Vinyl Noise Reduction - Ten years in the thinking.
Do you have a product that you’ve been considering buying for a decade. Perhaps it’s just me, but I just couldn’t shake this one. In the end I had no option but to pay up in order to free up valuable storage space in my brain as I was in danger of overwriting my PIN numbers and home address.
The device is the SweetVinyl SugarCube SC-1 Mini - a box that removes clicks and pops from vinyl records in realtime.
I’ve never seen a proper demo of this. High end audiophiles appear uniquely abysmal at demonstrating their HiFi components. Instead, I had to give it a go.
Again this is a video that would be impossible without Patron support. When I look back at the DBX Disc video (mentioned at the start of this video), after ten years and over half a million views it’s earned perhaps a quarter of what I just spent on this device. The reality is that this video will never pay for itself in my lifetime.
Of course the inevitable glib response to any device that gets rid of clicks and pops on vinyl records will be… ‘just buy the CD’ or ‘stream the music' or something similarly tiresome. However for me this is uniquely useful for rare recordings that don’t exist in any other format. Otherwise, yes if your new Taylor Sheeran vinyl has a scratch - just play a digital version instead.
I’ll be keeping a close eye on this one for delayed content matches with the classical music tests, but so far it’s flying under that radar. Of course as always, any issues will necessitate a quick snip and re-up.
Right that’s me done (I hope), have a good rest of the week and take care.
Comments (91)
Have you looked at Parks Audio? They make a phono preamp called the Waxwing (formerly the Puffin) with a similar noise reduction feature. It currently costs about US $500, but I haven't heard it demonstrated (or compared to the Sugarcube).
It got a lot of mentions in the comments under the video, but it’s the first time I’d heard of it.
Very cool video! I've always been curious if these worked
BTW Thanks for the very interesting video
What an amazing bit of kit. I'd really love to get something like this, but at @£1500, hell no. Let me check last night's lottery draw.
Wondering about the band, musicians on the 7” record Is it Max Rebo Band, known from playing at Jaba the Hutt palace ?
Why didn’t you connect the pcm recorder to the headphone output on the Cambridge riia?
The preamp is before the SugarCube.
Hey Mat, i can send you a couple of my band's records that won't hit content match. They were recorded by Steve Albini, mastered for vinyl at Abbey Road, and pressed to 180gram vinyl. Cheers, Patrick
I’ll pay for any that fit the bill, I’ve got a particular type of sound in mind. Do you have a link to somewhere I can hear them.
I have a question for vinyl enthusiasts - maybe Techmoan himself won't know, but I'm sure some of you viewers do - what is your recommended way to remove clicks and pops (and background static) from digitized vinyl recordings after the fact? I have a rip of a rare vinyl, it was done at the absurd audiophile grade of 192kHz (and 32-bit! Why?!) but it unfortunately still has the record artifacts. I'm looking to clean it up a bit, but have no experience doing so - I've heard the program iZotope RX mentioned a lot, but have never used it... any thoughts? I'd be happy to share the rip if someone could clean it up for me (I also only need it saved as CD quality 44.1kHz 16-bit, but I'm also not sure whether it should be downscaled before or after cleaning up) A device like this seems nice if your primary goal is just listening to records in real-time, but as someone who dabbles in archival it's probably not as useful/not as powerful as doing it after-the-fact in a DAW.
I’m sure some people here will have suggestions, unfortunately I’m not one of them as I don’t have a clue, but good luck.
Looks like they're out of stock again. But your demo makes the case for this thing. I've had the case where I've cleaned records, but due to pressing issues, etc, there's a lot of surface noise. It seems like this thing would be the ticket in those cases. Probably best for my bank balance that they're out of stock, but I share your appreciation of a device like this. I've given them my email to notify me when they're back in stock. Let's see how flush I feel when and if I get notification from them.
Wow that was a fantasic device, clearly alot of work gone into software as well as hardware, be curious to try on old 78's.
