Vinyl will never, ever, ever be as quiet as CD’s.
However, vinyl can easily sound as quiet as CD’s given sufficient QC (no need for 180 / 200 gram for this) and proper use.
Biggest factors should be playback volume and whether or not you grew up listening to vinyl. If you or your family played vinyl in the 60s / 70s / 80s, it assuredly predisposes many (most?) folks to be more tolerant of the background noise by virtue of early impressions; some clearly even like it as part of a listening experience. And the more recent generations that should eschew vinyl for hearing all that subtle (or not-so-subtle) background from the medium that they didn’t likely experience early in life, well, they’ve rediscovered it as a trendy adolescent or YA hobby.
So seems like pouring heavy plastic discs housed in paper boxes to be shipped around the world… during an era when music is made digitally and comes nearly free of physical space requirements… is around for a while longer 😜
My subconscious is fine with vinyl background sound on older recordings. Tape hiss no prob so long as it’s within reason. But new digitally mastered stuff? My personal take on any sense of reason is not within the bounds of accepting that noise - it’s not a natural part of the process anymore and the limitations of the medium (vinyl) are an unnecessary constraint to digital music’s attributes. Best vinyl setups on earth won’t change that, but if ya like it and the results, all good! I’ve kept my vinyl setup modest because, in all honesty, the percent increase on return I’ve heard from more “serious” front-end setups is negligible. Spin a well-produced ol’ 45rpm on a reasonable setup and it’ll likely outperform the same via 33.3 (sorry, that looked too digital…) 33 1/3rpm on a better front end. But I digress from noise.
I agree with one of the posts above that, in my anecdotal experience, new vinyl can be noisier than old stuff. QC just ain’t what it used to be, maybe, especially with all the color-collectible stuff being cranked out. 🎼 “Snap-Crackle-Pop, Rice Krispies Frisbees!”
One thing seems surer than not, these days: the common sentiment for nifty kit, tangible conventional sleeves and so forth seems like it’ll keep vinyl in production longer than “silent” CD’s, which at least on a sociological level is pretty interesting.
End morning coffee diatribes.