact gaps between tracks. 

If I load the audio files fro a CD into QLab, there might be 12 tracks. Tracks 1-4 are roll throughs and tracks 5-9 are pauses after every track. Then tracks 10-12 roll through. See my problem? I don't care about 5-9 because I'm pausing after every track. But, I do need to know about the tracks that roll through. 

When I get a stack of CDs, I'll look at them in Toast to get the gaps and I'll enter the time (as a pre wait) into QLab. If I have time I'll look at the files and sometimes it will be obvious that one track should roll right into the next. Sometimes I'll be able to see that the :06 seconds Toast was telling me is really :06 seconds of silence at the end of the previous track. And, sometimes I just have to guess. When we run rehearsal, the stage manager will tell me, "That sounded wrong, what'd you do?". I'll explain that I thought there was a gap and I added the seconds but I'll take them out if they think it's wrong.

I have Peak. It really wont read the info of a CD either.

On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 1:01 PM, Chris Bakos <christop...@gmail.com> wrote:

Peak might do that, but that seems like a pricy solution at $500 US. Toast will give up the gaps between songs, but not the "6 second of silence at the end of a track" problem; but you already know that. I'm not sure you could ever find an easy solution for the "6 seconds of silence at the end of a track" problem without some level of tech. I'm guessing that time to too tight to work this out with the performers?

[Cedric Lathan]

Someone on the QLab group led me to Exact Audio Copy. It's a free pc application but I was able to open it in Parallels. Once you get it configured right it works for what I need.

[Cedric Lathan]

Toast will tell you the gaps but it also includes the seconds of silence that someone might have added to the end of their tracks. It reads those seconds as part of the gap. Exact Audio Copy (pc) works. I opened it in Parallels and had help figuring it out. I'll look at Peak again but I wanted something that only takes a few seconds to give results. Burning a CD image file is sometimes longer than the time I have. I haven't had Jam for ages.

[cedricl]

I meant, someone on the rec.audio.group.

[Jeremy Lee]

Glad you got what you need.  It seems that those of you who do dance concerts need a very specialized workflow.

-- 

Jeremy Lee

    Sound Designer, NYC - USA 829

        http://www.jjlee.com

[Cedric Lathan]

Just wish I could find a Mac application that does the same thing. I hate having to open Windows in Parallels on a Mac. Exact Audio Copy will read the gaps and then save a cue list that you can open in Text Edit that will give you all the dirty details about each track.

[Jake Zerrer]

Try XLD: http://tmkk.pv.land.to/xld/index_e.html
It does just about everything CD related that you can think of.

[Jeremy Lee]

Thanks Jake- geeky but pretty fantastic! Beware that it's likely reporting times in CD frames- ie 75 frames/ second.

On Jun 2, 2012, at 1:21 AM, Jake Zerrer wrote:

> Try XLD: http://tmkk.pv.land.to/xld/index_e.html
> It does just about everything CD related that you can think of.
>

[dan howarth]

ha. "very specialized" indeed. honestly dance is.

to be focused ---- i'm a bit confused on the original query - cedric, these dance CDs have a negative / minus time in between tracks ? ie this is a programmed minus time on the CD that is more than the usual 2 seconds programmed by most burning apps ?? that someone involved in the dance choreography has programmed, specifically to coincide with the choreography ? ie the time from track 3 to track 4 -in between- has been specially programmed to be ... six seconds of minus time ??? etc etc. or are we really looking at a lot of dead tail (positive time) at the end of track 3 (that the dancers are accustomed to throughout rehearsal) before track 4 starts .... ie track 3 is 3:45 long and there's six seconds of silence before track 3 is over (3:51) and then track 4 starts ?? that isn't minus time (which is -yes- kinda hard to see). that's just dead space / tail at the end of an audio track. yes - minus time is a bit hard to read without a more definite scanning app. positive dead tail is easy with qlab. 