Great video Mat I have quite a few records that have crackles and pops. Price is a bit high but what great satisfaction. A great addition to your hifi. Enjoy
I really enjoyed this video Mat - thank you. I'd love to own one of these. My 15 year old son and his friends have got "into" vinyl, so I have revived my turntable and got my small record collection out of storage and am adding to it again! But the pops and clicks do remind me of why the advent of CDs was so welcome...
Another great video! I’m sure you’ve gotten a million musicians telling you about their records that won’t hit content match. But my band is another one for you: Falcon Arrow. We have 6 records; 3 of ‘em are still in print. They can be ordered here: https://falconarrow.bandcamp.com/album/6-3-94
Many thanks for getting in touch. I’ve had quite a few emails from artists offering their records. I’ve been working through these to find any that are suitable to buy to add to my test discs. Unfortunately at the moment I’m really missing something acoustic, and mellow, real instruments perhaps pianos and guitars and unprocessed vocals, just kind of chilled out lounge music or the like - the idea being that I can use it to demonstrate things like hiss or wow and flutter if it was recorded to tape. I think you’ll understand why therefore I’ll have to decline your kind offer, however I really do appreciate the artwork you used.
Great video, the 'before' reminded me why I was so glad to get rid of vinyl.
Thanks for the video! I have a question about dbx: I have a cassette player which has dbx. Would I be able to use it to play dbx records? (Not directly!😂)
I don’t believe so, my only reason for saying this is due to the decoders having one button for records and one for tapes, making me assume these are different standards.
That was brilliant, Mat. That Beethoven test was truly amazing.
I'm guessing it would work with other media like reel to reel or 8 track ect ect, great video 👍
It should, but it’s listening for quick impact noises so crackles and pops, rather than hiss.
Mat, sorry for the odd question, but the shirt you're wearing in this video looks really nice. Would you mind sharing where you got it from? (If I can get one, I promise not to wear it in any tech videos, out of professional courtesy!)
It’s from Charles Tyrwhitt - I only know as that’s where all my current shirts are from, but unfortunately I don’t know which one it is.
As someone who has spent many hours de-crackling records largely by hand (or at least with a bit of software and then by hand) I think I could have saved myself many hours and hence many virtual ££ even at minimum wage. It is really fantastic. As a final test I would want to try it one a record with some dynamic percussion as those are the ones I had most trouble with - say Sandy Nelson perhaps.
Let There be Drums! 😉
I was wondering how this thing could ever work- the separation of audio and pops. But then you displayed the audio waveforms. Pops and cracks have a very short noticeable volume increase at a particular frequency. And the software just strips those away. Very interesting. Too bad Dolby didn't come up with this solution for vinyl. Anyway, excellent conclusion because I'd buy one for at most $395 USD, but not at its current price (when available).
It's not black magic what these do. eg. Audacity's declicker sourcecode is freely readable on Github, only 60 lines of code https://github.com/audacity/audacity/blob/Audacity-2.0.0/src/effects/ClickRemoval.cpp#L214 "Clicks are identified as small regions of high amplitude compared to the surrounding chunk of sound. Anything sufficiently tall compared to a large (2048 sample) window around it, and sufficiently narrow, is considered to be a click." The intensity dial basically tells how large sudden jump should occur in the audio so that gets identified as unwanted spike. Turn it too high and it it missidentifies short transient sounds as clicks. Turn it too low and some low volume clicks are missed as candidates. I'm not saying this device contains this the exact same thing. It can be more sophisticated, like it could even run a small machine learning model in real time which able to pick out this type of signal from audio. It's just the basic principle is the same.
To me, this video is what i see a the groundstone video from the Techmoan channel. I like the lava lamp video because i may before it came out might just bought a ”original one” not because that’s a original but the quality, size, colours.. compared to the cheap ones i bought from aliexpress there’s just no comparison. One of them is just ok but the other one is much better and the lava reacts to the light giving it a illuminating and because it’s red really reminds of lava. The downside it that it’s fragile and easily could fall. The other green one is just ok. But the red doesn’t care about being on for a really long time 8-12ish days, however the green one becomes murky like the lava is breaking up and starts colouring the water or whatever they use
I'll tell you what though that Mod Pop Weasel is a banger!
