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In Reply to: RE: Good suggestion to use anti-skating as a test. posted by John Elison on June 19, 2023 at 22:03:03

Hi John,

I have bought a ton of used classical chamber and baroque LPs in the last year. They are mostly in very good shape (the only bargains left in used vinyl these days) but there can be some noise. My set-up is such that I can easily make a rip/needledrop so I do it as a matter of course for everything I play. One day (!) I will have them all processed and in a library (and it doesn't help when you make a significant turntable upgrade and want to record everything again :))

I am dubious that DSD capture is more immune to clicks and pops. The ADC in your TASCAM samples the signal in an identical fashion whether you use DSD of PCM. It will be an over-sampling type that uses several levels instead of 1-bit (a sort of hybrid DSD-PCM but much more like DSD than PCM). The differences comes in the decimation and, IMHO, any sound quality difference is more likely due to the different DAC structures to convert DSD and PCM.

I do my ripping using Audacity - those files are what I import into Vinyl Studio. That is what I meant by 'pre-ripped'. I only use VS for de-clicking but it is a complete environment for doing rips, processing and organizing files. The trial versions says you can do 5 albums free but it must mean you can make 5 rips before having to pay. As I only import WAV files from Audacity that must get around the free trial period and I've never paid up (though I should as I think it work the fee just for the de-clicking).

Thinking more about de-clicking in DSD - finding a click must be all about the sudden change in signal - the slope of the waveform. DSD measures only the rate of change of waveform so I thought it should be as 'easy' to identify clicks in a DSD file as in a PCM file, maybe easier. But, as I think more, the challenge will be in muting the click. PCM tells you the absolute value of the signal at any point so once the click is identified you swap in enough 0 samples to mute. In DSD swapping in 0 samples means leave the signal unchanged i.e. no change in slope. To mute the click you'd have to calculate a bitstream to ramp the signal quickly down to 0 volts, hold it there long enough to mute and then ramp it up quickly to the previous value before the mute - I expect that would be difficult.

Vinyl Asylum

RE: Good suggestion to use anti-skating as a test.

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