Need of pre-emphasis and de-emphasis circuits in digital communication?

de-emphasis is the complement of pre-emphasis, in the antinoise system called emphasis. Emphasis is a system process designed to decrease, (within a band of frequencies), the magnitude of some (usually higher) frequencies with respect to the magnitude of other (usually lower) frequencies in order to improve the overall signal-to-noise ratio by minimizing the adverse effects of such phenomena as attenuation differences or saturation of recording media in subsequent parts of the system.

Special time constants dictate the frequency response curve, from which one can calculate the cutoff frequency.