Sweet Vinyl Sugarcube - I Want It!!!
At the NY Audio Show this past weekend, I got to see and hear the demo of the Sweet Vinyl Sugarcube. This PC-based stand alone unit is amazing. Here is what it does:
1. De-clicks vinyl - and does so completely transparently, and is user-adjustable (more or less filtering of clicks and pops).
2. Digitizes vinyl - MP3 through 24/192 resolution.
3. Locates metadata for LPs being played/digitized, including cover art
4. Inserts track divisions based on the metadata (wow!).
5. Compensates for non-RIAA recordings
6. Plug in apps will do even more, like reducing groove noise.
It inserts in a line-level loop or between your phono preamp and preamp. It has digital (S/PDIF and USB) outputs as well as analog outputs.
Projected retail is $2500, and they plan a kickstarter campaign soon.
If you spend time digitizing vinyl, this thing is nothing short of a miracle. I want one so badly I can taste it.
(I am not associated with Sweet Vinyl in any way.)
I thought this was one of the more informed reviews: http://https//hifipig.com/sweetvinyl-sugarcube-sc-1-2/ I intend to purchase one of these once all the kinks are worked out so am very interested in following the progress. |
Ok, I just had to post this... I am finally able to digitize vinyl at
96/24 using my Sweetvinyl SugarCube SC-2 and play it back from my
server. I am listening to Sting's LP "Nothing Like the Sun" that I
digitized from a pretty clean double LP, and I am having a
"Holy-Mother-of-Crap" moment, where everything is just about perfect.
Clean, effortless, extended, all the buzz-words. Wow! The highs,
especially, are so much cleaner and smoother than with my Red Book
digitized files using my Marantz CD recorder. Considering my system
costs a fraction of what many people here have spent on their rigs, it
is really something! I love music, and I love this hobby! There are some issues in the new beta software I am testing, but the quality of the files I created with this wonder-box is really amazing. |
Just a quick update: The beta software for the SC-2 has gone through several revisions. Metadata searching has improved greatly. Also, I can now enter catalog numbers of LPs and the SC-2 will use that data to populate the metadata fields and add album art. Track begin/end identification still needs work, but is getting better. I still have to manually adjust each start and end point. Transient noise in between tracks remains an issue which Sweetvinyl says is being worked on. |
