What is the cause of "pre" echo?

[lgreen]

Listening to some CDs on my high resolving system tonight..... On many of them I can hear a "pre" echo....not sure this is the correct term but... (also hope this is the right forum...)

I can hear what sounds like an echo of the beginning of the song before it actually starts....or if there is a quiet part I hear the echo of when it kicks in before it actually starts. This is detectable usually only when there is a quiet part...you hear a faint echo of the next passage before it actually starts, and when it starts the echos of the rest I guess are drowned out.

What's the cause of this? I think I saw something before somewhere that it could be the analog tape masters leaking the signal through to the heads before the rotation got the tape there (1 layer/rotation picked up early?).

Anyone hear this before?

[rpapps]

Hi Lgreen
The phenomenon is called print through.
There's an explanation here:

http://www.aes.org/aeshc/docs/3mtape/printthrough.pdf

Cheers
Rob

[peace brainerd]

Thanks for the question lgreen - and thanks rpapps for the answer.
I've always wondered about that same thing. Too idly, evidently, to have ever tried to find out about it.

[Pano]

Good old print through. You don't hear it as much as you used to.

Print through is why we were taught to store tapes "tail out." That way the echo comes after the main sound. Doesn't sound as bad, if you can even hear it.
As described in the AES article.

Listen with good headphones, you'll hear it pretty often. If you hear it on a DDD CD, you gotta wonder.

[EC8010]

Originally posted by panomaniac
Print through is why we were taught to store tapes "tail out." That way the echo comes after the main sound. Doesn't sound as bad, if you can even hear it.

Well, well, well. You learn something new every day. Nobody mentioned why it made sense to store tapes "tail out".