How to handle this release with an unknown track at the beginning (but it is not a separate track)?

Hi.
I got Rammstein’s “Reise, Reise” CD


The CD contains 11 tracks, but when I look it up with MusicBrainz Picard the majority of releases show 12 tracks, the first one being unknown and lasting 36 seconds. Then track 01 is “Reise, Reise” which lasts 4:11
I’ve found a release (the Australian one) which shows 11 tracks with the first one being “Reise, Reise” - also with 4:11 length. Now… the ripped track is indeed 4:47 long, having 36 seconds of different noises, before the real song begins.

Which is the correct release therefore?
I’m not going to split the CD’s track 01 in two, I’d say…

A quick read of Wikipedia confirms that 36 seconds of noises is from the pregap.

Some pressings of the album contain a recording of the last 30 seconds of the flight as an easter egg hidden in the pregap.” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reise%2C_Reise#Themes )

So if you don’t want to split it, you can call it “track one”. It is kinda part of track one with some gapless rippers.

Can’t tell you which release to tag it as without knowing barcodes, etc. The packaging is going to be more reliable here than the actual length of track 1.

-=-=

Okay, read a few more annotation on the releases. And it points to the USA editon as having the pre-gap as part of the first track. Which is same as the Aussie edition. https://musicbrainz.org/release/0fd60fe1-85fb-4e75-98fc-8b2e33f47007

So it sounds like you either have a USA edition. Or your CD has been ripped to combine the pregap into track 1.

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The barcode reads 0602498681503 and it matches three releases:


On the disc itself I can read “Made in the E.U.” and there’s 9868150 printed on the booklet.

So I don’t think this is the USA edition, am I right with this assumption?
And what do you mean by “your CD has been ripped…”?

When I said “ripped”, I thought you were talking about a copy of a CD converted to MP£ or FLAC files. My error.

It is the annotation notes I would be looking at with this CD. As your track 1 is 4:47 it sounds like an edition without a pre-gap. I am guessing there is nothing there if you “rewind” at the start of track one? You get the 30 seconds of audio from the crashing aircraft as described on Wikipedia and the annotations? Maybe some Japanese voices?

Over at Discogs they have over 100 variations of this release. And 32 editions with your barcode. My personal thought is you may have a European re-issue? Just from the small bit of reading I have done it is clear the original release hid that 30 seconds in the pregap, but once they produced the USA version they took that pregap and tagged it onto track one. Then later versions mirrored that layout. I wonder if you have a later European issue doing this?

Maybe having a poke through some of these will find a better match? I guess your exact copy is not currently listed here at MB.

And most of those 32 are not even European. So the barcode is very common.

Tricky with discogs as they are often lazy and slack. I regularly find a release has been “cloned” but the track list not corrected. So something like this is hard to spot due to their lack of discIDs and being certain of track time.

Only three of those are European “Made in EU” (If we ignore Bulgaria, Ukraine, etc)



They are certainly talking about the pregap in some of those notes.

But still can’t find something like yours with that 4:47 track time as track one. Where are you getting that time from? Could it be your CD player is adding the pregap as part of track one? Do you have a classic HiFi CD player you can load the CD into instead of a computer?

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Many thanks for your research!
I get the time when previewing track #1 with Mac OS “Preview”. I also see 4:47 indicated as the “Original Value” in MB Picard. But TBH I never really heard the audio of the crashing airplane when I listened to this CD! So maybe it’s really hidden in the pre-gap and thus it’s not getting played by HiFi CD players?

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This is likely the case. Listen to it on the Mac and I assume you hear the extra 30 seconds.

Now put it back int the HiFi, select track 1 and REWIND. You should go into negative time and be able to select the hidden audio.

I think you are going to find you have the normal European copy with a pregap, but your Mac is being “helpful” and merging it into the first track. I’'m pretty sure my PC does that with hidden tracks

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