i would like to be clear that the time between tracks is specifically programmed, ie some tracks are -0:05 and some are -0:03 and some are even -0:08 or whatever ???? this smacks of a very intuitive and computer savvy choreographer ... my first thought is --- why aren't you in touch with the "audio designer" who has programmed this kind of whacky CD ... ? that's a bit unusual - i've seen dance CDs for a while now and that's honestly quite geeky. usually when this is needed, they leave .. five or eight seconds of "positive time" at the end of a track when they want a transition to occur. the dancers learn (during rehearsal, etc) that they have -that- much time to get there before the next track starts ... if this is the case, it's quite easy to deal with qlab pre-waits and all that .. .positive time (dead tail) is easy. i honestly i have not met a choreographer who knows how to program negative wait time between tracks. not saying it's impossible. etc. as has been offered so far, not many programs seem to allow the reading of the negative time stuff. having "negative time" is kinda unusual ??? usually this sort of detail can be .. worked through .. with a bit of communication ? with the original sound designer person ? 

[Cedric Lathan]

Sometimes I get it both ways, with added silence at the end of a track and programmed space between the tracks. The tails I don't worry about, I import a track, it imports, tail and all. It's the space that's programmed between the tracks. Some people will use more than the normal :02 seconds which is the default for most burning software. We have a lot of "savy" audio designers out here in the Bay Area. I'm not in contact with them. I get a stack of CDs with a list of which ones roll through and which ones start and stop. I need to have those pre-wait times because, as you said, the dancers learn the timing between tracks, for those CD tracks that do roll through.

--

[dan howarth]

On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 2:07 PM, Cedric Lathan <cedricl...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sometimes I get it both ways, with added silence at the end of a track and programmed space between the tracks. The tails I don't worry about, I import a track, it imports, tail and all. It's the space that's programmed between the tracks. Some people will use more than the normal :02 seconds which is the default for most burning software. We have a lot of "savy" audio designers out here in the Bay Area. I'm not in contact with them. I get a stack of CDs with a list of which ones roll through and which ones start and stop. I need to have those pre-wait times because, as you said, the dancers learn the timing between tracks, for those CD tracks that do roll through.

thanks for the expanded explanation .. i would also like to know of a reliable mac solution.

i did a bit of looking around just now --- found this: http://desolationvalley.com/wj/oddcd/index.shtml ---- so what i referred to as "negative time" should properly be called "pre-gap" time. 

and i found a usenet query from 2004 with virtually the same wording as your original question and our responses, ie Toast & Jam, then EAC was suggested .. (had to make sure the tardis cue was OFF) .. and then a suggestion that Firestarter FX (mac os -- with a ROUND app window !!) should do this as well. unfortunately i don't have a decent "odd-cd" around here to test this whole thing out .... but the round window is different. why not make the qlab v3 window into a big Q. or a little q. with the GO button on the descender. 

also -- a quick google search for "exact audio copy mac" brings up a TON of hits .. if you've already gone down this path, what did you find ? thanks. 

[cmonaghan76]

If you don't mind the command line or 'Terminal', a audio-CD's table of contents file, on a Mac anyway, is stored as a hidden file called .TOC.plist that you can read from the disc. It is structured like an XML file. The structure of the disc is all there, showing the starting block number for each item. A single block represents 1/75 second, the smallest unit of accessible data on a CD. Some simple math and you can derive the time for each element.

I've made a little command line utility that will list out the structure of the disc, but I still need to do the time conversion on the blocks before I can share it.

What I don't have is a CD with pre-gaps to see what the data structure looks like when pre-gaps are present. Would you be willing to send me your .TOC.plist file of a sample CD so I can examine it's structure?

Chris Monaghan
Widgeteering Studios, LLC

[raymond soly]

> On Tuesday, May 29, 2012 1:56:16 PM UTC-4, cedricl wrote:
> Is there an application that will tell the time of the pauses
> between CD tracks so that when I import them into QLab I can set the
> pre waits correctly? Toast does it, but, it has to import the tracks
> as if it was going to make a new CD and it takes forever. I run
> shows for dance performances and sometimes they pause after tracks
> and sometimes they roll through to the next track. Most of the CDs
> are timed according to the choreography so they put the time they
> need between tracks to fit the dance. This works if I'm running it
> from a CD player but not if I'm running it in QLab. I need to know
> the time between tracks.
>

I use an older version of toast (titanuim 7) alongside a more recent
toast titanium V9.....when burning I use 9 but when just importing
quickly or to listen or get cd times I use 7...... os X 10.5.8......

