How do I handle pre-emphasis with EAC?

I have a CD that I believe is encoded with pre-emphasis. (It's a Japanese pressing of Thriller. Perhaps you've seen that thread over on the music board.) The reason I say that it's encoded with pre-emphasis is that the CD-R I made with Roxio Easy CD Creator sounds very bright. I've never made a CD-R before that sounded so different from the original CD. Of course, I want to make a CD-R that sounds like the original.

My understanding is that EAC allows you to set the pre-emphasis flag or whatever when making a copy. I couldn't find any settings on EAC marked pre-emphasis. Is there some feature that I have to select before extracting songs to the hard drive? Likewise, is there a feature that I have to select when I burn the resulting song files to a CD-R?

In case it matters, I am using EAC pre-beta version 5. The file that the program is downloaded into is called eac095pb5.

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

Wouldn't a bit-accurate copy of the CD made by EAC carry the pre-emphasis flag? Are you listening to your CD-R on the same CD player as the original CD? If not, try the CD-R and original CD in the same player.

There are some CD players out there that do not recognize and adjust for pre-emphasis.

 

Frankly, I don't know about EAC. Do I just copy it or do I have to set something?

I listened to the Thriller aluminum CD and the CD-R on the same player -- a Sony SCD-C555ES. The original sounds warm, though a bit muddy. The CD-R sounds bright and harsh.

 

Keith,

Isn't there a column off to the right in that version that shows if pre-empasis is used? Mine shows it?

First, verify this and see if the disc has pre-emphasis. Now, extract to single WAV + CUE. Edit the cue and look for a FLAGS PRE on each track. Is it there?

If you burn that CUE you should get the flags to carry over.

Please let me know what happens.

 

Donald and Michael, thanks for helping me out. I hadn't scrolled all the way to the right, so I never saw the pre-emphasis column. I had been looking in the menus and in preferences for a pre-emphasis option.

In any event, the Thriller CD that yielded a bright CD-R is not encoded with pre-emphasis according to EAC. I just don't understand why the CD-R sounds so bad. As I've said, I've never found any of my other CD-Rs made with Roxio Easy CD Creator so objectionable.

To further explore pre-emphasis detection with EAC, I tested the following early Japanese pressings:

* Michael Jackson Thriller, original Japanese release, catalog number 35 8P-11
* Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here, original Japanese release, catalog number 35DP 4
* Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here, original Japanese pressing made for the US market, catalog number CK 33453
* Wings Wings Greatest, original Japanese release, catalog number CP35-3114

According to EAC, none of these discs are encoded with pre-emphasis. Someone here once told me that the Wings disc is encoded with pre-emphasis. Is he wrong? Is there something wrong with my EAC program? Were only some copies of Wings Greatest encoded with pre-emphasis?

I am now on a quest to find a disc in my collection that is encoded with pre-emphasis.

 

I just tried the following early Japanese pressings looking for pre-emphasis:

* The Beatles Abbey Road, original Japanese release, catalog number CP35-3016
* Boz Scaggs Middle Man, original Japanese release, catalog number 35DP 3
* Boz Scaggs Silk Degrees, original Japanese pressing for the US market, catalog number CK 33920
* Billy Joel 52nd Street, original Japanese release, catalog number 35DP 1

None of these are encoded with pre-emphasis according to EAC. I thought some of them might be since they are early releases. Hmmm...

 

Hey Keith,
Your computer may not have a handle on pre-emphasis. I know that CP35-3016 has been said before to have pre-emphasis...

Now, I'd LOVE to know how to figure out pre-emphasis if one's computer doesn't detect it...mine doesn't either

 

I had wondered if there was some issue with my burner. It just so happens that I have two burners -- one internal and one external. For all the pre-emphasis tests posted in my two previous posts, I had used the internal burner. Well, my external burner also says that my Abbey Road CD is not encoded with pre-emphasis.

By the way, I've never had a problem with the CD-R of Abbey Road that I made with Easy CD Creator.

 

I don't know. I want one of those players that has a pre-emphasis light like crazy so I can figure this stuff out...

 

Me too! Maybe I'll try to pick one up cheap. I probably wouldn't use it for playback, but just for detection of pre-emphasis. It would be cool if today's players did that. That's like finding a player today with the Index function.

