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

Plus who is going to believe files posted directly by the manufacturer? The only surprise there would be if they showed a problem. People I tell about the Sugar Cube often just nod their heads and humor me, they would probably feel the same about a posted file. Actually hearing it in person is believing, otherwise the claims sound too good to be true. It is too bad the trade shows were affected, this where the word gets out to the press and to the public.

 

Do you have advertising standard laws in the US? In the UK, if a company put up samples which were found to be falsified they would find themselves in trouble...

 

This is quite true but, there enough dubious products out there which makes me feel such lawsuits are difficult to win and/or too expensive to pursue. What I was trying to say, but did a rather poor job of it, is a claim by the manufacturer people take with a grain of salt. In the past, the more believable claims would be a file posted by a third party-audio magazines for example. Although in these days of YouTube "Influencers", 3rd party claims are not always believable too. What did the reviewer get for saying these things? Which gets me back to my comment that for the Sugar Cube hearing it in person. Sadly there are few dealers and trade shows are drastically curtailed.

 

I agree, cleaning is good! However, to listen to the anecdotal evidence in many threads, it does take some investment in a higher quality cleaning machine to thoroughly do the job. For me a Spin Clean plus the Sugarcube SC-2 is a winning combo.

 

Like most things hi-fi related, cleaning follows the laws of diminishing returns - put simplistically, the Spin Clean will give, say, an 80% clean, compared to a vacuum system at say 90% and ultrasonic at 95% and then combinations of these methods pushing to 99%. The price rises steeply with each percentage point.

Knowledge of cleaning is similar - the better your knowledge, the better choice of products, and the better the results, which can potentially alter the above by a few percent at each stage.

I've grown to love cleaning my records, both for the sonic gains but also for the connection to the media it brings, which is all part of the vinyl experience for me.

But for all that cleaning goodness the SugarCube is the trump card. Couldn't live without it.

 

This is definitely an amazing fear of engineering, and useful if you either have kind of entry level equipment, or if you tend to play older out less than VG+ records., it might even be good to have for whatever irreplaceable albums you have that are subpar.

The thing is, with a good turntable, cartridge and (most importantly) quality phono stage/SUT, and feeding that system clean vinyl, it’s dead quiet anyway. I almost never hear noise on my vinyl, and that goes back to when I bought my VPI Prime/Rogue Aries/Cadenza Black. I think a major part is the heavy platter and plinth - it seems to create this sense of unwavering stability and a very black background. The Rogue was quiet, and I since moved on to a more quiet Modwright. I’ve been through several VAS cartridges, but they are so quiet. I don’t play worn vinyl, so there just would be no reason for me to own this.

The fact that it has to take the analog signal and bring it back to the digital domain (three processes : A-D, signal processing to remove clocks/pops/noise, and then D-A) is off-putting to me.

 

No amount of cleaning will fix a record with baked in pops and clicks. Enter the SugarCube.

That's entirely understandable, but easy to test thanks to the bypass button on the unit, which offers a true analogue path. I personally cannot hear a difference between the SugarCube in bypass and active mode, so I suspect that 192/24 is sufficient to capture vinyl transparently. Any reservations I had about playing vinyl in the digital domain, or at least at 192/24, are gone.

 

I have yet to hear a record 45+ years old, even just unsealed, without pops and clicks. If your diet is brand new MoFi releases (and you are lucky) then yes, totally quiet playback is achievable even without Sugarcube. Otherwise...
I just yesterday evening listened to my precious Ambrose Slade, in probably VG condition at best, and with SC-1 enjoyed quet and click-pop free playback of this underrated gem from 1969. Single "NM" copy would probably cost more then my Sugarcube SC-1 mini, and you know what - it would still have clicks and pops )).

 

Vinyl is off couse not "dead quiet" unless you don't spin any record.
No turntable on earth can make those problem go away.

 

I'll respectfully disagree. On my current system vinyl most certainly can and does sound dead quiet. Not all LP's, but a good pressing: Yes it can. My maximum listening levels are about 85-95 db peak. Even at that volume I will drop the needle and other than the initial pop when the needle settles, I hear dead quiet until the music starts. Or sometimes I will hear the tape hiss fade in from the old analog master tapes used. The same thing between tracks-silence. The SC-2 Mini takes care of any misc. clicks and pops and life is good.

I didn't think this was possible when I started playing records after a 30 year hiatus. This didn't happen until I upgraded and assembled all of my current gear. It kept getting closer and closer and I upgraded the gear in search of black backgrounds. New turntable, upgraded cartridge, upgraded phono preamp, upgraded to integrated amp from AVR, got UCM. The Sugar Cube was the last piece of the puzzle.

From my listening position 10' away from my speakers I am hearing nothing on many records and I am spinning records every day.