Ray

[Cedric Lathan]

I use EAC for Windows in Parallels n the Mac. I didn't see a Mac version. I'll look again. I'll also check out FirestarterFX. Thanks.

On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 5:31 PM, dan howarth <theater...@gmail.com> wrote:

thanks for the expanded explanation .. i would also like to know of a reliable mac solution.

i did a bit of looking around just now --- found this: http://desolationvalley.com/wj/oddcd/index.shtml ---- so what i referred to as "negative time" should properly be called "pre-gap" time. 

and i found a usenet query from 2004 with virtually the same wording as your original question and our responses, ie Toast & Jam, then EAC was suggested .. (had to make sure the tardis cue was OFF) .. and then a suggestion that Firestarter FX (mac os -- with a ROUND app window !!) should do this as well. unfortunately i don't have a decent "odd-cd" around here to test this whole thing out .... but the round window is different. why not make the qlab v3 window into a big Q. or a little q. with the GO button on the descender. 

also -- a quick google search for "exact audio copy mac" brings up a TON of hits .. if you've already gone down this path, what did you find ? thanks. 

--

[Rich Walsh]

I feel like I'm missing something fundamental here: if I copy a track from a CD I get the whole track, silence included. The "pre-gap" often contains signal (eg: crowd noise on a live CD), so how could it not be copied as part of the audio? The CD doesn't actually _pause_ for 2s between tracks: the 2s counts towards the total time available on the disc...

I just made a test disc with two 1-minute tracks in it, and an 8s gap between. iTunes, the Finder and Snapper all report the first track as 1:08, and the second as 1:00 - so with an auto-follow between them they would play in QLab just like on a CD player. On the CD player, the counter counts up to 1:00 during track 1, then the track display switches to "2", the counter counts down from 0:08 to 0:00, and then it counts back up again. The 8s of silence is part of the end of track 1, not part of the beginning of track 2.

A CD is a continuous single track of audio with PQ subcode to define tracks, indices and various other gubbins. If you "save as disc image" from Toast all you get is an SDII file with region markers in it, silence included for the pauses. If you copy all the tracks off a CD you get _all_ the audio, don't you?

What have I missed?

Rich

[Cedric Lathan]

Sometimes they have the :06 seconds as silence at the end of the track and sometimes there might be :03 seconds of silence plus a :03 second pre gap before the next track to make up the :06 seconds between tracks. I need to know the pre gap between tracks. You're right, the track with :06 seconds at the end will roll through perfectly, but, the one with :03 seconds at the end and a :03 second pre gap won't unless I add the pre gap as a pre wait in QLab. If I'm playing a CD that rolls all the way through, I play it in the CD player. But if I'm playing a CD that the dance calls for stops and starts and/or cross fades between tracks, and some tracks that roll through, I load the tracks in QLab. That's where it's important to know the pre gaps between tracks that roll through. Someone led me to a solution to my problem, Exact Audio Copy. You do whatever you want with your shows and maybe you won't come across the same problem I'm having. No two shows are alike and no two sound engineers or sound designers approach the same situation with the same tools.

[Rich Walsh]

On 11 Jun 2012, at 06:01, Cedric Lathan wrote:

> Sometimes they have the :06 seconds as silence at the end of the track and sometimes there might be :03 seconds of silence plus a :03 second pre gap before the next track to make up the :06 seconds between tracks. I need to know the pre gap between tracks. You're right, the track with :06 seconds at the end will roll through perfectly, but, the one with :03 seconds at the end and a :03 second pre gap won't unless I add the pre gap as a pre wait in QLab. If I'm playing a CD that rolls all the way through, I play it in the CD player. But if I'm playing a CD that the dance calls for stops and starts and/or cross fades between tracks, and some tracks that roll through, I load the tracks in QLab. That's where it's important to know the pre gaps between tracks that roll through. Someone led me to a solution to my problem, Exact Audio Copy. You do whatever you want with your shows and maybe you won't come across the same problem I'm having. No two shows are alike and no two sound engineers or sound designers approach the same situation with the same tools.