Well, I am seriously impressed with that technology, and your demonstration of it, Mat - it really seems to do what it says on the tin. I guess it could be very useful for someone who, say, wanted to digitize a collection of shellac 78s - or maybe just listen to them on a regular basis. Is there any way you could demo how well it works on 78s - they are often the worst case scenario for surface noise? Have a great weekend!
Whenever I get another chance to get my 78s set-up, set up, I’ll give it a go. It’ll probably be quite a while though.
Excellent video and it got me thinking (dangerous), could this technology be applied to cassette decks, like a kind of 21st century dolby noise reduction but without its drawbacks? i.e. muffled sound etc. I know cassette mechanisms are not what they used to be, but recently you reviewed the We Are Rewind BLASTER, which if I remember implemented the off the mechanism quite well. Obviously such a deck would horrendously expensive, but we can dream... unless its possible to output a deck to the SweetVinyl SugarCube SC-1 Mini? 🤔
There have been some devices like this and perhaps DNR is the most common implementation - the Blaster appears to claim it’s using something along these lines to reduce noise. You need something that reduces hiss though rather than remove impact noises which wouldn’t be present on tape.
I'm indeed very impressed, until now never got really a positive idea about de-crackling a record... But I guess there's some good technology involved that counts up for the price, it's indeed too expensive for me, I'll just listen to the crackles...
I like the choice of song with the first record :) and it's interesting to see a product do what it says it will, great video
Amazing! You are so right, this device would have benefited "normal" music lovers far more than well-heeled audiophiles. If I had this thing, my memories of vinyl listening would have been a lot more pleasant. Some may find charm in the pop and crackle, but the noise just makes me want to turn into Hulk and smash. In fact the only times nowadays I willingly listen to vinyl is when I watch you or one of VWestlife's videos.
Is that a Grado Labs cartridge on your turntable? I have a pair of their headphones.
It's a Goldring cart
Besides Anders Enger Jensen, I'm pretty sure Jeremy Heiden (friend of the DCC Museum) also doesn't mind his music being played on YouTube.
Wow, I can’t remember the last time I saw a new piece of consumer electronics with the “Made in the USA” on the back! 🦅🦅🦅
Elsewhere on the internet, folks have stated that SweetVinyl is using (legally, I imagine) the signal processing code developed by the late Brian Davies and incorporated in his program ClickRepair. May I suggest a little internet searching (using "ClickRepair software") to those wanting more info?
Interesting - it seems the original clickrepair runs just fine on a Raspberry Pi, so perhaps they are just running it as is. There seem to be some claims that they purchased the rights to it before the original author died, but charging over a thousand dollars for a Pi with software that used to cost $40 on it does seem a bit on the cheeky side
When Techmoan is happy, we're all happy.
I can imagine my late father going for something like this with his Linn Sondek LP12 (the reason why I could never buy singles as a kid... it only ran at 33!) He used to take his copy of Dire Straits 'Love Over Gold' along to places like Sevenoaks Hi-Fi, and test stuff by seeing if he could hear the milk bottle smash on 'Private Investigations'. Irritatingly, what would probably be the album in my collection which would fetch the most money in pristine condition, is sadly the most scratched. A mispressing of NOW Dance 93, in which Side 4 plays NOW 1993 in error. These later (pre-revival) vinyl NOW releases go for silly money anyway, let alone a mispressing. I was wondering why 'Give It Up' by The Goodmen was on both sides... sounding like a crackling fire. The Beethoven one does sound really good. I've a fair amount of spoken word stuff, though couldn't justify the cost of this, sadly!
Impressive! Just to mention that April 2023 will be the date of the PCB design/revision, not necessarily the build date.
Good point. If it’s possible for me to snip this out of the video in situ I’ll give it a go, but it’s probably not worth a re upload.
