Sweet Vinyl Sugarcube - I Want It!!!

malosuerte:  My time with the SC-2 has been hampered by an amplifier failure.  Whiile my amp is in the shop, I have been doing little critical listening, instead using the time to digitize more LPs, during which I monitor the process usinfg headphones (Audio Technica ATH-40X).

But here are some early impressions:  Fit & finish is excellent.  The unit runs cool, and setup (connection to wifi) is pretty easy and simple.  Sound from the headphone section of the SC-2 sounds good over my liesure cans, Grado SR-60.

Much of the functionality of the SC-2 has yet to be switched on.  I am using the Android app, and it seems to work pretty well.  But the track-splitting is not yet available.  Neither is the ability to send a digitized file to a server on the network.  For now, the only recording that can be done is to an attached USB stick.  I tried one recording, and it seems to work fine.  I used 24/192 FLAC encoding, but I am waiting for 24/96 FLAC encoding (which is promised) because of limitations elsewhere in my system.  Also, the SC-2 cannot yet play back from the attached USB stick, so playback was through a laptop using Foobar2000 and the Grados.  Without the track splitting or ability to send files to my server, I am still using my CD recorder to create CD-Rs from my vinyl.  I am routing the signal through the SC-2, so I get a nice clean needle-drop.  I hope to be able to avoid using the CD recorder once the SC-2 is fully functional.

The album recognition feature is spotty.  It has successfully identified a few pretty obscure LPs , but does not succeed often with classical LPs.  Sweetvinyl says they are aware of these issues and are working on software fixes.

Other things still being worked on are a way to manually add/edit metadata, and to submit missing metadata to Sweetvinyl's database.  More recording resolutions are planned, as are a L-R balance control for recording, and a calibration memory for multiple 'arms/cartridges.  A screen dim/off function will also be added.

All that said, the click processing works extremely well, although changing the level of processing seems to have little effect.  To my ears, there is little to no difference in the sound whether in bypass, A-D-A but no click removal, or click removal modes.  Even on the worst LPs I threw at it, about 95% of the clicks and pops were inaudible.  The downside of this is that surface noise is alot easier to hear.  Sweetvinyl says they may eventually release a surface noise processing feature, but this might not be a free upgrade because of the complexity and effort required to develope it.

I took the SC-2 to my local audio club meeting yesterday.  Only one or two of the those listening claimed to be able to hear a difference in the sound depending on the mode of the SC-2.  They felt that the sound was a bit less forward with the processing engaged, and that the highs were just slightly shelved down.  But except for them, the rest of those in attendance could not tell a difference between the processed, the A-D-A without processing, and the bypass modes.

I am holding off on a more thorough review pending the SC-2 being fully function.  But if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask them here.