Ripping CD`s properly with Pre Emphasis in DBPOWERAMP (Like the Abbey Road BT)

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by Stanshallogist, Apr 22, 2015.

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  1. Stanshallogist

    Stanshallogist Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Ripping CD`s properly with Pre Emphasis in DBPOWERAMP (Like the Abbey Road BT)

    Hi I got a Abbey Road Black Triangle and I wanted to know how to rip it properly as I have heard before these copies have pre emphasis. If I am uisng DB Poweramp how should I do this?

    Is there something else I should be using? I couldnt seem to find info on this topic so I posted instead.
     
  2. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    Bump. I need to know as well.
     
  3. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    DBpoweramp does not have this capability, (Some reason Spoon has not added this) there are a few other options for de-emphing cd's in the pre-emph threads, some use SOX/Foobar2000 with a plugin, I use WaveEmph, Itunes can if it's detected in the TOC and there is a MAC ripper also that can
     
  4. JP

    JP Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brookfield, CT
  5. Orthonormal

    Orthonormal Turbo-nerd

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    There are two steps other than the ripping. The first is knowing whether the CD you're ripping has pre-emphasis. Apparently that's hard. I searched for software that could read the table of contents and the data subcodes to find pre-emphasis flags, and all I learned is that older versions of EAC could do it before a lawsuit from the RIAA, and CUEripper *might* be able to do it. Since I have no CDs that I know have pre-emphasis, I can't test that. The older versions of EAC crash instantly when I try to run them in Windows 7. Or, you can try playing them in a CD player that has a pre-emphasis light, and see if the light comes on.

    Once you know that, you just rip them as normal to a WAV or FLAC file using your favorite ripping software.

    The next step is to apply a de-emphasis filter. There's one built into the sox command line audio utility, which is what I have used to apply de-emphasis and then save the result to a FLAC file that can be played back on any player. There's also supposed to be a plugin for foobar2000 which should allow you to de-emphasize during playback if you're using CUE sheets with the PRE flag set, or convert the files and save them for general use. There are also some stand-alone utilities which I haven't investigated.
     
  6. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Yep, EAC 095pb3 will detect the sub also
     
  7. Orthonormal

    Orthonormal Turbo-nerd

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    Has anyone gotten that version of EAC to run in Windows 7 or 8?
     
  8. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Squad 701 and Dino like this.
  9. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Settings- I have it set like this
    EAC-EAC Options-Interface-Installed External ASPI Interface-checked
    To scan a disc
    Action-TOC Alterations -Detect TOC Manually
    If it's in the TOC it will automatically detect it once the disc is inserted, for sub do the above
     
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  10. joannenugent

    joannenugent Forum Resident

    Location:
    East Coast USA
    On a side note: XLD for Mac will check TOC and subchannel for pre-emphasis.

    As for applying the de-emphasis, I am not sure how best to do that...or how the software de-emphasis curves sound compared to a good disc player.
     
    c-eling likes this.
  11. joannenugent

    joannenugent Forum Resident

    Location:
    East Coast USA
    How do the files processed via WaveEmph sound?
    I have read a lot of reviews claiming that the SOX plugging leads to a significant narrowing of the audio channels.
     
  12. Steve Martin

    Steve Martin Wild & Crazy Guy

    Location:
    Plano, TX
    xACT has a de-emphasis curve (it uses sox under the covers).
     
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  13. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    My personal preference was/is WaveEmph, I didn't enjoy the foobar plugin :cheers:
     
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  14. joannenugent

    joannenugent Forum Resident

    Location:
    East Coast USA
    Oh right! I forgot about xACT - I should give that a listen.
     
  15. Orthonormal

    Orthonormal Turbo-nerd

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
  16. Master_It_Right

    Master_It_Right Forum Resident

    Since iTunes properly removes pre-emphasis, I always just make a CUE image with EAC for a disc with PE, mounted it with DT Lite and then ran it through iTunes. Then you know the rip is good and the pre-emphasis gets properly removed, tracks tagged correctly. Then just convert it to your chosen format - FLAC, AAC, etc.
     
  17. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    That would work. And would get you a perfect rip since the ripping is done by EAC.
    I did a listening test to compare SoX de-emphasis with iTunes de-emphasis back in 2009. And I preferred SoX back then. So I went with SoX for de-emphasis when I processed all of my pre-emphasis CDs. But that was back in 2009. I believe iTunes has updated and improved their de-emphasis since then. I haven't done a listening test with a current version of iTunes to compare against SoX (I'm a Windows guy, so all this applies to the Windows version of iTunes).
     
  18. Dino

    Dino Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kansas City - USA
    I'd heard about this version of EAC but I never found it on my own. Thanks c-eling!

    A word of warning on the file though. I downloaded it from the above link and did a Norton scan before unzipping it. Norton came up with this:

    Threat name: WS.Reputation.1 from mirror8.net
    Infected file: uplayermediaplayer-setup.exe Removed

    After that file was removed I unzipped it and opened EAC. It opened up okay. It wanted to scan my CD drive - as usual for EAC. I will try it out later.
     
    c-eling likes this.
  19. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    Dino likes this.
  20. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Thanks for the info about the threat, my pc never detected it, I will remove it!
     
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  21. Dino

    Dino Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kansas City - USA
    c-eling likes this.
  22. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Thanks Dino, I'll grab that one!
     
    Dino likes this.
  23. Autocraft

    Autocraft New Member

    I have quite some discs that use pre-emphasis. Never knew why they sounded so thin and bright after ripping to disk. Now I do. So I am currently on that same boat and don't know what to do exactly.

    Wikipedia has extensive info and links to various after-ripping tools that use a eq-curve to correct 'rips' already on your disk.

    What I do understand is that the de-emphasis circuit in normal cd-players works analogous, vs the software to de-emphasize tracks on your pc uses a mathematical equation. Not to be purist, but a de-emphasis equation is just an approximation of an analog process.

    So what I did was buy me an optical-cable. Because my sony standalone cd-player has this optical output. And my cheap Art phone-pre2-DAC has this optical-input. Which routes directly to the USB output, and into the USB input on my computer.

    Now, I have not tried this yet. I do not understand how to choose the options correctly for my pc to record 16bit 44100 from optical-in>usb>usb>directly to pcm without any unnecessary analog conversion in this process (if there is any additional analog conversion besides writing the pcm-stream to .wav). If anyone has a better understanding please share.

    So in respect I don't know if this would be a better solution than the after-ripping software solution.
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2015
    c-eling likes this.
  24. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    @Dino , ok I can't get this one to work, it finds my drives but won't read them, I've tried all the compatibility modes with no luck, I noticed on this one it won't let me change the interface, do I need to install a ASPI driver?
     
  25. JamieLang

    JamieLang Forum Resident

    Location:
    Nashville, TN
    THANK you....after fighting some this weekend to get the sox command line working in 10.7, xACT did the DeEmph on the old TotoIV CD in seconds.

    And I'd since just reRipped it with iTunes 12.1 (original lossless rips years back via CueTools on Windows)....taking the resultant files into Audiovana plugged up to the "big system" )Oppo as USB DAC) to listen, and the xAct/Sox is a bit better....iTunes DeEmph kinda "softened" it in the 2-5khz region--the drums punched a little harder on the soX version.

    BUT....I would also point out....iTunes sounds fine. I wouldn't discourage anyone from using it....I'm just on a quest to find the best version of this particular album in digital. Geek stuff..... ;)
     
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