tt surface noise reduce or tolerate?

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.

I use a RCM with the 3 step AIVS that Viper_z uses, then zap the record near the edges in three spots, then once in the middle with a Zerostat 3. Gotta have a Zerostat! Most recordings still have a very slight surface noise, but is very, very negligible. I bought a used lp for a buck, did the 3step cleaning, zapped it 4 times, and put the stylus in the lead-in groove. It was dead silent, and I thought I had left the mute switch on. When I saw the mute was off, I turned the volume up more, thinking it was all of the way down, then the music began and startled the crap out of me! Yes, some lp's can be as quiet as a cd, but I find most have a very, very slight surface noise that is only to be eliminated when the music begins. I can live with that. I listen to about 60 percent cd's, 40 percent lp's.

I hardly ever clean my records...yes I do take the dust off of them before playing with a microfiber cloth with a touch of distilled water. I had a Rega and right there in the owners' manual it said to listen and not worry about the record's cleanliness. I have a Nitty Gritty, and a steamer, but aside from initially cleaning the record from a garage sale, I am not that fastidious ...and yet, my vinyl playback is quiet.