tt surface noise reduce or tolerate?

Being relatively new to vinyl, I am now convinced that LP cannot be as quiet as the CD and the best one can do is to 'put up' with the noise and just enjoy the music.

I have bought over 50 new LPs in the past 2 months. Most of them are so-called audiophile records costing $50. I clean all my new records before play, I have a record cleaning machine, but I do more than just record clean. I use 3-step cleaning process using Audio Intelligent Solution, vacuum off the solution at each step, I also use steam-cleaning. It took me about 40 minutes to clean 2 sides. My LP is as clean as it gets.

But does it get rid of ticks and pops? Well, only if the ticks and pops are due to dust/dirt. I found out that the occasional pops/ticks that I'm still hearing is due to the imperfect 'pressing'. For example, one LP - "Debussy: Clair De Lune by Agoult, 45RPM", is just noisy all around, ticks and small pops all over, even though the grooves look prestine. I have brought this LP to try in different setup at friends place, I hear the same kind of noise.

Another LP that I bought: "Ray Brown Trio - Soular Energy, 180g vinyl". Have 4 small successive small pops on track#1 around 4:31 minutes of the song. At first I thought I wouldn't want to tolerate this because it's my favourite song so I returned it for another copy. And guess what, the new copy has exactly the same 4 succesive pops at the same place.

Another LP: "Schumann: Fantasy in C Op. 17, 180g" has unbearable surface noise (no ticks/pops), even though Michael Fremer rated it 11 for sound quality and 11 for music. (http://www.musicangle.com/album.php?id=139)

But overall (and luckily), most of the LPs do not have too many pops/ticks that deprives me from enjoying the music. One of the quietest LP that I have is "Jazz At The Pawnshop, 180g".

Surface noise and all, on some LPs tape hiss is clearly audible. That's why Dolby and DBX processing were invented...before CDs were around.

When I play my ancient Benny Goodman LPs the surface noise is part of the experience. But for quiet classical music it's another story.

Just a Radiohead side note: Don't base any "vinyl quality" decisions on their 45 rpm LPs of "Hail to the Thief." Dead silent but REALLY dead sounding, as in lifeless.

agree with all above...check your cartridge alignment.

LPs and surface noise, love it, hate it.

I've had this same dilemma over the years, but there have been a few things which you can do to reduce noise/enhance your listening pleasure. Most have been stated above already, but I suppose it maybe good to recap some points which I found to be worthy of attention:

a) Clean LPs = best method already discussed here at length is the steam cleaning. I follow that up with another round of detergent solution, followed by distilled water with a 2nd clean brush. Brand new LPs must be cleaned to remove the release agent, and usually benefit from >2 cleaning cycles. Depending on where you live, cleaning every side before listening at least once with pure water may help.

b) Proper cart/arm setup = getting the offset, VTA, VTF etc... is critical to reducing tracking errors/distortions. Even with pivoted arms, when the cart is alined correctly, even end of side distortion is reduced significantly to the extent it does not interfere with the music.

c) Generalization: line-contact/micro ridge profile styli tend to be more quiet in the groove. The most quiet carts I have are the Dyna XV-1s and some Soundsmith line-contact retips.

d) Get the Loricraft or equivalent RCM = I reckon that in all the efforts to reduce surface noise, this was on par with a component upgrade, so much more detail and music was reveiled. This was by far one of the most worthwhile upgrades, though costly.

At the end of the day, you cannot fully remove tics and pops from all LPs, some are badly pressed and some masters are obviously damaged, so you can't do anything about those except to return the LP. However, what analog has to offer is a sense of ease and natural smoothness which even the top digital rigs can only aspire to.

Happy spinning.