The thing is, your problem actually has pretty profound implications, ie: that when you copy, say, all the tracks off a CD the total duration can – in some circumstances – be different from the total duration of the disc, and, what's more, be MISSING whole chunks of audio. This is something that is worth knowing about…

I am intrigued, as I've never experienced this in 20 years of ripping CDs – so I thought I'd check the bits of the Red Book I have access to to see if it was possible: and I can't figure out how could be theoretically possible. So I made some discs to test it, and neither Toast nor WaveBurner nor iTunes (or in my memory Jam, or even Masterlist CD) can create a disc where some audio exists outside of the track markers. Essentially, the disc is one single piece of audio with some P codes to tell you where the tracks start and stop and some Q codes to tell the counter what to display. I can not find, recall or create a CD that has a pause at the beginning of the track as you describe. Every disc I make adds silence for any pauses, and this silence becomes part of the track before when ripped.

With your tracks that have "a :03 second pre gap" what happens to that 3s of audio when you rip the track? Does it not appear as 3s of silence at the beginning of the track? This is an honest enquiry, not a criticism of how you work – which seems to be how you have taken it.

Rich

[Thomas Vecchione]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 1:42 PM, Rich Walsh <rich...@mac.com> wrote:

I am intrigued, as I've never experienced this in 20 years of ripping CDs – so I thought I'd check the bits of the Red Book I have access to to see if it was possible: and I can't figure out how could be theoretically possible. So I made some discs to test it, and neither Toast nor WaveBurner nor iTunes (or in my memory Jam, or even Masterlist CD) can create a disc where some audio exists outside of the track markers. Essentially, the disc is one single piece of audio with some P codes to tell you where the tracks start and stop and some Q codes to tell the counter what to display. I can not find, recall or create a CD that has a pause at the beginning of the track as you describe. Every disc I make adds silence for any pauses, and this silence becomes part of the track before when ripped.

This depends on your software, whether it becomes part of the track or not when ripped.  In my experience most software will not rip the pregap.  You are correct in that the pregap is just audio however, but the redbook standard is for 2 seconds of silence between each track, many CDs will 'bend' this rule and use the pregap to hide entire songs even.  You can create these with a simple audio file and writing a TOC by hand if you want, but I can do it easily in Ardour for instance by using CD range markers and exporting a session with TOC info which does the same thing for me automatically.  This was a common trick especially in the late 90s for many commercial CDs, for people to 'hide' tracks but also to try to discourage ripping CDs in fact with Pop music by placing the track marker so that you missed the first bit of the song that was actually in the pregap.

 

With your tracks that have "a :03 second pre gap" what happens to that 3s of audio when you rip the track? Does it not appear as 3s of silence at the beginning of the track? This is an honest enquiry, not a criticism of how you work – which seems to be how you have taken it.

In my experience most rippers simply ignore it, and start at 00:00:00 of the track in question, not in the pregap.

To the OP.  I keep meaning to check but haven't had a chance to, but I believe either Max or Rip from sbooth.org can rip as a single WAV with TOC for an entire CD.  I just haven't had time to check since you started this thread so am tossing it out there as something worth looking at.  These are both OS X applications.  You should also be able to use `drutil toc` on the drive to pull in a TOC file, but I have never tested this, I just pulled it from a quick glance at the man page for drutil, which is what I use for burning discs on OS X.  This program should come with every OS X install and is a command line program.  You could also try `drutil discinfo` or `drutil trackinfo` and see if that might provide the information you are looking for as well.