 

In my experience, EAC does NOT reliably detect pre-emphasis. I've verified pre-emphasis myself in two ways. One is to take a disc I believe to have pre-emphasis--say, the original Toshiba-EMI Abbey Road--and do a straight disc copy to CD-R. Then I pop both discs in a CD player. If the copy is noticeably brighter than the original, and I do mean noticeably (I'm not talking about subtle differences some feel can be detected across bit-perfect copies), then I assume the original has pre-emphasis and burn another copy with EAC and the cue sheet set to FLAGS=PRE. Then I compare that copy to the original. If they now match, I have verified that the original has pre-emphasis.

Using this method, I have proved to my complete satisfaction that the Toshiba-EMI Abbey Road and DSOTM have pre-emphasis.

I recently listened to a CD-R of the original Japanese Wings Greatest Hits. I heard much more tape hiss than I expected, and there was a clearly audible treble uptilt. I burned a copy of the copy using EAC with FLAGS=PRE, and the resulting copy sounded great, certainly on par with the original Parlophone release and maybe even a tad better. This method, of course, is pretty subjective, but once you've trained yourself to hear pre-emphasis with method one, I think method two is reasonably reliable.

 

Gardo, thanks for chiming in. This pre-emphasis thing is nutty. I've made a CD-R of the black-triangle Wings Greatest with Easy CD Creator, and it sounds great to my ear. Yes, there is plenty of hiss, but it doesn't sound overly bright. However, the CD-Rs I made of two Japanese pressings of Thriller (catalog number 35 8P-11 and CDEPC 85930) sound much brighter than the originals. The originals must have pre-emphasis. I'll make CD-Rs of these discs with EAC and see what happens.

 

FWIW, the subject of EAC ... pre-emphasis ... and the Toshiba Abbey Road ... was discussed on this forum a year or so ago ... you might try a search ...

 

O.K., help me understand this situation regarding pre-emphasis:

1. I play the Japanese pressing of Thriller with catalog number CDEPC 85930 on a Sony SCD-C555ES SACD/CD changer, and it does not sound bright.

2. I play a CD-R of the above Thriller CD made with Roxio Easy CD Creator on the 'C555ES, and it sounds very bright.

Based on this, I assume that the Thriller disc is encoded with pre-emphasis. EAC tells me that it isn't, but I still think it is. Assuming that the disc is encoded with pre-emphasis, is the following correct?

* The Thriller disc is encoded with pre-emphasis flags, but Easy CD Creator ignores them when I make a CD-R. The CD-R sounds bright as a result.

* The 'C555ES SACD/CD changer can detect pre-emphasis flags and "defeat" pre-emphasis in order to produce the correct sound with encoded discs.

The 'C555ES was released in 2001, so I would not expect it to have pre-emphasis detection, but how else can one explain that the aluminum Thriller disc sounds fine yet the CD-R of it made with Easy CD Creator is very bright?

 

Your assumptions above are all correct, in my judgment and experience. So far as I know, every CD player that has the Compact Disc logo on it must support playback de-emphasis of pre-emphasized discs. That's true whether or not the disc actually has some display indication that it has detected pre-emphasis. Otherwise, the player does not meet redbook playback compatibility specifications.

 

The black-triangle Wings Greatest was so hissy that I immediately compared it to the Parlophone pressing, whereupon I was satisfied that the difference there was the result of pre-emphasis on the black-triangle disc. Even "bit perfect" copies with Roxio or EAC won't set the flags correctly. That has to be done manually, with the cue sheet, in EAC.

For fun, I've burned back-to-back tracks from suspected pre-emphasis CDs, one track with FLAGS=PRE and one track without. The fact that they sound different on playback with standalone CD players (NOT CD-ROM drives on the PC) demonstrates that the player does detect the pre-emphasis and do the appropriate de-emphasis. If the pre-emphasis isn't there originally, then the FLAGS=PRE track sounds obviously too dull.

 

In my collection of audio test CD's, I have found some tracks that are known to have "pre-emphasis". STEREOPHILE Test CD #2 and the Digital Test double disc set by Pierre Verany. The Pierre Verany disc is noteworthy because it has "pre-emphasis" and non-"emphasis" examples of the same music track.

 

Thanks. I wasn't aware that pre-emphasis detection was part of the Redbook specs.

 

I'll have to listen to the original Wings Greatest black-triangle disc and compare it my Easy CD Creator CD-R. I'll also have to make a CD-R on EAC for further comparison.

It's interesting but it seems to me in my limited experience with pre-emphasis that CD-Rs are not equally offensive. I never found the Easy CD Creator CD-R of Wings Greatest to be offensive in any way, but the Easy CD Creator CD-Rs of two Japanese pressings of Thriller are offensive.

 

I found EAC to be flaky on detecting pre-emphasis too.

