Real Time Click Repair MiniPC Setup

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by krisbee, Jul 16, 2016.

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  1. krisbee

    krisbee Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Not sure I understand who/what you are asking, since the first post shows the device in action...
     
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  2. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    I believe he's asking me since the post before his was mine, stating that I was going to give it a go.

    Yes. Everything works perfectly and the software is mightily impressive! I did mentioned this in the SugarCube thread since that's a device that does it with more elegance in a STB format but if you have a spare PC (hopefully one which is quiet!), ClickRepair RT can run on it. I bought a great sound card to make it sound great and I'm happy to report my investment was not in vain!

    The sound is fantastic and it allowed for flawless playback of a very old Jazz record my FIL has which is scratched up beyond belief. As far as I could tell, there was no difference whatsoever in the musicality with ClickRepair RT on or off. Again, mightily impressive.
     
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  3. Wayne Bull

    Wayne Bull Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tipton, UK

    Glad it worked well for you.

    Was it your previously mentioned Sound Blaster card you ended up with?
     
  4. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Yep. Has a Burr Brown ADC and a Wolfson DAC included with great S/N ratio making the processed audio sound fantastic. Glad I got that one. Kind of flew under the radar as it's an older card that cost $300 initially.
     
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  5. Mintsauce

    Mintsauce Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Wales
    Sorry, I could have been clearer on what I was asking! Glad it all works for you with that nice sound card and many thanks to the OP for the Dropbox samples. I had a tinker around this afternoon and have it working on my main win10 pc using my phone as a line in source, it’s pretty impressive and I’ll now take the next step and try it with the TT as a source.
    I was intrigued by the results on things with added crackle, like portishead and tricky... unsurprisingly it does what it’s tuned to do and removes it and rather well too. I also tried c/pact by Autechre as it’s pretty dirty industrial sounding, it defiantly strips some out, but I struggled to tell the difference unless I isolated it. Is this a valid test, running digital through it? I can’t see why not?
     
  6. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Your setup is rather unique. I've never heard of anybody using their phone as a source. Theoretically, it should be a valid test, but there's nothing like the real thing.

    If you have a friend with a turntable, have him bring it over and play the most beat-up LP he has to hear the difference.

    Most of my LPs are in NM condition so I only activate ClickRepair RT on a handful of LPs, when my FIL brings some albums over, they tend to be in less than stellar condition, primarily because he's cheapening out by buying VG condition LPs. That application makes a world of a difference.

    You have 3 weeks to test it out after which you'll need to send an email out to Brian, the programmer and owner of it, along with your full name. His wife will then send a PayPal invoice to you of 40$ Australian Dollars. Once you've paid, you'll get a registration code. Note all the info down as there's no way for him to hunt down your registration info!
     
  7. feinstei9415

    feinstei9415 Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Bend, IN
    Don't take this as a flame, but I am wondering, if the LP is digitized in order to do click and noise removal, wouldn't it be better just to buy the SACD, DVD-Audio, or Blu-Ray Audio of the same performance? I thought that the beauty of analog LP's was to revel in the beauty of an analog playback format without the problem of "epsilon-delta" stairstepping of the audio signal. If you can't hear the difference between the Sugar Cube'd (or ClickRepaired) version of the LP and the LP played straight analogue, then obviously you can't hear the difference between a digitized analogue master tape transferred to SACD or 24-96 digital by professional remastering engineers. Might as well just play the SACD or 24-96 audio. The vast majority of my LP's (about 96% at last count) have already been transferred to digital format (I mostly listen to classical from the 50's and 60's), so I don't see the point of transferring it to digital for declicking/denoising....
     
  8. Mintsauce

    Mintsauce Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Wales
    Thanks, this is just where I got to today, I spent about two hours wondering why ClickRepair worked and RT didn’t, it was that I had no source connected! I have a Rega rig as per my sig, but with the software unsupported and my Linux skills being zero, I just wanted to test it. I need to get a connector for the phono cables next. Once I’m happy I’ll stump up for the software and look at hardware (I have an older revo 70 that I used for Kodi, might try that)
     
  9. Mintsauce

    Mintsauce Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Wales
    Personally I’m just tinkering and it might only cost me aus$40 to try it out as I have a mini pc spare. I see your point, but I’m not really that much of a purist and if I can breathe some new life into some my 80s records that I could have looked after better, then I’ll be happy. I’m fairly confident some of the reissuies I have will benefit too. I’m not set up for sacd or Blu-ray audio and I point blank refuse to buy digital as a file as I’m a collector at heart and like thing on racks. But, yes... I doubt this is for everyone.
     
  10. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Plenty of masterings are unique to vinyl. For instance, Kevin Gray's Steppenwolf - Gold which was released a couple of weeks ago. Same with 1st pressings sounding much fresher than whatever was used to make a CD which often might not be the master tapes or compressed/limited to hell. This common knowledge.

    As for the rest of your post, it's quite a leap in logic. Nobody I've polled has ever successfully defended their golden ears claims when I've put those people to the test, no matter what their claim was. Your stat is completely made up out of thin air, as well.

    No need for Linux, of course. That's just what Kris decided to use. I have W7 and everything works flawlessly.
     
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  11. Mintsauce

    Mintsauce Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Wales
    That’s good to know as the box I have free has win7 on it, should be perfect.
     
  12. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Both ClickRepair and ClickRepair RT are JAVA-based applications which means they aren't platform dependent. Linux, MacOS, Windows, etc. As long as the OS has JAVA on it, it should work.
     
