Dear Support,

thanks for asking.

Indeed no hum is audible. As 'hum' I mean nothing what generates electricity which becomes audible by that. 

You can call it 'white noise' because it is in the background and 'everywhere' present.

Only that I'll be aware of this in silent passages.

So do I have to live with that and get rid off this white noise digitally in the DAW?

Oh by the way happy easter!

Dynamys

Dear KaiS,

I appreciate your answer very much and apologize for creating confusion from my side in advance.
But misunderstandings can open a whole new world. This is from my perspective indeed the case with your answer.

Let me start with the questions at the beginning of this conversation. I think you’ve answered them.
The hint to compare the noise with and without the needle on the disc was indeed revealing.

Yes, the „disc noise“ indeed „covered“ the idle noise by far. (balancing around -55dBFS and -50dBFS).
Thus „If the disc noise is significantly louder that the electronic’s idle noise, you already reached the optimum, and you should just live with that.“ - case closed.

Your suggestion with the step up transformer is appealing, but not reasonable for me as I don’t have a RIAA decoder inside my ADI-2 Pro FS R BE.

„Without playing a vinyl disc the noise level is almost inaudible.“ - Yes indeed almost inaudible and only when I put up my monitors up -20dBFS till 0dBFS it becomes audible. The monitors add no noise. By the way I can’t afford this cartridge of yours in the actual version 17DX you’re using and won’t change that in the near future. I am happy with my 10Ω Ania Pro which has a slightly higher nominal output voltage. I don’t think having made a bad choice.

Thanks to your comments in another context (sorry for that) I’ve got an idea how to proceed further:
„If the vinyl noise isn’t ‚covering’ the electronic’s one[…]“ - I’m not sure if it really only „covers“. I think it’s added logarithmic. But the distinction between the different origins of noise is appealing to me. Getting the signature of the electronic noise and removing it should leave the „vinyl sound and the disc noise’ untouched. Will explore this if it’s feasible and leads to any slightly better result. Let’s see how far this rabbit hole goes.

Last but not least…

„Looking at the figures you supply“ - My apologies in advance for creating confusion. The numbers provided are all dB relative to full scale as common in the digital world also known as peak levels. The target level refers to EBU R128 reference level -23 LUFS (to be precise but I always write -23dB which is not correct) That is normalization of loudness like obligatory for every TV broadcaster.

Dynamys

Hi KaiS,

I am new to this forum (was reverted hereto by a friend), and I have not read yet a lot, which means maybe you have explained in other topics your view about DSD; I just find rather strange this "Avoid like hell DSD", considering that the majority of consumer dacs on the market today use Delta/Sigma chips, which before the actual conversion do exactly this - they modulate the signal to something very close to one bit DSD (normally 5-6 bit). 1-bit DSD format is too the result of Delta/Sigma modulation. I myself am not happy with this chips, that is why for PCM format I use an R2R dac.
P.S.: I strongly support your opinion that "Vinyl should be consumed as pure as possible".

I‘ve discussed some of the disadvantages of DSD here:
https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=41270

One main point:
DSD very inconvenient to handle, e.g. it can’t be processed in any way, not even digital volume control is possible (ADI-2 BTW uses special DAC chip features to work around the latter).

Regarding vinyl disc:
It’s side effects add to the listening experience.
Trying to remove them will fail, and doesn’t males sense.
If one doesn’t like them, most tracks are available as digital stream these days without those.

Here are some hints about vinyl playback and transfer:
https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 33#p232933

Wow, do I see some aggression here? Esoteric? What is esoteric - the R2R architecture? Since when?

Dear KaiS,

sorry for answering late as a project is consuming more time and yesterday planned overtime this weekend was granted by my bank manager.

First I want to thank you for your remarks and some I will selective apply and others I did adhere to since long time ago.
But first things first:

„No software in the world can separate electronic’s noise from the one that origins from vinyl.
The reason is simple: noise is a stochastic, random and unpredictable signal.“ -
Yes agree 100%. Not that I was aware if this fact before but your arguments I do know them as it’s the same in algorithms in computer programs.
Wjhat you describe in its probability as random and unpredictable I know as „no pattern recognition“ (Algorithms in computer programs need to recognize a pattern to work. A lot of people sell this as „artificial intelligence“ which it isn’t) Where there’s no pattern there can be no algorithm to remove the noise.

„it’s just adding 0.4 dB to the total, not worth to deal with.“ - Agree.

„The process of noise removal is highly destructive, usually based on dynamic small band FFT filtering.“ -
As it is written it gives me the impression that FFT it’s a „hack“ and it swings its methodological axe wildly around.

I tested it briefly and can confirm that it’s destructive although it removes the hiss. The signal looses a little bit of power and gets an artificial sound as it has been cleaned with a hard brush. It is comparable to some music from the 1950’s and 1960’s which has been restored such as the movie soundtrack from „La dolce vita“. (Katyna Ranieri & Nino Rota) Also it looses some power…  not that good. I didn’t have much time to refine methods but when you have a raw digital copy of the vinyl then replicate that file and playing with the DAW is ok ;-)

The hiss is almost acceptable in most of the songs which I heard as you said:  „But - who cares what happens between the tracks?!“

Yes right, what brings me to the root cause why I wrote here: The quiet parts in the vinyl „Tres Hombres“ of ZZ TOP where only the sticks of the drummer play have a lot of hiss which I am having a hard time to accept. The amplitude of the sound levels is high (17dBLUFS) between the quiet parts and when the guitars kick in. This is due to the fact that I want to hear it to the max with only a little hiss between -5dB and 0dBFS of my loudspeakers and not earlier starting at around -20dBFS!!!
I’ve tested it on my car (only 22W per channel at 4Ω but ok) and had the same impression.

Well I guess I will find a compromise as at normal levels the hiss doesn’t bother me.

Last but not least:
„Use a sample rate of 96 kHz or 192 kHz (which I consider the optimum).“ - Elementary, my dear Watson!

With the ADI-2 Pro I am able and do record in 32bit/192kHz. Unfortunately, my active loudspeakers only can play 24bit/96kHz over SPIDF (opt/coax) or RCA jack.
The USB of my loudspeakers are limited to 16bit/44.1kHz as they are over 10years old and were on of the early adopters.
All in all it’s not that bad as I can switch the input and clearly hear the difference in natural instruments. Particularly the release times after the attacks are a little bit longer in 24bit than in 16bit (>40mSec). I guess the higher frequency leads to more precision in time of attack and release. Maybe 192kHz bring another bunch of precision but not sure. Electronic instruments don’t seem to be much affected, but maybe it’s easier to handle this at the production than with someone who plays with a frying pan such as Manu Delago.

So, I thank you very much for your insights and guess that this discussion has fulfilled its purpose.
Avoiding DSD „like hell“ because it’s not in my scope. I did appreciate your discussion of the disadvantages.
That’s not my business! and the discussions seem to me almost academic. I want the music alive. PCM is perfect for this task !!

See you

Dynamos