The SugarCube Is Here At Last...Clicks & Pops R.I.P.

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by DigMyGroove, Nov 12, 2017.

  1. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Found this on the topic.

    "It provides a USB 3.0 interface to connect any size of USB attached storage and Ethernet to save files to a NAS drive or media server."
     
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  2. DigMyGroove

    DigMyGroove Forum Resident Thread Starter

    The SugarCube joins your network so the phone app can be used to operate it should you so wish. It does not connect to the internet in order to do it's main function, noise removal. For recording once the app is in full release it will, just like iTunes connect to a database to retrieve all the metadata and artwork.

    I listened to the recording I made of side one of Exile On Main Street again today, this time at work with better headphones, I'm even more impressed now than upon first listening.
     
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  3. DigMyGroove

    DigMyGroove Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Dan and Leo said that would be something you could do once the complete app is available along with any firmware updates they might offer.
     
  4. Bananas&blow

    Bananas&blow It's just that demon life has got me in its sway

    Location:
    Pacific Beach, CA
    Thank you for the reviews on a fascinating product. I hate clicks and pops. Does it work equally well with scratches as other surface noise?
     
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  5. DigMyGroove

    DigMyGroove Forum Resident Thread Starter

    It does, but you need to turn up the dial to 7 or higher. I have an early pressing of the Doors debut that has fabulous sonics but has had lots of abuse during it's long life. It was especially bad during "The End". The SC-2 took away all the bad stuff, but on that track I turned it up to 8 or 9 I think. Nonetheless this $2 garage sale find sounded terrific and lost none of it's analog sound. It's when playing a record like this that it's fun to here the noise on it's own and really appreciate what the SugarCube is capable of.
     
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  6. Drew769

    Drew769 Buyer of s*** I never knew I lacked

    Location:
    NJ
    I had a chance to hear these at the NY Audio Show last year, and I have to admit they were pretty impressive - especially the demonstration of the unit on a live record with a very loud scratch running throughout delivering a crisp "pop" on every revolution. Switched on, the vinyl was as quiet as a CD, switched off again, it was a mess. It's very much like the effect of Vinyl Studio on pops and clicks, but with the difference of being able to do the repairs "live" as you listen.

    I suppose such a device could pay for itself billowing cheap, damaged vinyl to be played like much cleaner vinyl. Since I play mostly pristine vinyl myself, it's not much of an attraction to me personally. I thought I detected a little bit of softening or dulling of the sound from the repairs, much like Vinyl Studio does when you overuse the click and pop repair. Personal preference, I guess.
     
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  7. 56GoldTop

    56GoldTop Forum Resident

    Location:
    Nowhere, Ok
    Any word if/when these will hit the streets?
     
  8. Chris Schoen

    Chris Schoen Rock 'n Roll !!!

    Location:
    Maryland, U.S.A.
    I record to tape, and have records with no pops or clicks.
     
  9. Chris Schoen

    Chris Schoen Rock 'n Roll !!!

    Location:
    Maryland, U.S.A.
    This device will come in handy when the only records out there are scratched up, hipster abused vinyl. Timely...
     
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  10. Bananas&blow

    Bananas&blow It's just that demon life has got me in its sway

    Location:
    Pacific Beach, CA
    I agree. LPs scratched up by hippies and stoners from the 70's sound so much better than scratched hipster records :).
     
  11. Chris Schoen

    Chris Schoen Rock 'n Roll !!!

    Location:
    Maryland, U.S.A.
    My records from the 70's are pristine. I was smart enough not to let anyone "handle" them.
     
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  12. Bananas&blow

    Bananas&blow It's just that demon life has got me in its sway

    Location:
    Pacific Beach, CA
    I need to read up more on this. I like the fact you can have a straight bypass for the clean records in your collection. I have many a record that would go from irritating to enjoyable apparently. I never thought this would be possible. It would be fun to listen to my "return/garbage" pile of records. I think it's probably time for me to get past my fear of digitizing the analogue sound of records. The benefits of room correction software, a la, the LS-50 wireless models and the SugarCube produce would probably convince me if I heard them in person.

    It sort of sounds like turning your records into CD's, but I guess there is more to it than that, better masterings for example.
     
    jcr64 likes this.
  13. stuwee

    stuwee Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson AZ
    I smell a rat, and a nasty smelling one too! Bring one to Tucson and my ears with the Summit's and the AKG 701's will let me know!

    I've never heard a click and pop remover, analog or digital that didn't ruin everything I worked so hard to build, sorry to the OP, I admit I've never heard one (the SC-2)...they can't have possibly jumped that far ahead in the last decade. So as I said, anyone close in the SW with one of these, you are invited to change my mind
     
  14. stuwee

    stuwee Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson AZ
    B&b, even done some Lp to a nice cassette or RtR on a good tape mastering? It depends on if it's a true AAD recording, or a DDD, some very nice work going on on the digital front end of recording. Most sounds much nicer on a good analog recorder...

    We all like what we like, some the noise free (subjective to many ears), some the effects of a diamond vibrating through a ditch of grooves, just like real music, heheh!

    Ton's of digital instruments used in the last couple decades, give me a well recorded drum kit, vintage guitar and bass anytime!!
     
  15. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    Two good test records would be Front 242's Front by Front and New Order's Technique on the song Vanishing Point.
    Even the most sensitive setting on a de-clicker for the drum start has an adverse affect for some reason.
     
