George wrote:

Also, a disc that was burned by
some software will do the same between tracks. I used to get a 'tick' at
those points but I guess my Pioneer mutes so I don't hear or see it.

The 'tick' are common for hifi CD recorders when operating in Track At
Once mode. TAO usually leave a piece blank on the CD and some hifi CD
recorder backup a litte when starting a new track. This eliminates
the hickup on some old audio CD player when they encounter a blank
area but the backup will generate some invalid bytes - which should
get corrected at the E22 stage. If E22 fails the CD player should mute
and set the validity flag in the digital output. So your Pioneer player
seems to behave correctly.

Maybe the burning software did set the validity flag when it made the
disc. That will be interesting to check.

There is no validity flag on a CD. There is a "pause" flag though that
should cause the CD player to mute, but this is rarely used to my
knowledge. Professional CD mastering software gets you access on the
P bit but CD burning software usually doesn't support that.

My old Denon CD player rises the validity flag in the digital output
when interpolating (error concealments) fails due to the length of
the error. When recording such a digital data stream to my DAT
recorders, both the Sony and the TASCAM enter pause mode until that
flag gets cleared.

Sad to read that more recent CD player have a poor implementation of
the protocol.

Norbert