Some audio CDs we buy can have hidden audio within the first track of the disc. In order for some hi-fi CD players to playback this audio you would start playing track 1 (at the beginning) and press the rewind button.
But when we come to back-up/transfer our audio CDs to the PC this hidden audio can become lost. This is because not all PC CD/DVD Rom drives can successfully retrieve this audio. What we'd like to do at daefeatures.co.uk is to catalogue this functionality along with the other drive features we already cover.
Thankfully, this feature is easy to test for. All you need is a CUE compliant burning app and the files that are available here for download.

First of all, download the files:
Image file
CUE Sheet
crc
md5

The file hidden_song_test.exe is a wavpack self extracting file. To generate your .wav file for burning simply double click on the file and the wavpack file will decompress itself.

You're now ready to burn the file to disc. To do this you should use a CUE sheet compliant burning app such as EAC. You must select the CUE sheet and not the .wav file when burning your disc!

Once the image has finished burning you can return to the main EAC window. EAC should display only one track, but that track should be in red. This means that there is a hidden track or TRACK 01 INDEX 00.

To extract the audio you should again use EAC and use EAC's Copy Image and Create CUE Sheet feature or simpply ALT+F7.

Once EAC has finished it's job playback the wav file in any audio player. If audio starts playing immediately your drive can retrieve the HTOA (or hidden track one audio).

There is an excellent thread at HydrogenAudio.org that discusses this subject titled Ripping hidden tracks before index 01, Hardware-based? What to look for?. Thanks to BoraBora for starting the thread.