I think the function to only hear what was filtered out can be very usefull to find the optimal setting on a record in very bad condition. Play a record with dynamic drums, switch to that filtered out only mode and turn it up to 10. I'm sure you will hear parts of the drums being filtered out. So you can dial it back to the level were you can't hear drum parts anymore and switch back to normal mode.
Nice thorough review and no hyperbole - Michael Fremer you are not ;-). Excellent. AND it worked well!!
Very impressive. I'll be saving the link because I would quite like one as a 'buy once, cry once' kind of purchase that should last for years. Even if the Pi dies (which they can do) you could theoretically replace it and swap over the SD card.
For perhaps the last eight years or so I was hoping to find one on the second hand market and had a saved search on ebay. It’s never got a single hit, so it looks like the few people who buy these hang onto them.
I note you're switching the mains supply to the device remotely. Does the power switch on the back cut the power supply, or does it tell the Pi to shut the operating system down gracefully?
I honestly don’t know.
Everyone else seems to have the main bit of the video nicely covered, just wanted to add that I'm really enjoying the casual openings to the videos that started recently. The first one (something along the lines of "oh, hello there") caught me completely off guard and got a genuine laugh out loud out of me!
You know I’m not a fan of ‘hey what’s up guys’ and most of the alternatives seem to have got a bit stale, so I thought I’d make it a bit more like a regular chat with someone you know, much like the Oddcasts
It seems really effective. I'm sure it is much better than the 1980 version but uses similar principles https://www.worldradiohistory.com/CANADA/ETI/80s/ETI-1980-05-Canada.pdf
There was an analog version of this in the 1980s: the SAE Model 5000A Impulse Noise Reduction System. I have one, and it kind of works. I should do a review of it.
I thought I might have one stored away somewhere too - I’m really not sure now though.
You can buy a lot of CD's for £1000. It clearly works so with opportunity cost if it works for you then why not. If it is working how i think it works its detecting the cracks and pops then inverting them and adding them to the input. Which could be done with a decent audio card and the right software in a pc. However, not seen this done, and for convenience the sugar cube does this without the hassle. I received a blu-ray box set yesterday it was nearly £100, it was worth £100 to me but is available on you tube for free. So if something is only available on vinyl and you really like it... So what about crackle free Cuba Ba ion from the Tefifon
I’ve got a nice crackle free Cuba Baion that someone copied for me from a pristine vinyl version. I’ve got it on record too, but their ‘rip’ was better.
Well, that was all very remarkable and almost miraculous! If one of your viewers is going to say (s)he could make the same for £10 - please tell them to sell me one!
Yep - talk is cheap, as are pipe dreams and empty promises.
Great video!! I would’ve liked a comparison to the Pro-ject version but if I’m remembering correctly from your review, that one was a POS
When I bypassed it, that was the same effect as using the Pro-ject.
Assuming it's an actual Raspberry Pi and not one of the many clones, it seems to be a Raspberry Pi 3B or 2B. It has 4xUSB2 (not USB 3 with blue plastic sockets) and only 1 full size HDMi, so not pi4 or pi5. There's a lot of extra hardware in there , so I agree it's no criticism it's using a pi. My only concern would be , if it is using regular pi2 or oi3, that's booting from SD card which might get corrupted.. Far better if it used a compute module which can boot from eMMC flash which doesn't mind if the power is pulled unexpectedly.
Yes the only way to power it off is to cut the power, perhaps that battery is there to ensure it’s not an immediate power out.
Wow! This worked way better than I thought it would. Great demonstration! Did you notice any delay between needle position and processed sound out? I guess even if it's a second off, it wouldn't really matter for normal use. Wonder what all those other circuit boards do!
I guess the best way to test this would be with one ear up to the stylus and the other in a headphone…but I can barely hear the stylus on my record player at the best of times.
