SAE 5000 Impulse Noise Reduction System - opinions?

Anyone out there tried this piece of hardware for removing pops & clicks on vinyl playback?
I'm specifically interested in effectiveness and transparency.
johnborzatti gave a good recommendation here http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=29247, but I'd like to hear a few more opinions.

 

It's not transparent.

 

A good record cleaner and a couple of vigorous cleanings will get out a lot of that crud in your records. Not that I want to start an argument about which machine and combination of cleaning is the way to go, I have had fantastic luck with the Clearaudio Simple Matrix cleaner. Its only a few bucks more than a VPI 16.5 (also an excellent product) but what really does the trick is the fact it goes in two directions.

Ive found that when cleaning used records with a lot of fingerprints and crud,the second pass is what really gets em clean.

You will be surprised at how much surface noise you can remove by good cleaning!!

 

Thanks for the replies. My suspicion was that it couldn't be very transparent, now it seems I was correct.
I actually already have and use a VPI 16.5 with great results, but not in all cases. I was actually looking at the SAE 5000 because I have some Anadisc 200s that have many pops and clicks despite being played a few times (they come with a warning that as MFSL does not "dehorn" its metal equipment, its new vinyl will have pops and clicks that go away with repeated plays. This doesn't always seem to be the case however. I've played my copy of Atom Heart Mother repeatedly but the pops remain.)

What the heck is "dehorning metal equipment" anyway?

 

If you have a 16.5, have you ever tried Vinyl zyme record cleaner?
It works particularly well on stubborn crud like you are describing...

you can get a small 4oz bottle from todd the vinyl junkie for less than 10 bucks.

Might help...

Ask SH about dehorning, I think he can describe it better than i...

 

I have not tried Vinyl zyme yet, thanks for the advice...

 

Not that it is truly transparent - nothing you do to sound is really is - but if I have a particularly crackly record I run the signal through ProTools and remove the crackle in real time with a plug in.

It does a pretty good job - but I've played around with it only in cases where there were VERY significant scratches and surface noise. There are definitely artifacts from this process when applied in a heavy-handed fashion, as most of us have heard. But it WILL do this in realtime, and you can "season to taste."

But at the end of the day, some tick and crackles are part of playing records. I do not make a habit of playing music this way -- it was an experiment aimed at speeding up the process of doing needle-drops.

-mk

 

I find that the SAE 5000 is definitely nice to have. If you'd like to play a deeply or heavily scratched record, especially for which there is absolutely no replacement, this thing is incredibly awesome. At the correct setting the 5000 itself becomes largely unnoticeable, and yes, my system is good enough to tell. I think that this's an analog device, not digital (I would almost always prefer to keep an analog signal analog). Though for most listening this thing doesn't see use, I do still use it every now and then, and it's an extremely useful item.

 

Wow, here's a thread from the past (8 years ago).

My contention is I used the SAE and Burwen TNE tick & pop reducers, and all of them have significant audible problems, particularly with material with high harmonic content. They all suck compared to modern digital de-tick, de-pop, and de-clicking software, which is infinitely adjustable and non-destructable. If you just turn the software on for a few moments, then bypass it for most of the song, you have the ability to cause zero flaws with zero processing. You also have the ability to program in high levels, medium levels, and low levels of processing, changing according to the amount of damage in the specific pressing.

I would disagree strongly with Kovatch's opinion that processing an analogue source with analogue components is always desirable, especially in this specific case. I think there are many cases where analogue processing is really desirable -- particularly with preamps, EQ, compressors, and so on -- but not with noise reduction. The iZotope RX processors are particularly good, especially RX3 advanced; this stuff is 1000 times better than the 1970s/1980s analogue processors ever were.

 

IIRC, SAE advertised this device as the "pop-and-click assasin". It was the only piece of gear left behind after a thief broke into my apartment and took away the SAE components system (amp, tuner, equalizer).

 

I sold hi-fi for a couple of different SAE dealers in the late 1970/early '80s and really tried to like this piece. Never could. Used improperly, it did more harm than good. Used properly, it did little of anything.

 

The trick is not to overuse the thing! I generally only use this on hard to find albums for which I have no replacement and are in bad shape. I would rather listen to these records than not. Keep the setting pretty low. It's not night and day, but it does help. In no way does this make a scratched-up record sound worse (less is more, if you can hear it working, back it off a bit). The reason that I listen to records in the first place is because I love the analog sound, and try hard not to touch it with anything digital. Anyway, I like it and use the 5000A, don't know the differences with it and the 5000, if any.

 

I used one for a long time back in the good old days. My take on it was to set it to a low enough threshold that I never heard it do anything bad. The rest was all gravy. And it did work well on some nasty snaps and pops. Pretty ineffective on crackle.