 

I think he meant no vinyl is dead quiet without intervention by a SugarCube (or other digital click removal).

 

When I returned to playing LP records in October of 2018. I was amazed how good LP's could sound on the new and better equipment I now had. When I turned my office into a small home theater in October of 2017, I had not been planning on playing records at all. I would have chosen my equipment a little differently. After I bought the gear for my home theater and listening to CDs/Streaming, a year later I made the decision to get a turntable. In less than 3 months after that I started an upgrade process all driven by records. I picked up a new integrated amp for 2 ch playback and began using the AVR in Home Theater Bypass mode. I sold my first phono preamp and upgraded to a much better one soon after. I followed that by replacing my Okki Nokki with an UCM. Records were as quiet as they could possibly be, or so I thought. There were still those pesky ticks and pops. The UCM took care of things that had been deposited on the surface of the record, but there was still nothing to be done about other clicks and pops. Back in 1984 I had abandoned LP's and was an early adopter of CD's because record noise made me crazy. In particular clicks and pops took me out of the moment when listening to LPs. With LP's, I soon knew where the clicks and pops were on all my albums and I'd know when they were coming.

By November of 2019 I was very happy with the state of things while listening to albums. The only thing left were clicks and pops and the UCM dealt with many of those. My own records really didn't have scratches on them, and I limited my purchases of used LPs. I really couldn't afford used titles in good condition so I tended to buy non-mainstream used titles that were not in demand and were low priced. Then I found this thread, which was "only" 50 pages long at the time. It seemed too good to be true, particularly the part about it being a device using AD/DA conversion to do its magic. There were some links to some videos made by Michael Fremmer who, surprisingly, gave it a nod of approval. I figured if anyone would hate this thing it would be him. He is always claiming he can always claim to be able to tell analog sources from digital. The Sugar Cube seemed to be an exception to this rule. I listened to the trade show videos he and others made, where the product was demoed and it seemed to work. I took a chance, it was a lot of money to spend on a startup company with a new type of product.

This has been the best money ever I spent of my audio system. Many of my LPs can have a black background and most of them are now rendered click free. Plus I can now buy more used LP's and have them be a satisfactory listening experience. I too feel the Sugar Cube will pay for itself in savings on used records. If I ever get an LP that turns out to be worse than I thought, I can do a needle drop while I listening to it for the first and only time. In the future I can play the needle drop. I couldn't be happier with this product.

 

If this is the case I will still stand by what I said and in addition say that I did totally misunderstand his statement. In that case I apologize for not understanding his intent.

 

I don't think there's any conflict here with consensus experience: a good pressing can indeed sound dead quiet - nothing but music. But these pressings are the minority while the majority convey non-music noise to some degree or other.

 

Listening habits and tastes have a lot to do with that.. Jazz have tons of new pressings, quiet, well made and well sourced (i.e. not butchered via modern style "remaster").
Rock and pop are not that lucky.
And classical to extent, at least for me - even tiny pops and clicks on something like classic quartets drive me nuts. So while huge amount of clean classical titles are around, "classical" crowd more often switched to digital because of "clean sound", even guys with large vinyl collection. Sugarcube can change all that.

 

Like I said before, with good, clean records and a premium setup of turntable, cartridge and phono stage/SUT, there really should be very little surface noise. My premium records are, of course, dead quiet. But, my recent Chet Baker reissues at $23 each are also totally silent. Now, you do have to spend some money to get there, but I suspect many of us already made that investment.

But hey, it’s all about enjoying the music. If a device like this helps people enjoy their records more and stay into the hobby, then rock on.

 

I use a spin clean, a degritter, have used a sugar cube, have a Nottingham analogue dais turntable with a 12" Moerch DP-8 arm (around 10-12 000$ set-up), etc. No amount of high-end gear will not make vinyl as silent as a CD or without its problem. Cleaning and sugar cube can fix some of the problems, but it will not fix all the other problems.
And should we buy 10 new ramdon records releases and see how good they are? Some talk like all releases are as good as the top 2%. Crazy time.

 

Perfectly said.,

 

I’m thinking of buying the GokdNote PH10 with seperate PSU. I’m currently running a Rega Aria. I’d love to hear your feedback on your experience with the PH10.

 

I am not a reviewer -but it sounds amazing, really just an awesome all around phono pre. And PSU is a must. I used it without for 6 month, and then bought PSU, and it remarkably improved overall performance, which I actually did not expect.

 

Thanks for the feedback

 

Just curious. Do you have any control over the amount of attenuation or does the sugarcube always remove 100% of all pops n clicks?

 

I'm sure it sounded *much* better with the PSU than without one.

Couldn't resist.

 

Yep, that exactly what I wanted to say. Wonder why it was not clear