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  13. krisbee

    krisbee Forum Resident Thread Starter

    You would be surprised at how many people will go on about playing analog purely and are running their signal through a receiver made since the 80s that have DSP and are already listening to something digitized and then converted back and never checked to see if their preamp/amp played things through a stritctly analog path. You would also be surprised at how many people failed to hear the difference when an a/d/a convertor was thrown in-line and they didnt know it. You would be surprised at how many records have a digital preview in line when cutting and have been converted once already...

    I would estimate at 30% of my collection hasnt been converted to a digital format by record labels... I would also say that collecting cheap albums for me is fun, and having them sound good for a small anount of money by the computer is part of my fun. I would also say that in my own tests of listening to a record and then listening to the digital playback of the same record showed that when conducted blind, myself and others couldnt discern which was which (this is just straight digital, not repaired) with my equipment.

    But I get it... you dont see the point, but want to let us know you don’t see the point.
     
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  14. krisbee

    krisbee Forum Resident Thread Starter

    My original post was showing how you can do it in Linux (apparently Im the only one) but ANYONE can do it on any O/S, windows included. My advice is try on a laptop or some computer, see if you like it. If you do, then you just have to figure out how to strip down and autostart the program if you want to automate it (and get a program to hit the button to start the ClickRepairRT program). Thats what I did so I dont have to do anything except start the computer, and it has no monitor. If you dont want to get that fancy, if you figure out for your computer how to remote into it, you can get close to how I have it (that is what the author did; he didnt get as fancy as me). Used laptops are cheap enough that as long as you dont mind hitting start on the program and the boot time, you can be set for cheap. My original goal was to make it basically an appliance, which is what made the instructions a bit deep. I can remote into the machine, but I rarely do. I have it to a set it and forget it state.
     
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  15. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Personally, I'd suggest a passively-cooled WinPC as the program doesn't require much power to run. That way, the computer won't have any fans to make noise.
     
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  16. Mintsauce

    Mintsauce Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Wales
    The phono to 3.5mm jack that I needed to connect the Phono Stage to the mini pc turned up this morning and I’ve been spinning some lp’s I knew had issues, all I can say is that I’m amazed by the results, they really are very good! I’m just using the mic line in on the pc currently, I imagine getting a decent sound card will improve things even more? (Hopefully 24bit, pretty sure my Rega Dac-R supports this via usb) I also bought a passive switch box which I’m running in reverse (1 in 2 out) so I can bypass the pc at the turn of a knob and a change of input number on the amp (Rega Brio-R)
    I was gutted when my SH/KPG Rumours got scratched during a party, right in the F1 bit of The Chain, didn’t even notice it playing through this app. Tools Lateralus picture disc is hugely improved and now I’m feeling guilty as I’m playing a copy of 17 seconds by The Cure that I got a £20 refund on due to it being more VG than the NM it was described as (ebayer told me I could keep it) and it’s now sounding really good.
    Next step is a passive PC which I’ve pretty much decided on, but is it worth splashing on a descent sound card?
     
  17. Wayne Bull

    Wayne Bull Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tipton, UK

    Im just using a Behringher UCA202 as a sound card and it's doing a great job.

    I have done recordings via the behringher and also bypassing the behringher and can't tell any difference , which is a good thing.
     
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  18. Mintsauce

    Mintsauce Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Wales
    Thanks, I was actually looking at the UMC202HD by that company as it does 24bit192 and it’s still fairly cheap at £55. Hope the USB ports on the mini pc can power it.
     
  19. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    ClickRepair RT tops at 16-bits 96KHz so no need to hunt for specific stats. The quality of the ADC and DAC will be of better use.
     
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  20. Mintsauce

    Mintsauce Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Wales
    Ahh! Thanks, I thought it might be capped in the demo version as the option is greyed out. You saved me a few pounds
     
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  21. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Tons of people here have helped me a great deal. Glad I was able to return the favor.
     
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  22. Mintsauce

    Mintsauce Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Wales
    I’m up and running now with a silent win10 pc doing the hard work. It’s effectively headless as it boots then launches ClickRepairRT then another mouse control program to click start in the app, so no monitor required. It takes about 30 seconds from turning on to the app being ready. The power button is set to cleanly shutdown the pc. Cost me about £160 not including cables, but I added a passive switch so could be done cheaper, for the price I’m really happy with it, Brian sent the licence really quickly too.
    One thing I have noticed if I a/b test it in and out of the loop (via the switch) is that my soundstage is a bit flat with it on, it looses its front to back staging, which is a shame. I wonder how much of that is down to the ADC in the usb interface as it was only £25. I’d love to try it with something like the scarlet 2i2 an see if I could get some of that back, but that’s considerably more expensive, so will need to wait for another time.
    Thanks again for your input and to the OP for bringing it to my attention, it’s been a fun and worthwhile exercise!
     
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  23. Mintsauce

    Mintsauce Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Wales
    Update: I was noticing some distortion an a few records which I put down to not having any control over the input gain and them coming in a bit hot. I found Ruins by Grouper to be a good (bad) example. I buckled and bought a Focusrite 2i2 and having gain adjustment has got this under control, it’s also much easier to get the output to match my other line in volumes. I feel the soundstage is much better too, so I’m really happy I upgraded.
     
  24. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    What were using before?
     
  25. Wayne Bull

    Wayne Bull Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tipton, UK
    I'm also using the focusrite 2i2 now and agree it is a big improvement over the Behringer
     
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