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Can You Live With Crackling & Popping Noise?

I just got my first turntable, a Rega P5 and not sure whether I'm supposed to be delighted or otherwise. When I put on my first record, there was intermittent popping, hissing and crackling noise at low to moderate volume levels. Having lived with digital for half of my life, I find this to be somewhat annoying. For a while I was feeling disappointed and pondering whether I would end up selling this thing. After a while I thought what the heck, since I had got this thing home I might as well turn up the volume and enjoy the music. I started to crank it up to reasonably high levels and all the hissing, crackling and popping noise began to drown and disappear into the background music. Somehow the annoyance turned to musical bliss, well almost.

My question, especially for those who own high-end turntables, can you live with all the crackling and popping noise? I reckon all these noises will be quite noticeable especially when playing some clean vocals with minimum background music? What actually cause all these noises? Is the noise caused by dust sticking on the surface of the record assuming the record is in good condition? Is there any way these crackling and popping noises can be reduced or eliminated completely by cleaning the records?

The manual states as follows:-

"Don't worry about visible dust on the record surface, this is brushed aside by the stylus and any that collects on the stylus can be easily blown away. In general, record cleaning is overdone and one should not believe all the claims made by record cleaner manufacturers."

Does this mean that cleaning records is pointless? If that is the case how do we get rid of the crackling noise in the event the dust and fine particles are the ones that are causing these noises? Is there any easy solution to clean the records by ourselves?

For any newbie who wants to take the turntable route, I would urge you to reconsider your options particularly if you have minimal tolerance towards popping and crackling noises. Even all my good old cassette collection that ended up in the rubbish bin years ago didn't exhibit all these popping and crackling noises.

If all these noises do not exist in records then analog is really the one to beat.

Thank you for your patience.
ryder
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,993 posts
 
One way that is not obvious to reduce ticks and pops is to use a tube phono section that uses passive RIAA equalization. Transistor units will often over-react to ticks and pops as most of them use loop feedback for the EQ. Loop feedback enhances ticks and pops!

Another thing to be certain about is that the cartridge is properly loaded! If not loaded correctly, it will **emphasize** ticks and pops. Correctly loaded you will get full bandwidth and no tonal anomalies, plus the ticks and pops will recede more to the background.
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,549 posts
 
Welcome to the real world of vinyl playback!

Record noise is par for the course with many records. To keep it to the minimum, get a good record cleaning machine or check other threads here for some manual cleaning techniques that can work very well also if you have the time and patience to do it right.

Personally, I hate record noise but have learned to live with it when required over the years
zenblaster
504 posts
 
The good news is that the hissing, popping and clicking you are experiencing are optional. In order to enjoy analog to it's fullest you are going to have to develop a cleaning system for your records. When I first get a record I do a pretty aggressive steam cleaning, new or used. I limit my used records to very good quality, as new. ONce a record is scratched you can not improve that pop/click, dust and grundge can be cleaned, to a degree. A record cleaning machine is a great option, but expensive. There are many threads you can look up here and else where on the net. After the initial cleaning a light dusting is all that's need prior to playing.
As my analog system has moved up the food chain one of the benefits has been the ability to put extraneous noises "up on a shelf in the background" of the soundstage, relegating it to white noise. The music you are listening too is front and center, more lifelike than I have been able to get from my digital front end. It is a bit more work than is required with digital but the rewards in my case have been worth it.
tfkaudio
591 posts
 
Art Dudley of Stereophile has, on several occasions, poked fun at the Rega "philosophy" of letting the cartridge stylus clean the record. "May your purgatory be a restaurant where they don't wash the plates, but rather let the forks clean the plates" (or something close to that) was one of the more hilarious takes on that philosophy.
No, you really do gotta clean records if you want them to sound their best.

Keep in mind, if a record is old and wasn't really cared for and was played on a turntable with a badly mis-aligned or overworn cartridge, the noise is probably there to stay.

But, for most others, the popping and hissing can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated, by a good cleaning.

Yesterday, my girlfriend asked my to give her a formal introduction to the music of the Beatles. I played the first 7 studio releases for her, and I heard a "pop" one time on side two of "With the Beatles". One pop on six albums*. Could you live with that?

* One of the seven albums, "Beatles for Sale", was played on CD (I don't have a vinyl copy of that one). After listening to it after playing the first 3 albums on vinyl, it was obvious how dry, unmusical, and uninvolving the CD was. I could tolerate a whole lot of popping and hissing before my experience was as unsatisfying as that.

Hopefully you have a good number of albums that are in good condition that will have little to no popping or hissing.

Cheers
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
Ryder,

Less-likely the megapriced cleaning machines will take care of clicks, pops and surface noise. Keeping records clean is their main purpose.

Sweeping dust with light touch of carbon fiber brush is sufficient enough.

I have now Michell Gyro SE/OL modded RB300/Lyra Helikon cart. I'm very concerned about quality of the records I buy and listen and keep them very clean and always place them in poly inner jacket. I also use Alesis ML9600 recorder to bring most of my records tended to llisten often to high-res CD24 formats and mostly play them through digital equipment. This way I preserve the records in good state.
Older records I have in my collection have clicks, surface noise and pops and I tried to eliminate it with Sony Sound Forge software. I admit I've done it right, but still keep 'unmastered' digital copy with pops because the edited version is still missing something the original has.
Noise is natural anywhere you are therefore absence of noise in digital sources is what makes them somewhat 'boring' vs. analogue
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