K2 technology is an audio mastering technology developed by JVC Kenwood Victor Entertainment Corporation. It was named after the two engineers who developed the system: Kuwaoka and Kanai. K2 technology has two major features: Improving sound quality and packing high-definition data in lower format CD. The fundamental principle of K2 technology is to produce audios that are "closer to the musical truth"[1] and "restoring sound to its original state."[1] Originally developed from a project in 1987, K2 technology is the fundamental technology of audio mastering technology such as netK2 and K2HD mastering.
The development of K2 was started in response to calls from recording engineers in Victor Studio. However, engineers found that there was a clear difference in sound quality between original audio data and the copy versions on CD even though the digital data does not change during the transferring process. The engineers in Victor Studio then found the reason that disguising the original data and copy versions is the electrical distortion such as jitters and rippling occurs during the data recording and transformation. Kuwaoka and Kanai, two engineers from Victor Studio started their searching for improvements of the sound quality for audio data after transformation. Their attempts were named the “K2 Interface”, which was the original version of K2.
K2 technology has two main features which can lead to various music production and manufacturing process:
High-definition Digital Signal Transmission Technology can be used to improve the sound quality during the data transmission process by blocking the distortion signal that can reduce sound quality during the transmission process. Letting only the data signal pass from the transmitter to the receiver, it preserves the digital data close to its original state. This feature is developed based on K2 technology’s principle of “closer to the music truth”
High-Fidelity Information Processing Technology is used when the audio data has already been transmitted. In this case, the K2 technology can fix the damaged digital data to restore it back to its original state. This feature can also be applied to restoring high resolution audio data, up to 100 kHz frequency and 24-bit resolution, in standard format CD by modifying the signal. This feature is applied to many newly developed K2 related technology such as netK2 and K2HD Mastering.This feature is developed based on K2 technology’s principle of “restoring sound to its original state.”
netK2 technology can either be used as an application program that transmits audio data from CD to compressed music file such as MP3 or working as a mobile digital audio resource.
netK2 Pre-Processing works as an application program and is used when the audio source needs to be transferred to compressed audio file. Without the netK2 Pre-processing, only the basic components can go through the process and those components that are eliminated will result in a reduce in sound quality. netK2 Pre-processing ensures that all these components that would have been eliminated are added back to the basic components to make the compressed audio file less-degraded.