     Thomas Vecchione

[Rich Walsh]

On 11 Jun 2012, at 19:21, Thomas Vecchione wrote:

> This depends on your software, whether it becomes part of the track or not when ripped. In my experience most software will not rip the pregap. You are correct in that the pregap is just audio however, but the redbook standard is for 2 seconds of silence between each track, many CDs will 'bend' this rule and use the pregap to hide entire songs even.

I would say that without fail the Finder appears to include index 00 of track n as part of track (n-1) when copying the files. Why would you use anything else to copy files from a CD? Boy was it tedious ripping CDs in Pro Tools 3 (via a QuickTime movie)…

I disagree slightly with your interpretation of the Red Book: according to my references, index 00 of track 1 has to be a minimum of 2s, and a minimum of 2s of P code start flag has to be written at each track start – but there is no requirement for an index 00 (ie: a "pause" or "pre-gap") in any track except track 1, let alone that it be silence. I can not find any provision for some kind of index 99/index 00 split of "pre-gap": a track starts at index 01 when the P data returns to 0. If the Q subcode shows the X byte as 0 for some of the frames while the P code flag is up, then there is a "pause" as index 00; if not then there is no "pause". There is never a "pause" at the end of a track, although there may be silent audio.

"drutil toc" doesn't do anything useful on a burnt CD, but "drutil trackinfo" reports exactly the same trackStartAddress numbers that are available by looking at the .TOC.plist file, which exactly match the durations between index 01 marks reported as the durations of the tracks in the Finder and iTunes. No magical missing "pre-gaps" at all… The only difference between index 00 and index 01 (and 02, etc) is that the counter counts down during index 00 – and it _only_ counts down during index 00. It seems that the whole point of this is that index 01 marks the _start_ of the track, so I would not expect any tool to rip anything before the start of the track as part of that track… Index 00 is the optional audio you get to hear if you let the previous track run on, and the Finder treats it as part of the previous track. The time that should elapse between tracks is clearly available in the TOC – and in the durations shown in the Finder, and in the durations of the files you get if you copy the audio from the CD.

What combination of tools do I need to use in order to not have index 00 appended to the end of the previous track – just so I can make sure I never use this combination of tools? The only anomaly I can find is if there is hidden audio in index 00 of track 01, in which case the Finder (etc) isn't going to see it (but then, nor is your CD player unless you skip backwards from the start of track 1).

Rich

[Thomas Vecchione]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 8:45 PM, Rich Walsh <rich...@mac.com> wrote:

I would say that without fail the Finder appears to include index 00 of track n as part of track (n-1) when copying the files. Why would you use anything else to copy files from a CD? Boy was it tedious ripping CDs in Pro Tools 3 (via a QuickTime movie)…

Because Finder does not do things like error correction to my knowledge, it does a straight copy without checking to make sure it is completely accurate.  If it does any at all it is exceedingly limited and not very good.  There are other reasons I cover below as well.  I do this(Rip with Finder) on occasion, but prefer not to.

You are correct in that Finder appears to treat the index 00 (aka pre-gap) as part of the track preceeding it however.

 

I disagree slightly with your interpretation of the Red Book: according to my references, index 00 of track 1 has to be a minimum of 2s, and a minimum of 2s of P code start flag has to be written at each track start – but there is no requirement for an index 00 (ie: a "pause" or "pre-gap") in any track except track 1, let alone that it be silence. I can not find any provision for some kind of index 99/index 00 split of "pre-gap": a track starts at index 01 when the P data returns to 0. If the Q subcode shows the X byte as 0 for some of the frames while the P code flag is up, then there is a "pause" as index 00; if not then there is no "pause". There is never a "pause" at the end of a track, although there may be silent audio.

I agree with your comments about the end of the track, and it has been quite some time since i Looked at the actual red book specs, but my memory is that strictly red book compliant audio does need a 2 second pregap between tracks, I believe this has to do with players that do not support the Q 'channel' as the P 'channel' was supposed to have 2 seconds of 1's and then return to 0 when the track/audio began, which are very limited in number especially these days (Hell I don't even have a straight CD player at all anymore, the closest I have are straight CD Recorders).  However I don't have the spec anymore to be able to verify so I will admit that I could be wrong.
 