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  16. amgradmd

    amgradmd Forum Resident

    Location:
    Richmond, VA
    I hear you but I was thinking along the lines of how the Silvercube would do with ripping with click repair versus ripping with Vinyl Studio's click repair. Granted, that will depend on the quality of your ADC/PC setup, in my case a PS Audio NuWave Phono Converter with Mac Mini. I think the VS does a great job of click repair and processing the files, but it would be nice to compare head to head.

    Maybe if some wanted, I could take an old LP with lots of clicks and pops (I use Nitty Gritty VCM with MoFi enzyme cleaner and several rinses so I get them as clean as possible!) and rip it with my setup and then send it to someone with the Silvercube and have them rip it with de-clicking and compare. We could even post the files to d/l and let people choose. I think that'd be fun! I have an old copy of Miles Davis My Funny Valentine that would do the trick. It's fairly beat up but has decent sonics. Anyone game??
     
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  17. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    @krisbee has a theory that since ClickRepair RT has been taken off the (virtual) shelves that there might've been some sort of exclusivity deal allowing Sweet Vinyl to use that product or something revamped specifically for their STBs which is in fact maybe even more sophisticated now. Personally, it wouldn't surprise me if the SC-1 and 2 were inherently superior to anything else out there at the moment as it's the latest and possibly greatest product of its kind.

    The phono preamp would color the sound of the results, wouldn't it?
     
  18. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    This kind of thing seems like a solution in search of a problem to me. Do people really have such crappy, beat-up or filthy dust and hair covered records that they're listening to a lot of snap, crackle and pop? Honestly, I have 3 or 4 thousand LPs, and yeah, some of them I bought used and were noisy from surface ticks from poor playing conditions; some of them I've played a lot over 40 years including under high school and college conditions and they're noisy because I didn't play them under the best of conditions or care for them well as a kid; some were just not great pressings -- the surfaces where whoosh or the vinyl had bumps (which may or may not be the kind of thing that this sort of product could fix anyway); but by far the majority of them play tick and pop free. And to solve the non-problem by digitizing the signal? I'm perfectly happy just listening to CDs or digital files when I want a no mechanical noise digital playback instead of turning my LPs into digitized versions. I don't get the point of this product. Now, off-centeredness, eccentricity, THAT's a ubiquitous vinyl problem. Ticks & pops? Not so much.
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2017
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  19. c-eling

    c-eling They're made of light,We never would have guessed

    I doubt I'll ever find another mono Parsley, Sage for a 1.00 ever again- that could definitely use some help in the pop n' click arena :laugh:
     
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  20. amgradmd

    amgradmd Forum Resident

    Location:
    Richmond, VA
    It's interesting to speculate where they got the tech or even if it's new at all.

    As far as the preamp coloring the sound, of course it would! One thing you could do is to record a song before and after the de-clicking both on the Sweetvinyl unit and I could do the same. You'd first of all get a sense for the sound of the preamps used and how they compare to one another. If one has more detail, bass, treble extension, etc. Then you could compare how the sound is changed, if at all, by de-clicking. I guess really the delta between the before and after results within the same systems would be most useful.
     
  21. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    That would be assuming the exact same pressing was used. Regardless, the turntable and stylus would also factor enormously into the end result.
     
  22. missan

    missan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Stockholm
    If I play records, I play records.
     
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  23. Bananas&blow

    Bananas&blow It's just that demon life has got me in its sway

    Location:
    Pacific Beach, CA
    There's many a naysayer polluting this thread that have never heard the product and are making assumptions based entirely on ignorance of said product. If you haven't heard it, why are you assuming the worst? Gotta love the internet sometimes. Just because you heard a different product that didn't work, or you just think it's a bad idea, doesn't mean anything and isn't helpful. It also doesn't make you correct.
     
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  24. JohnO

    JohnO Senior Member

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    The theory of how to do this processing has been known for 40 years or more. Three audio manufacturers made versions that I noted above, during the peak of 1980s hifidom, and those three companies went out of business. Tiny electronic kits companies made versions for do-it-yourselfers to assemble and solder. And later Marantz did one, and that unit just didn't sell. And one model is still available new from Esoteric Sound - halfway down this page, for $425. This has been available for sale new (I won't say "in current continuous daily active production") since 1999.
    CEDAR, noise reduction, hiss reduction, click reduction, sound restoration

    There are 50 or more software programs that do it on a PC.

    They all work. Of the software, some are poor, most are pretty good, a few are better. Any of those could have been licensed or ...

    As these things go, the click and pop reduction is not "difficult". The Marantz (Philips) version, around 1992, also did it digitally - convert to digital, process, convert back to analog - it didn't sell in Europe, or Japan, and I don't think it was ever released in US. Even the older analog units 1979-1982ish did the sensing in a way we now might recognize as digital sampling, but always kept the signal in analog.

    The new thing in the SC-2 is storing the files, and with internet-found metadata. That's not really new either. Your phone can basically do that and has for 10 years. Putting it all together in the SC-2 could be useful, but not really new.

    I really want to hear comparisons, with not only the old analog units, but a good selection of available software. I'm open. If this is "better", I want proof. If it is "as good as" something generally available, that's ok too. I want to see files, from the same record/turntable/cart/preamp, before and after the SC processing, so I can look at them myself.

    I'd like to hope this is better than what has been, I just don't really see/hear/think how it could be better. I'm not trying to be negative, I think and hope this is good - it is just not new. The indiegogo page says "A new category of audio component for the Vinyl Lover" - the click/pop reduction SC-1 is not; maybe they mean the SC-2 package in one box.
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2017
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  25. DigMyGroove

    DigMyGroove Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Sounds like a fine idea, PM me.
     

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