Pre-emphasized CDs

[Spoon]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

You would right click on one of the column headers, such as Title then select.

[slardy]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

I am new to DBC and I can not find any information on where the Track Technical column is or how to turn it on.

Help Please?

slardy

[Porcus]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

Is it safe to assume that these supposedly pre-emphasized Billy Joel titles must use the alternate method of flagging the CD?

Seems likely, assuming that there is indeed a pre-emphasis flag somewhere. Have you tried other applications to verify that?

[Dexter]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

Hi,
I just want to make sure that I'm understanding this correctly...

I upgraded my version of dBpoweramp from 14.3 to 14.4 today. My DSP Effects are at Release 9. Support for the detection of pre-emphasis was added to v14 when it released. The software will not de-emphasize the tracks.) However this support is ONLY for CDs where the TOC on a CD is flagged to indicate the presence of pre-emphasis. There is another way that a CD can be identified for the presence of pre-emphasis - dBpoweramp does not check for this. This other method is more rare & appears only on a handful of pre-emphasized CDs.

Theoretically, if I open dBpoweramp, with the Track Technical column showing, and insert a CD with pre-emphasis, there should be an indication of PE in the Track Technical column for each track before I start ripping. If there isn't, and the CD is on the list that was posted on page 2 of this thread, then chances are that TOC was not flagged & the other method was used.

I tested the following Billy Joel CDs:
The Stranger (35DP2-Japan for US)
52nd Street (35DP1-Japan for US)
Glass Houses (35DP18-Japan for US)
The Nylon Curtain (35DP34-Japan for US)

I saw nothing in the Track Technical column. The only CD I actually ripped (to FLAC & also to Wave) was 52nd Street. After the rip, I checked the tag - nothing was written (that I could see) in the tag - and I could not see this information in the list of available fields to include in the tag. (Pre-emphais is checked-off in the Tag Options.) Is it safe to assume that these supposedly pre-emphasized Billy Joel titles must use the alternate method of flagging the CD? Or am I misunderstanding all of this ... or don't have my dBpoweramp configured properly?

My concern is smple. I have a lot of old CDs. I can accept the fact that completely supporting pre-emphasis at this point in time would be time-consuming for such a small number of CDs. But I would like to be alerted befire I rip one. Thanks!

[Porcus]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

One of the utility DSP's can be used to run external processing on your files, which, I guess, would mean that you can use SoX from within dBpoweramp. I haven't tried.

I do not convert my pre-emphasized CDs. I tag them, and I use a media player with a plugin that recognizes the tag and applies the EQ on-the-fly (namely, foobar2000).
(Also, in order to make sure I have them identified even if I should screw up tags, I use a different file format, namely WavPack in place of FLAC).

[theanswer337]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

dBpoweramp can detect in TOC, but not in subchannel (unless recently updated).
Doing the EQ (which I wouldn't do anyway ...): there is always the Run External utility DSP so that you can call e.g. SoX from within dBpoweramp.

What does this mean? That you wouldn't use Sox within dbPoweramp for the eq'ing?
Not familiar with running an external utility with dbPoweramp. Can you elaborate?

[Porcus]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

dBpoweramp can detect in TOC, but not in subchannel (unless recently updated).
Doing the EQ (which I wouldn't do anyway ...): there is always the Run External utility DSP so that you can call e.g. SoX from within dBpoweramp.

[theanswer337]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

I am not interested in Sox or any other program to handle this. I am hoping for a solution within dbPoweramp.

[theanswer337]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

I'd like to bump this old thread and voice my request for a Pre-emphasis solution within dbPoweramp. I agree with jh901 that this is a big deal. Having the ability to detect (TOC and sub-channel) and eq a CD with pre-emphasis would, far and away, separate dbPoweramp from all other programs.

Spoon, is this something that you could revisit and hopefully offer a solution?

[Porcus]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

Argh. New record (no pun intended) I think. Last I heard of was my own purchased Lifelover: 'Konkurs', http://www.discogs.com/Lifelover-Kon...elease/1513652 .

Of course, I have no idea why. Well the guy credited with mastering, Michael Zimmerling, has been in that game since the 70's, so he might have kept his old equipment and settings ...

[atrocity]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

I just got "Feasting with Panthers" by Marc Almond and Michael Cashmore today. It's a 2011 CD and it's pre-emphasized! At first I thought maybe the flag had just been set in error, but after comparing the original rip to files de-emphasized with Foobar2000 I think it might actually be true. I wonder what the story is behind that?

[Porcus]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

Just want to mention that users of the foobar2000 player (why use anything else?) can use the nonstandard fix at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=84544 to apply de-emphasis on-the-fly. It implements the algorithm of SoX.

Of course, a wishlist item for dMC would be to write to the tag, but logging is certainly better than nothing.

WaveEmph

As a matter of fact, WaveEmph and SoX give slightly different results: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images...mphpcmpre.gif/ . See the (somewhat noisy) thread at Hydrogenaudio: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=65067 .

Looks like WaveEmph is adapted to a reference CD once issued by Denon. The thing is, the pre-emphasis was applied using an analogue filter, and if the device used in the mastering was off the reference curve, then ... well, de-emphasis should also be off in order to compensate. Now I have no idea whether Denon/Nippon actually used the most common component in their mastering ...

Probably you won't hear any difference, though.

[IrishPub]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

Those of you searching for a way to apply de-emphasis to ripped files, one way I found of doing this is with the freeware program WaveEmph, which can be downloaded here. It was written for older Windows 9x operating systems. If you try to run it on a machine with Vista or Windows 7, it will report that it the computer is missing the file MSVBVM50.DLL. That file can be installed using a patch from Microsoft available here.

As the name of the program implies, it only works on WAV files. It's UI is very basic, and it only runs one WAV file at a time, but that's fine as long as you don't have too many songs to process.

I used WaveEmph to de-emphasize the rip of my old Santana Shango CD, and now the album is finally listenable. (I don't have the 2011 30th anniversary remaster of Shango, but I hope they would have removed the pre-emphasis in that version.)

EDIT: I now see that WaveEmph was mentioned earlier in the thread, although the missing DLL issue was not.

[kerframil]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

- run SoX to apply its deemphasis filter, resulting in a corrected .wav file for each track (I could not get any version after 14.1.0 to work, so that's the version I used)

The latest version should work. I use the Windows build of SoX 14.3.2 and it's fine.

But SoX stripped all tag data, and I'm stuck on this. Various ideas, input appreciated: Is there an option within SoX to aviod loss of tags?

Sure. Don't use WAV! SoX supports FLAC natively so, if you rip to FLAC in the first instance, the metadata will be preserved upon using SoX. Here's an example of how I go about it from the command prompt:

cd \Users\kerframil\Music\Temp
for %F in (*.flac) do sox "%F" "..\%F" deemph

In this case, the files that needed deemphasizing were within a subfolder named Temp, within my Music folder. The de-emphasized files are duly saved within the parent folder i.e. the "Music" folder itself.

NOTE: The above example assumes that sox.exe is in the system PATH. If it isn't then use the full pathname of the program based on wherever it is installed. For example:

for %F in (*.flac) do C:\sox-14-3-2\sox.exe "%F" "..\%F" deemph

[Spoon]

Re: Pre-emphasized CDs

We do not have the de-emph filters, so is not a simple way of doing it.