The PreMaster CD format, developed in the early 1990s by the CD-ROM division of Sony, in cooperation with "START Lab Inc." of Tokyo and Sonic Solutions, contained a hidden "PreMaster Cue Sheet" that held the metadata needed for replication that a Red Book CD-DA lacks.
CD transports were not able to recover the data hidden in the Cue Sheet unless commanded to by proprietary software.
First, the CD-R mechanisms that were able to read and write the hidden cue sheet metadata went out of production in the late 1990s.
Second, only Laser Beam Recorders or LBRs manufactured by Sony were able to read PMCDs, which limited the formats adoption by replicators.
Modern, professional pre-mastering software relies on the DDP format, which protects both the audio data and its associated metadata.