Why is there so much "dead space" on music tracks?

[yoda313]

So have you ever noticed how many songs have a lot of "empty" or "dead" space at the end of tracks?

I know the need for at least two or three seconds of silence so the next song on a cd doesn't come screaming in at the end of another. However some songs have ridiculously long empty lead times.

Is this a lame attempt to pad an albums play time? I mean are some artists that desperate to hit a target time on an album they'll pad a track?

[Supreme2k]

That's why I rip most of my stuff. There's been a few times where i thought that I had gotten a faulty disc, because of all the dead space.

[lordsmurf]

It because of how CDs are made. I forget the tech info, it was more than a decade ago that I learned about it.

[Supreme2k]

It may not be what you think, ls. I know that some authoring software puts in gaps between song (2 sec. or so) for compatibility, but (I think) yoda is talking about some that I've had where it seems like they were trying to exactly duplicate the tape structure, dead space and all.

[stiltman]

Now if they could just duplicate the click from and 8-track during the worst place in a song

[Disco Makberto]

Hi, there!

On some CD's, at the end of what appears to be the complete album with all songs, there is an extra long silence after which a "hidden track" will appear. This extra song, usually a remix of one of the songs on the album or a remix of a popular song of the artist(s), is not mentioned anywhere on the CD itself or on the graphics, hence the term "hidden track".

Carlos Albert "Disco Mak"