Help me stay with Vinyl.

tomic601

I also do well at discogs.

after the page comes up, click/sort on the word 'condition'
then, down the list untill ......

https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/9824525?sort=condition%2Cdesc&ev=rb

Equipment, phono settings, cables and cartridge make a huge difference on the amount of noise you hear.  My first system was an old Krell phono/pre, Clearaudio Moving Coil, and Krell amp.  This setup had a soundstage that wrapped around me 270 degrees, was from the floor to the ceiling, and a couple of city blocks deep.  The sound was crystal clear unlike anything I have ever heard, then or since.  It also reproduced every pop and tick with supreme enjoyment and the groove noise sounded like surf on the beach.  I enjoy my vinyl almost 50% of the time with CD's and streaming splitting the rest.  The stylus size must be small to avoid previous groove wear.  I am currently using a Benz Micro Wood SL that I bought rebuilt on Agon, using the 400 ohm setting and a Clearaudio Charisma MM cart, and I am playing records I felt were too noisy with great enjoyment.  Good Luck.

Also, I clean my records with a Nitti Gritti machine and use an Anti Static brush from Maple Shade. I have cleaned records multiple times with poor results because I played them with the same stylus shape that caused the damage to begin with.  IE elliptical versus Shibata or Ridge Line.  When I changed the stylus shape much of the noise disappeared.  Also, I've bought quite a few records from Music Stack with good results.

I agree with some of the other posters. Digital audio has progressed to a point that it is very competitive with vinyl. To my ears, they both have wonderful traits that are just different. They will never sound the same no matter how much money you throw at either format.

I still have a nice vinyl rig and love spinning records. But streaming my files from a NAS or Quobuz from the internet sounds mighty fine. You shouldn't limit yourself to one format, you lose out on a lot of good music when you do.

Oz

People are always complaining about the records when I think it's their rig. While clean records are absolutely essential, the music to noise ratio is more important.

Find someplace where you can compare your rig to a "Sota Star Saphire" TT; that will put you in the ball park of how much you need to spend in order to get a high SNR (signal to noise ratio) They do not require the most expensive cartridges either.