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Learned something new today and it isn't good.

I have been in this crazy hobby for over five decades and thought I knew most of the basic information regarding audio quality.

That was before this morning.

Today I learned about the practise of applying "pre-emphasis" to CDs that was around during the late '70's and early '80's. Apparently this practise was developed as a way of reducing the signal to noise in digital audio. The problem is this was a two-part process and required the CD player to have a "de-emphasis" capability to allow the disk to play properly. Without the application of de-emphasis, cd's would sound "bright".

My question would be, "Does everyone else know about this?"

If you do, "How do you deal with it?"

I still listen to CDs and this is not something I need in my life.

128x128tony1954
ml8764ag's avatar
ml8764ag
502 posts
 

@kijanki nicely done.

jwillox
188 posts
 

My ripping software removes PE also.
I have my Lumin set to remove also, if detected.

does not seem like a big issue at this point.
much of my really good stuff is DSD anyway.
man’s playing a CD in my Marantz SACD30n is really good.

passthedutchie
46 posts
 

I learned about the practise of applying "pre-emphasis" to CDs that was around during the late '70's and early '80's

Late 70s eh? The first CD player came out in 1982.

clearthinker's avatar
clearthinker
1,582 posts
 

All this just underlines the difficulty of re-creating an accurate and satisfying sound once you break up the signal into billions of pieces.  And the lengths you have to go to in corrupting the sound further in an effort to undo the undoable.

The old omelette question for digital engineers.  Their work has achieved a lot in 40 years but dither will always be with us.

tony1954's avatar
tony1954 OP
1,049 posts
 

@clearthinker 

I don't know what this has to with the topic.

Emphasising was something record engineers did to manipulate the frequency curve to make up for the deficiencies playback equipment half a century ago.

Digital sound quality today is for the most part fabulous and all the discussions about it on this site usually involve tweaking sound, not major surgery.

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