Hi there,

Following this great topic by our well respected member John Lydle:

http://REPLACEMENT ERROR/topic...t-integrated-circuit

I decided to buy a dbx module as well as one dbx vinyl disc. After long searching and waiting, I finally came up with both, as well as a turntable.

It's a Rita Coolidge album:

It's very curious indeed when hearing directly to the disc with the strong dynamic range compression that the dbx system makes.

If we say that some of the best turntables can reach up to 80dB of dynamic range and the dbx can add up to 40, this give you nothing less than 120db of DR, which they call "Full DR":

But this is almost impossible to reach. My dbx 224x module, which is supposed to be the best ever made by dbx (or at least the latest model), can reach up to 105db, so this is the real max. DR, if it's not worsened by other chain in the audio system (amplifier...).

The audio quality is however impressive. You can barely hear any background noise when the dbx is active, even in my Audio Technica's Sound Burger portable turntable, which has only 50dB of SNR. I guess I can reach up to 90dB which is indeed excellent value, but not as high as if I play it in a better TT.

The disc comes with interesting data, which explains how this disc was encoded (surprisingly, it comes right from the real singer and not from a master, because this disc outperforms a master tape):

And explains the system itself:

Hope you enjoy!

...and for us to fully appreciate how amazing it is, how about flac encoding a sample of a track for us to experience?

my technics RS 255X has dbx & a loopthrough for turntable listening - would love to try a dbx lp through it

Bravo Hugo am proud of you taking the plunge into vintage vinyl sound again. Glad you took my recommendations with the 224X.  I have that model and a 1981 Sony Biotracer turntable with Dynavector moving coil Ruby cartridge.    The sound is nothing less than spectacular using the dbx discs.  Over past few years I have collected 24 dbx records.   I love making tapes from the dbx discs and encoding them onto tape with dbx noise suppression.  Then pop in the DD9 add my portable dbx decoder and viola dynamic range  over 100 with no tape hiss at all on cassette tape.  Impressive.    

   I do find it most odd that the disc decoder is limited to 105 when range of disc is quoted at 120.  Odd that they did not make a piece of equipment capable of taking full advantage of the disc technology.  I never knew that.   Course 105 dB is still about the best dynamic range you can achieve with home system.

Sure, Plop!. I'l try to do tonight.

Thanks John!

Of course I listened to your recommendations; always good.

I bought recently also a good turntable, a Technics SL1200 MkII which was supposed to be serviced and 100% working but one rca cable (R channel) is not always working and one light (the one to see the cartridge) often fails to power on.

But it sounds pretty good.

Here you can see my 224x module and my external sound card

Finally I did. Here's the file. I recorded it at 24bits and 96kHz in PCM, both undecoded and decoded. Then I did a mix so it starts undecoded, after 30s turns decoded, after 30s undecoded, then one more time and then decoded until the end of the song.

I uploaded as a high quality VBR 192kbps as well as a FLAC file (it's 72MB donwload from my Dropbox)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kiiv...y0h/dbx%20vinyl.flac

Look for your comments :-)

I have to say for a vinyl record with dbx that it sounds impressive. There is some sibilance on a couple parts such as at 40s and 1:34s where there are some high treble peaks. Perhaps due to distortion/clipping? Otherwise not bad at all.

Hopefully you will find some more dbx records to get a bigger range of music to try with this set up.