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Electric Light Orch - Don’t Bring Me Down

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crapfromthepast View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote crapfromthepast Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 February 2022 at 3:24pm
Dave - Pre-emphasis was used on very early CDs, and was thankfully retired after the mid-'80s. Unless you have a really old CD, it won't be an issue.

If you do a normal rip of a CD with pre-emphasis, it will have a really bright high end and a deficient low-end. It'll sound tinny.

There is software out there that can re-EQ a CD rip to compensate for the pre-emphasis, but I don't have any firsthand experience with it.
There's a lot of crap on the radio, but there's only one Crap From The Past.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Hykker Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 February 2022 at 4:25pm
Originally posted by crapfromthepast crapfromthepast wrote:

Dave - Pre-emphasis was used on very early CDs, and was thankfully retired after the mid-
'80s.


Wasn't this due to using tapes originally mastered for the vinyl releases? I've heard that Motown was particularly
notorious for this.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote crapfromthepast Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 February 2022 at 5:25pm
Originally posted by Hykker Hykker wrote:

Wasn't this due to using tapes originally mastered for the vinyl releases? I've heard that Motown was particularly notorious for this.


I think the source tapes and the pre-emphasis are two different issues, although both plague some of the first-generation CDs.

The internet has a list of CDs that use pre-emphasis, and it's a pretty small list - probably 100 or fewer. I think that ELO CD from above is one of the pre-emphasis CDs, which is why I thought it was ear-bleedingly bright.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote mjb50 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 February 2022 at 10:25pm
Indeed, pre-emphasis is an option which can be applied during the digitization of analog tapes. It is not on the analog master tapes, and has nothing to do with the fact that some CDs were made from the wrong production masters.

That said, Dolby A or dbx noise reduction is sometimes encoded onto the analog tapes and does not always get properly decoded when playing the tapes during digitization, and they can end up having a similarly bright sound because of this. But that's less common than pre-emphasis, in my estimation.

Also, when I used the word emphasis in reference to the 1993 gold disc of Discovery, I did not mean pre-emphasis. I know what pre-emphasis sounds like and that's not what is on that particular disc. I was just using the word in the general sense.

But it is true that at least some of the 1980s pressings of Discovery were mastered with pre-emphasis. Lazlo's list of releases suspected of having it hasn't been updated in years, but it does mention those. I believe "Don't Bring Me Down" on ELO's Greatest Hits Vol. Two also has it. There's a Steve Hoffman forum thread where these suspicious CDs are discussed.

Edited by mjb50
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote EdisonLite Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 February 2022 at 4:48pm
I never even heard of this "pre-emphasis" issue until reading this post. I did look at the list of CDs that used this - in the link provided above. Quite a few CDs. Does anyone know what year they stopped using Pre-Emphasis?
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote EdisonLite Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 February 2022 at 4:51pm
Trivia - I knew about the "groooos" lyric. (Probably on the album sleeve's lyrics). But I didn't know the guy on the Discover cover is a young Brad Garrett. That's the brother of Raymond in "Everybody Loves Raymond", right? I sort of see the resemblance looking at the album cover now.

<that weird sound at the end is the sound of the fire door to the studio slamming shut.>

To me, that did sound simply like a slamming door. Didn't know it was the one in the studio, but that makes sense, as it was the closest door to shut during the recording :)
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