Frustrated with Vinly

jay73:

 it's frustrating when playing some of my newer records and they have noises that I do not want to hear.

Presented now for your consideration, the answer and solution to your frustration.

The year we transitioned from all CD to more LP was one fascinating enthralling evening after another. I did everything possible to ensure only music came off the groove. But of course there were all the usual noises.

One night my wife exclaims, "Its so quiet!"

I thought she meant this particular record. It was pretty quiet. For a record. I said something like yeah this is one of the better pressings. She said no, that's not what I mean. 

Now her not being an audiophile the words are different and it takes a while asking questions teasing it all out but here's the gist of it. My words now but her idea, which I love because years later the more I think about it the more its clear that its true and correct.

Its not about ticks and pops, or groove noise. Its not comparing one clean new LP to another older one. None of that. Its the noise that comes off a CD compared to the music that comes off a LP.

Got it? The CD only seems quiet because the obvious noise you hear as hiss is so low. But CD noise is not separate from or extraneous to the music. The noise is woven right into the signal. CD turns music into noise. That's why people prefer LP. Not in spite of the noise on a record, but because of the noise that is CD.

The minute you realize this a great weight will be lifted. Really obnoxiously severely bad pressings will still tick you off, sure. But the soft surface noise of your typical LP will not. When I hear that its like "Ahhh, wonderful! Music to my ears!"

stylus brush very lightly cleans area prior to stylus, like new dust speck that just landed there, not actually cleaning the groove.

and, shure brush is anti-static as well as designed/controlled damping.

I wrote to Jico. the brush on Jico replacement stylus is just a brush, no designed/controlled damping, no static removal.

@almarg 

Looking at the settings on my phono stage dip switches, this is what I see:

- 100pf
- 47k
- RIAA curve
- 40db

1. Get a Spin Clean and clean all your records.
2. Buy Mobile Fidelity inner sleeves.
3. Buy a box of Mr. Muscle pads.
3a. Drop stylus with cue lever onto pad. Lift. Repeat. (Do not drag over stylus.) After every side.
4. Sell table and buy a Pioneer PLX1000, Technics SL1500c, or a Technics 1200GR.
5. Find a solid record store with used original pressings and explore other new music.

Looking at the settings on my phono stage dip switches, this is what I see:

- 100pf
- 47k
- RIAA curve
- 40db

OK. So we can say at this point that the phono stage settings are not contributing to the tics/pops/crackling problem. From a sonic standpoint, though, chances are you’ll find that changing the 100 pf setting to zero will be beneficial in the treble part of the spectrum. Although that will depend on the unknown capacitances of the phono cable and tonearm wiring, as well as on how complementary the change is to the sonic character of the rest of the system.

Another setting change that I suspect would be sonically beneficial is to lower the setting of the antiskating dial on the turntable. As is the case with many such turntables, the instructions for yours say to set the antiskating dial to the same value as the tracking force, which IME is invariably much too high. In fact if you’ve set it in that manner you may notice when you view the cartridge from the front while the stylus is in the groove of a rotating record that the cantilever is deflected to the left (toward the center of the record), rather than assuming the nominally straight ahead position it assumes when the stylus is lifted off of the record. I suggest setting the antiskating dial to about 60% of the tracking force, i.e., if the tracking force is 1.8 grams set the antiskating dial to about 1.0 or 1.1.

The others have given you lots of good suggestions about the tics/pops/crackling problem, so I don’t have anything to add at this point. I was going to suggest that you buy some Mobile Fidelity record sleeves, but Noromance and Antinn beat me to it!

Good luck. Regards,
-- Al