History of K2

The name K2 was taken from the initials of the two engineers who developed the system (Kuwaoka from Victor Company of Japan, and Kanai from Victor Studio).

The development of K2 was started in response to calls from recording engineers in Victor Studio. They objected to the common idea that there was absolutely no change in sound quality no matter how many times the original data was copied when the music media is transferred from analog records across to digital CDs. Because digitalizing sound is encoded in combinations of zeros and ones. Although no changes occur in theory, the studio engineers claimed that there was a clear difference between the sound quality of the original master and the copied sub-master. So the engineers at JVCKENWOOD set about to clarify the reason for this. Subsequently, it was discovered that although the digital data was exactly the same, electrical distortion (jitter, rippling), etc. occurred when the data was being recorded and saved, which had an adverse effect when converting music played back in digital into analog, thereby proving that changes did occur in sound quality. An attempt by the two engineers to improve the changes in sound quality that occurred at this time led to the original version of K2, which was named the “K2 Interface.” 

Efforts i n creating high-quality sound of digital sources with K2, which started from a signal transmission system at a music content production studio, will c ontinue to e volve and e xpand from being featured in playback e quipment to the remastering o f songs, c utting records, and more.