Quiet Tonearms/cartidges??

records still 'behave' like they always did, regardless of the money you spend. don't think those charming ticks, pops, etc, have disappeared. just pick a front end you like the sound of, and prepare to have fun....take care of your records and they'll take care of you.

The best setup with state of the art table, arm and cartridge and a top notch phono stage net you LP playback as free of noise as CD most of the time.

The reason I say most of the time, there will be a click or pop occasionally but moment by moment the music flows pretty much free of noise. During music sessions with my group on Tuesday evening we play a wide variety of LPs ranging from freshly opened to oldies from the 1950s. During the four plus hours of LP listening there will be a maximum of 4 or 5 total clicks or pops.

The total time these take up during the session amount to less than half a second and the other three hours, 59 minutes and 59.5 seconds are pure joy.

As many have posted in other threads here at Audiogon, even a live performance can be interrupted by chair squeaks, throat clearing or coughs. Even with CD your home is never DEAD quiet.

You have to ask yourself if the quality and availability of the music you intend buying is worth the effort rather than obsessing over possible negatives.

I also wonder why you would spend money recording to tape with prices of raw tape stock, especially since you say it will be processed with a DBX 224 which will alter the natural analog sound in a negative way (in my experience).

Even assuming you can pull off a PERFECT recording, any upgrade to your vinyl playback system (even VTA adjustment, tracking or load) would make your tapes out of date, at least quality wise. Why not just set up the vinyl playback correctly and enjoy?

I think that the most significant factor affecting tics and pops is not the quality of your cartridge/tonearm/turntable, but the dynamic range of the music you listen to, followed by the physical quality of the pressing.

If you are listening typically to music with narrow dynamic range, such as most rock music, or classical chamber music, or to recordings which are significantly compressed in terms of dynamic range, you will hear minimal tics and pops. If you are listening to uncompressed wide dynamic range music on high quality audiophile-oriented labels, you will also hear fairly minimal tics and pops. But the worst case would be minimally compressed wide dynamic range music on a mediocre pressing (typically symphonic music from one of the major labels), in which case I would say stick to cd.

Regards,
-- Al