A simple question from the new guy ....

The better your gear, the more pops, clicks & hiss you`ll hear. New records loose their virginity quickly & develop pops & clicks. Even scrupulous record care is like pissing into a strong head wind.

I have never heard hissing on an album unless it was on the original master recording. Cassette tape hiss is another story. I never could listen to cassette recordings due to the loud hissing. The Dolby noise reduction just took away to much of the highs. When you listen to an album today you will be amazed how much more musical and open it sounds compared to what your used to from your CD player. It just sounds better. Give it a try.

Vinyl is what I was raised on,I'm used to it. Yes you get pops and clicks but it's part of the package. Going into analog is costly, and maybe you'd be better off getting the best out of your digital source that you have. You don't list system but what I'm trying to say is if you have let's say 15,000 invested in a killer digital front end and you want to get into vinyl to egual that sound you will have to spend money on a
Turntable
Tonearm
Cartridge
Record Cleaner
Cleaning Fluid and Brushes
Interconnects
And of course Records.
I try to get equal sound out of my Digital and Analog front ends. This allows me to buy the cheapest source a remastered Cd or a 18o gram pressing which in some sense makes me think I have more money to buy music. If you do go analog Make sure you get someone to do all the adjustments,pay extra for a Tonearm with a azimuth adjustment because someone who knows what they are doing can minimaze the noise from a misaligned cartridge and bad anti skating settings. If you buy a package deal,a TT, Cartridge.Tonearm don't assume that it is set up properly let someone do that for you. There are quite a few of these on Ebay and here. Things get misaligned in shipping,things get desroyed if not packaged properly and this is the cheapest route.

As you get better and better analog equipment, the cleanliness and condition of the record become the big factor in what accounts for and how much distortion there is. Obviously ticks and pops caused by surface impurities are the most obvious, but I have found that with clean, undamaged records, they are almost nonexistent. On the other hand, that old record you found stashed away in some coat closet, that looks like it's been cleaned with coarse grain sandpaper? Well that will sound wretched regardless of what you play it back on.

and useless for many, many playings if they are handled carefully and played on decent equipment that is set up properly. I have records that I have owned for nearly 40 years and played dozens and dozens of times, and they still play with no problems and only a couple of pops or clicks. Those are probably due to something that was attracted to the vinyl from static electricity as it was playing, and not part of the record itself.

It is totally wrong to say that they "lose their virginity quickly and develop pops and clicks". This is nowhere near the truth, unless you are careless and get them dirty.