eXentric, that's actually correct for that method of self-booting. The DC only cares that there's two sessions on the disc. The 4 second audio track was just an easy way to make a small session that produces a known offset into the next session. The "original" way to convert a non-booting into a self booting disc was to create the small first session with the 4 sec audio WAV, and then extract and remaster the non-booting data to be in a second session with mkisofs.
Someone smart later figured out that the remastering could be skipped entirely by configuring the 2nd session to point back to the data in the first. The result is two CD/XA sessions.
wish people would stop saying that like it's the truth. It's NOT True. You cannot "push" data out to the outer edges. Remember CDs (unlike CD-RW) are ROM (Read Only Memory). You cannot change how session data is allocated. What the "dummy file" really does is create SPACE between readable chunks of data on the CD. Files are written to a CD SEQUENTIALLY (therefore why we have numbered sessions). Those sequential blocks are too closely packed together for the DC's laser reader (and therefore its stepper motor) to keep up with. Therefore in terms of the first Rips such as Crazy Taxi those who burnt them with no dummy file found that data wouldn't load (such as textures and other models) for non player objects (ie everything but you and your car) so it looked WRONG. By adding the dummy file, the time between readable or appropriate data blocks actually passing under the DC's laser reader is decreased (ie time BEFORE next readable block) as it "spaced" (for want of a better term) by blocks of the "dummy file" (which has data that is not relevant to the ripped game).
You have no idea what you're talking about. If you're going to complain about spreading misinformation, you should get your facts straight first.
Of course you can "push" data to the outer sectors of a disc. Mkisofs gives you all kinds of control over where data ends up. By your own admission, CDs are mastered with files written to them SEQUENTIALLY, which means a dummy file is not going to somehow get sprinkled in between readable chunks. No, the sequentially numbered sectors with data on them go in a spiral, from the center of the disc out. Inside the session, there's the root directory information, which points out the locations of the files. So if the first file that the disc points to is a huge, empty file (say sectors 50 through 5000), the innermost portions of the disc are, in fact, going to get filled up with dummy data, effectively pushing the real data further out towards the edge of the disc. The outer edges of the disc are faster because more data passes underneath the laser per revolution. Unlike audio CDs, modern CD drives do not read with a constant linear velocity (CLV). Also for random access, the next chunk of data read is more likely to be nearby since there is more data in a revolution.
Dummy files are not the only way to accomplish this, however. The problem is the dummy file will leave the root directory information far away from the data, requiring the head to seek all the way back to the beginning of the disc every time it needs to access the root directory. The better thing to do is to use a large dummy .WAV file in the first session, with all of the data in the 2nd session. That way the root directory info is placed near the data. This assumes that you are actually placing the data in the 2nd session. The newer "tricks" used to make a disc bootable are making a 2nd session that points back to the data conained in the first, so that method would not apply.