tt surface noise reduce or tolerate?

So far all the Radiohead LPs I've gotten have been quiet.

In the CD world, those with analog master tapes are frequently reissues of older LPs. Older master tapes have degraded with time; its not that the original LPs covered up the hiss, the hiss was often simply not there. If you get a chance to play with a 1/2" format stereo tape machines you find out what I really mean.

A lot of transistor tape machines will make a sort of 'modulation noise' that is absent on the tube tape machines, and it is transistor recorders that often are used to master CD reissues. So CDs will often have tape hiss that the original LP issues will not, though no fault of either media- its more of a mastering problem.

There are many reasons reasons Lps fail most having to do with the creation of the LP recording, far fewer after that. Too many newbeyee's are unware of the manufacturing thresholds that must be crossed before a "pure" recording is possible. It takes years with a mentor and with to understand the thresholds to overcome. All the best.

Crem1, what do you mean by 'Lps fail'? I've had LPs for 35 years now but I have yet to see one fail. OTOH I've seen a few CDs failing recently. For me, 'fail' means it won't play or degrades significantly **with proper storage**. LPs IME do not fail but CDs and most all tapes do.

A far better explanation would have been to focus on manufacturing defects. "Fail" was a short-cut term to denote a negative experience that that i used to "cross-bridge", as a reference for persons that have little or no experience with needle-discs ,but have some connection to CD's,tape ,or I Pods where fail is sometime outlined in trouble shooting-type texts.

My mistake to the keen eye but I think we both can agree that LP ownership does require a learning curve that is quite different than what the young adults experience with other media. All the best.

The longevity of LPs is something I can't argue about. The very first LP I acquired, used, about 1954, the musical "Wonderful Town", I can still play today. In that time interval Mag Tape, which until CDs was the only alternative, has gone through several format changes rendering earlier formats unplayable.