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I believe the process is called "pre-emphasis." And practitioners should be drawn and quartered (their careers, at least).
I thought Dylan's problem was mainly with the whole "perfect sound forever" crap foisted on the market by Sony. It doesn't matter whether CDs suck because of the medium or because of the engineering.
When CDs first came out many sucked because digital processors truncated the data at 16 bits. This made high frequencies sound glassy and shrill. I don't think dithering became standard for engineering processors until the '90s but even then many engineers had older truncating equipment.
Then the human factor: sound engineering is an art. What makes a track sound good on vinyl sounds awful in digital. Vinyl needs certain frequencies emphasized and others limited, particularly the lowest octave. The playback needle gets "lost" in the groove if bass level is too high, and the lands between the grooves become too thin and the track bleeds through. But then for CDs engineers tended to raise the treble too much to balance the new power of digital bass. So, even with dithering many CDs were dreck.
In my car, the CD player is actually muted. I believe they found that CDs played too loud compared to radio, so that if you had a volume at your "comfort level" (relatively high to overcome road noise) and then popped in a CD it would blast your eardrums.
I have a Shania Twain CD that I could only play half as loud on my (awesome until the CD died and one speaker terminal busted) home system. It is way over-processed. In my car it is the only one that matches sound level with the radio.
I thought Dylan's problem was mainly with the whole "perfect sound forever" crap foisted on the market by Sony. It doesn't matter whether CDs suck because of the medium or because of the engineering.
When CDs first came out many sucked because digital processors truncated the data at 16 bits. This made high frequencies sound glassy and shrill. I don't think dithering became standard for engineering processors until the '90s but even then many engineers had older truncating equipment.
Then the human factor: sound engineering is an art. What makes a track sound good on vinyl sounds awful in digital. Vinyl needs certain frequencies emphasized and others limited, particularly the lowest octave. The playback needle gets "lost" in the groove if bass level is too high, and the lands between the grooves become too thin and the track bleeds through. But then for CDs engineers tended to raise the treble too much to balance the new power of digital bass. So, even with dithering many CDs were dreck.
In my car, the CD player is actually muted. I believe they found that CDs played too loud compared to radio, so that if you had a volume at your "comfort level" (relatively high to overcome road noise) and then popped in a CD it would blast your eardrums.
I have a Shania Twain CD that I could only play half as loud on my (awesome until the CD died and one speaker terminal busted) home system. It is way over-processed. In my car it is the only one that matches sound level with the radio.
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