"drutil toc" doesn't do anything useful on a burnt CD, but "drutil trackinfo" reports exactly the same trackStartAddress numbers that are available by looking at the .TOC.plist file, which exactly match the durations between index 01 marks reported as the durations of the tracks in the Finder and iTunes. No magical missing "pre-gaps" at all… The only difference between index 00 and index 01 (and 02, etc) is that the counter counts down during index 00 – and it _only_ counts down during index 00. It seems that the whole point of this is that index 01 marks the _start_ of the track, so I would not expect any tool to rip anything before the start of the track as part of that track… Index 00 is the optional audio you get to hear if you let the previous track run on, and the Finder treats it as part of the previous track. The time that should elapse between tracks is clearly available in the TOC – and in the durations shown in the Finder, and in the durations of the files you get if you copy the audio from the CD.

drutil toc works fine for me here with a burnt CD, not sure why it doesn't seem to be working for you.  As I mentioned before, one method of deterring rips of CDs were to offset the start of the track (index 01) so that it missed part of the beginning of the track, popular in my memory in the 90s.  That way if you did rip the track without the pregap you had a cut off start of the track.  This is something Finder, and iTunes IIRC, don't and can't accomodate for and is another reason that people tended to use programs designed to rip CDs instead of depending on the system provided utilities.  Another possibility that can happen on some CDs is that the audio 'between tracks' can have absolutely nothing to do with either song and you really don't want it on those tracks.  Again not something that Finder can handle apparently.

This is also what leads some people to actually rip entire CDs with TOC/CUE files and play them back in players capable of handling it, to ensure that they get as accurate a copy as possible and not have cut off tracks from players that can't handle gapless playback.
 

What combination of tools do I need to use in order to not have index 00 appended to the end of the previous track – just so I can make sure I never use this combination of tools? The only anomaly I can find is if there is hidden audio in index 00 of track 01, in which case the Finder (etc) isn't going to see it (but then, nor is your CD player unless you skip backwards from the start of track 1).

Rich

That was the point of those tracks actually(Hiding audio), well that and one other point, which was to have computers recognize the audio disc as a data disc.  This was especially a problem for Windows until I think sp2 of Win95, could be used to launch programs via autoplay etc.  This later led to the adoption of the mixed mode Blue Book standard for 'enhanced' CDs which didn't utilize this trick IIRC.

    Thomas Vecchione

PS Random tidbit, I always found it interesting that CD-DA actually provided for 4 channel audio, but noone ever used it that I know of.

[steve payne]

I use Reaper for this. If I import from CD I only get the song. No wait when I render it. 

Steve Payne

[Cedric Lathan]

I am not ripping a CD. That is not the problem. Playing one song at a time in QLab is not a problem. When I import a track into QLab it imports just the audio file. The problem is when I need to play the tracks in QLab EXACTLY like they play in a CD player. The CD player includes any gaps between the tracks when it plays the CD all the way through. Some sound designers add sub codes to allow for more time between tracks to match the choreography of a dance. Some will add actual silence which gets included as part of the audio file. I need to know what is in between the tracks so if there is a sub code that adds :07 seconds, I can add a pre-wait to the next track after I import it into QLab. If I'm given a CD that has several tracks, they can be played back in a combination of ways for a particular dance. They can play as a pause after every track (not a problem in QLab) or as a complete roll through (not a problem, I put that in the CD player) or as some tracks rolling through to the next and some pause after playing. It is the last example that could be problematic because if there are sub codes between the tracks that roll through and I do not account for them as a pre (or post) wait they WILL NOT play exactly as they did in the CD player. That's why I was looking for something that gave me all the metadata associated with the CD. I found something that does this for me, Exact Audio Copy, a Windows application that I open in Parallels. As far as I'm concerned, I've found what I need and my question has been solved.

--