What is "EMPHASIS OFF" on the DA4ES? (1 Viewer)

[NickSP]

I was watching the display while playing a CD and while the display was scrolling, I observed something called "Emphasis Off" on the display when it shows the sampling rate, etc. How do you turn the emphasis "on" ? Can somebody please shed some light on this?

 

[Jeff Kohn]

The redbook audio standard includes something called pre-emphasis. I'm simplifying a bit but basically, if a CD has pre-emphasis that means that the teble/brightness is boosted, and should be filtered on playback. Apparently there is a theory about this lowering the noise floor or something. That said, I think it's pretty rare that CD's are recorded with this feature enabled. And trust me, you don't want to turn it on if the CD wasn't mastered that way, it will have a very negative impact on the treble, making it sound very flat and muffled.

 

[AaronBatiuk]

How do you turn the emphasis "on" ?

You can't. As Jeff pointed out, this refers to high frequency pre-emphasis that is optional for Redbook audio CD. It really is unecessary and is rarely used these days. You have no control over it; A flag is carried in the S/PDIF meta data to turn it on or off automatically in the device doing the D/A conversion, which in this case is your receiver.

 

[NickSP]

Thanks guys, that makes good sense.