Living with popping and crackling

Improper cart. loading can highlight surface noise. Check out Bob Hagerman's paper on his web site that addresses this issue. A MM cart. with too much shunt capacitance loading it will have a high freq. resonance. Ultrasonic noise pulses can excite this resonance and be shifted down to audio band where they can be heard. Similar things can happen to a MC cart. with too much resistive loading. Also, in my experience incorrect VTA can also highlight surface noise. One other point; during the oil crisis in the 1970s, many record companies upped the content of recycled vinyl in their product to save money. Recycled vinyl IS noisy and all the cleaning in the world won't cure it.

Oy veh! 4yanx beat me to it.

If you don't believe it Todd, I'll lend you the two Classic Records and one Speakers Corner I dared to play a few times without cleaning them first. These were ripped-open-the-plastic-myself brand spankin' new. The first couple of plays were pretty quiet but the ole snap, crackle and pop got a little worse each time. Maybe 6 plays each at most. I figured no harm, I'll wash them when I get my RCM.

No dice. The mold release chemicals or whatever else the manufacturer left ON that vinyl is now IN that vinyl, ground in by the stylus. Multiple cleanings on my Loricraft stopped the damage from getting any worse, but nothing will undo it. $100 worth of records are toast.

Be warned or be sorry. Better yet, read the thread I referenced above. I may be crazy, but 95 or so other crazies posted various versions of the same idea (4yanx was about the craziest of them all BTW!)

Crazy like a , well, like a crazy person! :-)

come on now. I never said I didn't believe it, I'm an analog newbie myself.

Surface noise is a fact of life for vinyl. In the last decade before consumer digital media became available many kinds of hardware were developed to address the issue: dynamic noise filters (Carver Autocorrellator) pop and click eliminators (actually digital devices), and DBX noise reduction (similar to Dolby processing for tape recorders, and the only really successful approach). Distortion, dynamic range, and most other deficiencies were overcome by the best equipment, but surface noise just became more and more objectionable as other faults were corrected.

Some audiophiles can "listen through" the noise. Some say spending $30,000 or more on phono playback equipment will solve the problem. (After spending such money, who would admit a mistake!) Others simply deny surface noise exists. Unless you are one of these folk, concentrate on a good digital system.