# Which of the Quake CDs are actually pre-emphasized?

**URL:** <https://discuss.quaddicted.com/t/which-of-the-quake-cds-are-actually-pre-emphasized/2236>\
**Category:** Quake\
**Created:** [December 12, 2016, 8:31am UTC](https://discuss.quaddicted.com/t/which-of-the-quake-cds-are-actually-pre-emphasized/2236 "2016-12-12T08:31:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Greed](https://discuss.quaddicted.com/letter_avatar/greed/32/5_e30499b05c07943df9b13d07c8c32459.png) [@Greed](https://discuss.quaddicted.com/u/Greed)\
**Post date:** [December 12, 2016, 8:31am UTC](https://discuss.quaddicted.com/t/which-of-the-quake-cds-are-actually-pre-emphasized/2236/1 "2016-12-12T08:31:18Z")

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I have 7 CDs with Red Book soundtracks in total, namely:

Quake (1.01 original release)  
MP1: Scourge of Armagon  
MP2: Dissolution of Eternity  
Shrak (v2)  
Malice (USA)  
X-Men: The Ravages of Apocalypse  
Abyss of Pandemonium

I want to dump all of these properly to OGG and be done with it.

Now, it’s common knowledge that the original Quake soundtrack is pre-emphasized, the difference is quite obvious once you de-emphasize it, especially with track 2 (Quake Theme), it’s much less harsh and there’s much less noise. But what about the rest?

I’ve tried de-emphasizing all of these with [http://sox.sourceforge.net/](http://sox.sourceforge.net/). Quake, official mission packs and X-Men seem to go through just fine, but the rest (Shrak, Malice and Abyss of Pandemonium) show dither errors in SoX’s output feed. So they aren’t actually pre-emphasized?

Is there a tool to check if a CD has pre-emphasis? I’ve tried using cdda2wav (from the [http://cdrtools.sourceforge.net/private/cdrecord.html](http://cdrtools.sourceforge.net/private/cdrecord.html)), but that utility is hopelessly outdated and I wasn’t able to run it on my laptop, it just showed driver errors.

Bonus question: What about Quake 2 and Hexen 2 soundtracks?

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**Author:** ![bfg666](https://discuss.quaddicted.com/user_avatar/discuss.quaddicted.com/bfg666/32/42_2.png) [@bfg666](https://discuss.quaddicted.com/u/bfg666)\
**Post date:** [December 12, 2016, 9:02pm UTC](https://discuss.quaddicted.com/t/which-of-the-quake-cds-are-actually-pre-emphasized/2236/2 "2016-12-12T21:02:56Z")

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You can actually already find most of these (except AoP) here: [http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-mod-releases/finished-works/7337-high-quality-music-packs.html](http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-mod-releases/finished-works/7337-high-quality-music-packs.html)  
And the AoP soundtrack is downloadable here: [http://www.quaddicted.com/files/music/impel\_music.zip](http://www.quaddicted.com/files/music/impel_music.zip)  
It’s gonna save you some work.

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**Author:** ![Greed](https://discuss.quaddicted.com/letter_avatar/greed/32/5_e30499b05c07943df9b13d07c8c32459.png) [@Greed](https://discuss.quaddicted.com/u/Greed)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2016, 8:19am UTC](https://discuss.quaddicted.com/t/which-of-the-quake-cds-are-actually-pre-emphasized/2236/3 "2016-12-13T08:19:29Z")

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Thanks, but I’d love to do this myself and actually learn something in the process.

Guess it’s back to googling for the pre-emphasis flag in TOC and how to check for it on Windows 10 64-bit.

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**Author:** ![ericw](https://discuss.quaddicted.com/letter_avatar/ericw/32/5_e30499b05c07943df9b13d07c8c32459.png) [@ericw](https://discuss.quaddicted.com/u/ericw)\
**Post date:** [December 13, 2016, 8:47pm UTC](https://discuss.quaddicted.com/t/which-of-the-quake-cds-are-actually-pre-emphasized/2236/4 "2016-12-13T20:47:13Z")

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Try EAC: [http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/](http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/)  
there seems to be a column in the UI to indicate whether the pre-emphasis flag is set.

Keep in mind the preemphasis flag is just metadata and could be wrong, I don’t think there’s a 100% sure way to tell if preemphasis was, applied other than listening and guessing from the sound, or looking at a spectrum and guessing…

> [@](#):
>
> dither errors in SoX’s output feed

As a general rule I think you want to use the -G or --guard flag of SOX, from the manpage “Automatically invoke the gain effect to guard against clipping.”.  
The sox deemph filter is applying an EQ curve, so with any processing like that you need to guard against clipping.