Interesting Article

I have lots of great LPs from the past several decades and love 'em...however, I've bought 2 LPs recently from Barnes and Noble (!). I wanted a clean copy of Beggar's Banquet and there it was...for 22 bucks or so...got it home and it's pressed on heavy-ish clear vinyl and sounds great. Next a Sargent Pepper (I know...from the digital "masters" but whatEVER), and it sounds better than any copy I've had including my utterly trashed original, had all the old LP's paperwork, and, again, 22 bucks or something. Craze? Fine with me.

Wolf, if your Sgt. Pepper is from the new Mono series, it is NOT from a digital master, but from the 4 track analog masters!

My Pepper LP is as stated...stereo, from digital. I am not into the mono LP hype by the way.

I'm sorry but I dislike playing my vinyl records (with a few exceptions). I have a descent rig (VPI Classic 2 w/Sumiko Blackbird) and almost every record I play has clicks, pops, groove noise, etc.. It just bothers me to distraction -I almost never play vinyl.
Note: I recently played Hendrix's "Are you Experienced" for maybe the second time (super-duper premium 2 record set) and hit a total-blockage point that threw the stylus out of the groove (totally not groovy!). Frustrating? Chee-wa-wa!

I wet-wash before each play (Nitty Gritty vacuum), use a Zerostat ion gun, do all the things your supposed to do but if it's in the vinyl already, it aint commin' out.

I admit that a clean pressing sounds awesome (Dark Side of the Moon comes to mind). But these are one-in-ten if your lucky. I guess I should keep buying the same record over-and-over until I find one I like?

I hope Meridian's new encoding scheme (MQA) will finally tip the sonic scales to digital's advantage.

Dweller... you don't need a new digital encoding scheme you just need a better DAC... or a more musical, analog-like one.

If you want to hear every detail on the recording, I highly recommend the PS Audio DirectStream DAC with the Pike's Peak firmware. It will provide plenty of fine detail and articulation (bass is amazing) and it will still sound natural, musical, and non-fatiguing.

If you need a tube DAC, I can recommend the Jolida Glass FX Tube DAC III with the cap upgrade and Bybee Music Rail mods. There is not as much detail and articulation as the DirectStream but the Jolida has a super musical and very satisfying presentation without losing too much detail.

Records still sound quite good to me but like you, I don't like hearing the ticks and pops, etc.