Quote:
I'm not quite sure, but this offers some insight.
"Updated information with the latest findings.
If you are lucky enough to have a Japanese Black Face or a genuine Black Triangle CD with Sound Signature #1 handy you are going to like this.
If you aren't lucky (or wealthy) enough to afford paying 50-100$ for that CD, don't worry, I might have some good news for you too.
More on that later.
Sound Signature #1 was recorded with Pre-Emphasis tags, a practice in use before 1985, when the Redbook standard wasn't too solidly implemented and CD players came with a DE-EMPHASIS switch that you could turn on or off at will.
From here
What is Pre-Emphasis?
Some old CD tracks are recorded high frequency with emphasis. When the track is playbacked, CD player reduces high frequency. As a result, offensive high frequency noise is reduced. This process is called de-emphasis. Most CD players have a de-emphasis circuit internally, but some recent cheap players don't have it.
Emphasis of Music CD
A pre-emphasis used for music CD is 15/50 microsec. This is called CD-DA emphasis too. A response increases from 0dB to 10.45dB with a frequency increases from 3.18KHz(50microsec) to 10.6KHz(15microsec).
In order to succesfully listen to a Japanese Black Face or genuine Japanese Black Triangle with foobar, the following steps have to be done:
Get Foobar special version
Then follow these steps in order to load the 50-15 De-Emphasis
50-15 De-Emphasis WAVE (Hit "Free download" to get the file)
Now you need to load the 50-15_De-Emphasis impulse wave:
Hit play.
Notice the hiss, sibilance and background noise removal in the upper frequencies.
Enjoy.
As anything related with subjective measurements, some people might like another Sound Signature better, specially the MFSL Ultradisc (or II, I have yet to confirm if there is, if any, a difference between these two and in that case why this might be).
The important thing is that this is how Black Faces and genuine Black Triangles were intended to sound like when they were produced more than 20 years ago.
I want to thank AntoniosT for pointing towards the convolver on foobar and other research and two anonymous persons, one of whom helped with massive De-Emphasis research and blind ABXing as AntoniosT did, and the other built the 50-15_De-Emphasis.wav impulse wave according to the Redbook standard specs.
