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
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