Frequently Asked Questions About CD-R and CD-RW Discs

Please contact Media Sciences if your questions are not answered on these pages.

My recording software erroneously places two-second gaps between tracks when I do multi-track recording. Why don't engineers fix their bad software?

These gaps are both required and functional. A gap was referred to as a "pause" in the original Standard for CD-DA. Gaps of two to three seconds are always required at the beginning of the first track, and also at the end of the last track. Unique, critical signals are encoded into subcode channels in these gaps.

Common practice placed gaps of similar duration between logical tracks, which originally were "songs." One practical benefit was that a seek to a new song would begin reading in the gap. This allowed the drive servo systems to stabilize before the music began. Modern drives can quickly achieve servo lock, therefore two seconds may be somewhat excessive.

Incremental track-at-once recording on CD-R or CD-RW discs places important track descriptor blocks (TDB) in the pre-gap of each track located at index 00. Gaps must be present in this recording mode, both for the TDB and also for ramp-up and ramp-down of interleaving that is part of the error correction mechanism.

The presence of this two second gap, or "pause," is required by Standards and is good practice. It is unfair to criticize software vendors who follow these guidelines.