AXPONA 2016

Sweet Vinyl’s Dan Eakins Demonstrates the Sugarcube™ Hi-Res All-in-One Vinyl Digital Recording Platform

Michael Fremer  |  Apr 18, 2016

At CES 2016 Sweet Vinyl’s Leo Hoarty demoed a Sugarcube™ prototype that incorporated a built-in phono preamplifier. The revised edition introduced at AXPONA 2016 does not.

The feedback Sweet Vinyl received at CES suggested potential buyers would much prefer to use their own phono preamplifier, so along with a series of upgrades and improvements, the product was redesigned without one (Musical Surroundings introduced at AXPONA 2016) a stand-alone version of that phono preamp.

In this video, Sweet Vinyl’s Dan Eakins demonstrates how the product now works, including the efficacy of the built-in click remover.

COMMENTS
Chriswilford1's picture
Submitted by Chriswilford1 on Mon, 2016-04-18 14:56

So this can be used to clean up noisy albums in real time playback as well as to record digital versions of albums that can then be stored and played back on your digital music rig (iTunes etc)? Sounds pretty great. Mikey, did you get the sense that the unit will color the sound of the signal running through it?

Jeffrey Lee's picture
Submitted by Jeffrey Lee on Tue, 2016-04-19 20:37

Maybe watch the video again. I believe your questions are all answered in it, at least in a broad sense. No shift in tonality, playback via your system, etc.

Lincoln Matt's picture
Submitted by Lincoln Matt on Tue, 2016-04-19 04:03

Not to speak for Mikey, but I saw the unit demo and, as much as you could tell in a show environment, it did not seem to change the sound. There is a knob on the front that lets you set the threshold for the noise reduction. You can then use the "click only" track to be sure you do not have any music being filtered out.

Chriswilford1's picture
Submitted by Chriswilford1 on Tue, 2016-04-19 21:09

Thanks for the reply but what I'm interested in knowing is if anyone has used the unit in a Processor type mode, where the entire unit can be switched in and out of the signal path to determine if the unit itself (without any correction at all) being engaged? If cables etc alter quality I am wondering if simply being patched through this unit will alter the sound at the end of the signal stream.

All that being said, if this piece performs as well as described I m very interested in this being the newest addition to my system.

Thanks again for the input and look forward to more.

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