Very interesting video. One thing that came to mind was the great advantage of it working on line level is presumably it can be used to clean up vinyl that has already been recorded to another format even if you don't have the original vinyl anymore. E.G. the recordings made of a mate's vinyl years ago. P.S. apologies if you said this, but I stopped halfway through due to work an am writing this before watching the end.
No, I didn’t mention it, but yes it should work.
This could also be a great tool to restore for example those old Tefifon recordings.
Perhaps something to try another day.
Interesting
Lovely show, Mat, thanks. I wondered: do you still get at least a vestige of excitement about unboxing and playing about with a new bit of expensive kit? Or have you been stung by dross too many times? Update - I read down the line that you're hoping to have the evening off. Just so you know - I don't actually expect a reply to somewhat-inane questions like the above. Certainly not immediately.
If it’s something I’ve never seen/heard/used before I’m always looking forward to experiencing it for the first time. Even if it’s something quite close to another thing I’m familiar with, I’m intrigued to discover any differences. Then again I only really make videos about the things that interest me, the latest smartphone can go and do one. Unbox, charge, update and stick it in a pocket asap.
If you're looking for records, i am completely, 100% biased but my friend Kate has a really great self-released vinyl available, and i've personally used her stuff on youtube without content matches-- https://katiecruelofficial.bandcamp.com/album/lost-vagus
A straightforward demonstration of an audio device that works just as it should [do]. Very cool, should get lots of views, but something tells me it won't. But all in all, a good video about a gadget that's cool and useful even if it's hard-to-find and expensive.
Interesting device but I quite like the crackle and pops on a record (well until it gets stuck). Thanks for a great video Matt
Colour me impressed! I was afraid that you'd have a repeat of your experience with the Pro-ject NRS Box S3 you tried a little over 3 years ago, which really did nothing to the Tri-Micron record, and not a great deal to the Pop Goes the Weasel record. But this actually does what it claims. Wonderful. Price aside, the only negative I can see is that, rather disappointingly, this isn't actually in the shape of a cube. It'd cause issues fitting into shelving, sure, but I'd put up with that for the simple, fun, whimsical aspect of it looking like an oversized sugar cube.
On the upside, it isn't made of sugar either.
So that is Crackle and Pop sorted. What can we do about Snap?
More difficult to defeat as they have The Power
What I love about this is that, while digitally processing the audio, it still keeps the organic sound of a record intact. Was fearful it would eliminate surface noise and clean it as far as sounding like a CD. Bravo.
• This is a great item - thanks for demonstrating it for us. I would enjoy using it with my 66-year-old Motown records. Lovely video. You're done, and absolutely no re-edits required, because I said so. 😅 • Free up brain storage? Have you considered that your brain may require defragmentation, a disk cleanup, clear cookies, delete web history, and a restart. It works for me - sometimes. Until the pre-scheduled factory reset - eh, what was I talking about? • This device functions so much better than the Marantz SX-72 from a video that doesn't exist: https://youtu.be/NR42w0VF7E8 Older tech isn't always better in this case. Have a great rest of the week and take care 🤍.
I was trying to remember that Marantz device without success. I also tried the Project Box which was just as useless. https://youtu.be/tOeK4hdn_bQ Thanks for the confidence on the no re-edit. I hope you’re right as I want the rest of the evening off.
I have had mine for years and really really like it. I'm saying that before I watch your video. Very interested to hear your opinion. 🙂
How much do we have to contribute to get you to buy and review one of those record players uses "LASERS" to read the record?? 🙂
I save my money for the sonar version of a record player.
This post is before I press play on the video - at this moment I'm intrigued but steeling myself for disappointment, at least on your behalf. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. As to the CD/streaming thing - in almost every objective measure those options should be better, but to think that you don't know that, and that your choice of vinyl is from a place of ignorance, rather than preference, is maddening (as will be the inevitable comments that, in essence, tell *you* how *you* should be spending *your* money, an astonishingly prevalent illustration of entitlement on the internet). And for my (very small and I wish it could be larger) part of the patron support that allows you to try these things, and me to enjoy seeing you try these things, you are extremely welcome.