The key for a hidden track at the beginning is that players usually start playing track 1 from index mark 1 (1.1) rather than index 0 as with continuous play through all subsequent tracks. The lead-in area for 1.0 is a holdover from grooved phonorecordings never meant to be played. It's a way for the primitive hardware of early CD players to acquire the start of the data stream in a safe area that doesn't have to be faithfully reproduced.
Some players permitted you to skip back from 1.1 to 1.0 to hear the lead-in as a hidden pseudo-track. Typically this was only possible with hardware index nav. buttons rather than the track nav. buttons, further obfuscating the presence of the hidden track.
The other means of "hiding" tracks is to have a bunch of short silent tracks until you get to track 99 (inconvenient to reach on a player without numeric track entry) or to have a long section of silence starting on the last track from index 1.
>Typically this was only possible with hardware index nav
Holding the previous track button would "rewind" playback and get you into the pregap on all the CD players I remember using, but these would have been late 80s models onwards.
Some players permitted you to skip back from 1.1 to 1.0 to hear the lead-in as a hidden pseudo-track. Typically this was only possible with hardware index nav. buttons rather than the track nav. buttons, further obfuscating the presence of the hidden track.
The other means of "hiding" tracks is to have a bunch of short silent tracks until you get to track 99 (inconvenient to reach on a player without numeric track entry) or to have a long section of silence starting on the last track from index 1.