Disc At Once

Disc At Once or DAO is a CD or DVD recording mode that masters the entire disc in one pass, rather than a track at a time as in Track At Once or TAO. DAO mode, unlike TAO mode, allows any amount of audio data (or no data at all) to be written in the "pre-gaps" between tracks.

One use of this technique, for example, is to burn track introductions to be played before each track starts. A CD player will generally display a negative time offset counting up to the next track when such pre-gap introductions play. Pre-gap audio before the first track of the CD makes it possible to burn an unnumbered, "hidden" audio track. This track can only be accessed by "rewinding" from the start of the first track, backwards into the pre-gap audio.

DAO recording is also the only way to write data to the unused R-W sub-channels. This allows for extended graphic and text features on an audio CD such as CD+G and CD-Text.

See also