[kartik]

Behold another strange product from elpj

http://www.elpj.com/purchase/declicker.php

 

[tennisets]

Didn't Robert Burwen design something to remove clicks and pops too? I seem to remember reading something about it, and it was a lot less expensive than $2,800 (assuming I'm remembering correctly). It would be a nice thing to have for damaged records.

 

[bigshot]

The Burwen/KLH TNE7000A. It's really quite effective, and since its noise filter only cuts in for a tiny fraction of a second, it is completely transparent. It doesn't work well with gunshot pops, but for small tics and clicks, it works great. I got mine on Ebay for under $250. Analogue noise reduction doesn't get better than this.

See ya
Steve

 

[newmanoc]

Pricey! And, I doubt it can work without some of the legitimate musical dynamics of an LP occasionally triggering the"anti-click" circuitry, thus impairing the sound. Of course I'm not a very technical guy, so the proof would all be in the hearing for me. I am definitely not going to be a first adapter, though. Clicks bothered me at first, but now I largely listen through them without distress. At least as long as the LP isn't totally trashed.

 

[bigshot]

It doesn't say how it works, and the photo is a mockup!

The Burwen unit's instruction manual goes into great detail how it works. You plug the turntable directly into it, and calibrate the sensitivity to a quiet bit of groove. The TNE7000A scans for several different types of anomalies... transient spikes, frequencies beyond the range of the recording itself, and differences between the left and right channel... and when it isolates a click, it switches in its noise gate for as little as 1/10,000th of a second to eliminate the transient spike, replaces it with sound matched to the dynamics and pitch of the surrounding signal, and smooths out the waveform around the edit. All of this takes place in less than 1/500th of a second. You can invert the sound to only show what's being removed too. That makes it easy to adjust the threshold properly. When it's not removing clicks, the Burwen passes the signal through with no processing, so it's very clean.

For a while, a lot of pro studios were dumping their Burwens on ebay. They're a little harder to find now. I use mine all the time. By the way, the music never triggers the Burwen. It even hears and removes clicks that I have to strain to hear under the music.

See ya
Steve

 

[Aman]

For some reason, I have a feeling that such a device would lower the fidelity of reproduction quality... Am I right to assume this?

Hell, I better be wrong -- I would have to pay for my turntable seven times and still have to pay a little more to buy this thing

 

[Scrith]

Given that it has digital outputs, it seems highly likely that it is performing and Analog to Digital conversion, then applying some DSP on the data to remove the annoying sounds, and then converting it back to Analog with a DAC.

If this is true, you would almost certainly be better off with a CD that was professionally created from an analog recording.

 

[bigshot]

The Burwen is completely transparent. There's nothing inline when it isn't performing a declick; and when it is, it's complete within a tiny fraction of a second and back to being completely transparent again. If you turn it up too high, you can hear it artifact, but at a normal level, it's completely undetectable. It won't make a thrashed record sound good, but it will improve good records.

See ya
Steve

 

[memepool]

Marantz made a similar device in the early 90's called the SX72. It sounds very good by all accounts and received rave reviews. These turn up on Ebay from time to time. It was 450UKP when it came out so it can be quite pricey 2nd hand

 

[RickG]

Burwen TNE7000 Transient Noise Eliminator

 

[bigshot]

The Marantz was entirely different than the Burwen. I had one of those back in the day. It was very crude, and was only useful on the biggest pops, which it replaced with a little thud. It could be set so it would cheerfully chew through drum solos, replacing drum hits with little thuds. I would suggest avoiding it.

Packburn made a noise reduction device that compared sides of the groove walls to choose whichever was cleanest, but that is only useful for mono records.

I have a Burwen DNF1201A too, but I wouldn't recommend it. It's only useable at the very lowest settings; and there are digital dynamic filters, like SoundSoap that are a million times more effective. I only use the Burwen DNF when there is a LOT of hiss, and I use it with a light touch along with other noise reduction techniques. It has a nasty tendency to pump quite noticeably.

See ya
Steve

 

[some1x]

I agree with Scrith on this one. This unit has an A-D stage and a D-A stage, and can't be completely transparent. Why go vinyl if you are going to digitize it?

 

[kartik]

Quote:

Originally Posted by some1x I agree with Scrith on this one. This unit has an A-D stage and a D-A stage, and can't be completely transparent. Why go vinyl if you are going to digitize it?

A lot of older material is available only on vinyl. Only the popular stuff makes it onto CD. Used vinyl is cheap to buy, but some times may sound more crackly than is desirable.

 

[memepool]

On the whole even quite badly mauled old vinyl sounds fine if you have cleaned it with a vacuum type record cleaning machine and play it with a fine line stylus on a good quality turntable.
Factor in that pressings generally get better when you rewind 25+ years and the whole availability issue.
Cool Edit removes any residual clicks and pops if you want it digital, which often still sounds better than commercial cd's of the same recording. A realtime digital declicker would be cool for archiving to DAT, I guess but wouldn't you need to play the record through in order to tweak the settings for each recording?

 

[chillysalsa]

I think I'd rather get a good record cleaner than mess with the pure analog signal using either:
... the 'declicker' which involves AD > DA with digital processing,
... or the noise reducerers which involves a huge mess of OPAMPs and capacitors directly in the signal path - both things I've never been happy with the sound of!