Well, there's a ton of posts about it here and at Hoffman. People make it more technical and confusing than it really is.Rorsontherun wrote: ↑Wed Sep 13, 2023 11:20 am Hi, could someone explain me the "pre-emphasis" or "de-emphasized" thing? I don't understand those terms. I would really love to listen to this unique version of Abbey Road, if someone could reupload this too I'd be really grateful!
A CD with pre-emphasis has roughly a 10 decibel or so treble boost added to the WAV files at the mastering stage. The actual boost is more like a specific curve but we don't need to get into the weeds with charts.
CD players would then shave off that boost by applying the inverse of that boost with an additional analog circuit in the playback that kicked in if it saw the emphasis flag in the file.
The point of this was to remove/reduce supposed digital noise hidden in the highest frequencies. It's the same principal as Dolby noise reduction.
This emphasis was only used on some of the earliest CDs and then ditched as better A/D and D/A stuff came along eliminating the need for it.
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The issue today is that when you rip some very early CDs that 10 decibel boost is still there because it's part of the WAV file. Ripping does NOT re-equalize the file to take it out.
The Toshiba CD was released in 1983 without authority of EMI. It represents Japan's master tape.