I used EAC to rip my Japanese target cd of Quarterflash's first album and create the cue sheet. I have a DVD-Rom drive and a CD-RW drive, both reported the same lack of pre-e.

I use a shareware program called Feurio to burn my cd-r's. I can load up the cue sheet and it sets up the tracks for burning - or in this case, one long wave file image of the cd using the cue sheet to locate the track points. I burned a copy, played it back and it was bright as could be - very harsh.

I went back into the cd cue listing in Feurio, found the place to edit the track information, changed the pre-e flags to "on" for all tracks and re-burned it. Perfect this time.

Now I had find a way to de-emphasize the cd for when I want to include any of those tracks on a comp cd I might make in the future - without having to remember to set the pre-e bit flag for that one track.

I found a site by someone that actually graphically showed how to set the FFT Filter in Cool Edit to cut the high end down (keep the db level at 0 from 0kHz to 3KHz then slope from 3K to 10K down to about -9db and level from 10K to 22K at that -9db - or there-abouts). I tried it and it works. I resaved the wave file with the new eq, and was able to get a several db level boost overall since the cut in the highs left a huge volume headroom to work with (all done to a file converted to 32bit first, of course).

Although I found that EAC forum thread before, the description on de-emphasis left my head spinning. I needed something to show me what the curve looked like (hey, I'm an architect by trade, so things need to be visual to register with me )

 

BTW, I also found that if you play a CD on a computer (like I do at work) and it is set for digital playback (cd-drive sends the stream to the software player for DAC and then sent to the soundcard), pre-emphasis is not picked up if it's there. It will sound harsh.

Set it for analog playback (the cd-drive does the DAC and the analog out is connected to the soundcard) then pre-emphais will get picked up and sent to the soundcard properly de-emphasized.

I don't have a setup where the drive's digital out is sent straight to the soundcard but I would assume any decent soundcard would de-emphasize accordingly.

I also found this out using EAC after I discovered the Quarterflash CD thing. You can change how EAC plays back a cd. Under EAC Options and in the "General" tab, you can change the first option in that tab to "Use alternate CD play routines". That forces EAC to play the cd through the IDE cable and do software digital-to-analog decoding. Switching it back and forth, I could hear the treble change difference.

 

Thanks for the info. I have an old Pierre Verany test CD that was pressed in Japan, but I don't think it demos pre-emphasis. How old is your two-disc set? I'd like to find a copy.

 

I got it!

My Japanese pressings of Thriller with catalog numbers 35 8P-11 and CDEPC 85930 are definitely encoded with pre-emphasis. When I load them in my CD burners, EAC says that are not encoded with pre-emphasis. However, I just made a CD-R of the CDEPC 85930 disc on EAC with the pre-emphasis flags turned on, and the copy sounds identical to the original disc! The CD-R is not bright and harsh like the one I made with Roxio Easy CD Creator! Me so happy!

I still have a couple issues with EAC that I've posted before. For one thing, my burners don't seem to like the Write Lead-Out step. This step never seems to stop. The EAC dialogue box indicates that the step is completed, but it doesn't actually shut down, and the light on my burners stay on, which suggests that they're still doing something. I generally use my external burner for writing to CD-Rs, so I just hit "Cancel" on the EAC dialogue box and turn the external burner off.

Also, I can't seem to encode CD TEXT on my CD-Rs with EAC. Let's say that I don't name the .wav files when they are stored on my hard drive. When I set a "cue sheet" with Easy CD Creator, I can enter track titles and name the disc. However, I can't seem to change the names on the EAC Cue Sheet. Can this be done? I don't like to name the actual files on the hard drive because Windows doesn't accept certain characters. For example, I believe an ampersand (&) becomes an underscore (_).

 

An update on Wings Greatest

I just compared "With A Little Luck" on my original CD (aluminum black-triangle disc with catalog number CP35-3114) to the CD-R made with Easy CD Creator. Sorry, Gardo, but I detect nothing wrong with the CD-R. The hiss screams on the aluminum disc, and I do not detect any enhancement of the hiss on the CD-R. Furthermore, the CD-R is not fatiguing.

Now, I don't purport to have a golden ear, but I immediately detected something wrong with those Thriller CD-Rs. Granted, I initially blamed the harshness on the mastering, but I still knew that something was wrong. I've been listening to the Wings CD-R for months, and it has never bothered me.

For the sake of completeness, I will burn a CD-R of Wings Greatest on EAC with the pre-emphasis flags on. If the resulting CD-R sounds dull or flattened, then I will know with certainty that the original disc is not encoded with pre-emphasis.