How do you get past the pops and hiss of LPs?

A third vote for thoroughly clean records, But also, a good quality, well set up turntable and tonearm combination will be incredibly quiet. Friends whom I have had over for dinner evenings or casual "get togethers" have commented at how quiet a turntable can be relative to what they remember.

With a clean record that is in good condition, background noise, scratches and pops are virtually non-existent. I think the old Thorens may be partially at fault. The older, higher mass tonearms really have a tough time keeping up with the newer high compliance cartridges.

But, just keep listening to the music. With a turntable, the music usually sounds so good, it makes all the other stuff go away.

Even at its best vinyl may give you a few ticks and pops from time to time-static.It cannot be as quiet as digital either. How do we get past? We just do.Not an issue at all.

Kevin,
You don't have to get a multi-kilobuck analogue rig to have your records sound quiet.
I set up to my nephiew an analogue with cheap Dual turntable $20 from ebay, $20 Audiotechnica cartridge bought new right after the turntable, "amputated" auto return mechanizm to make it manual... $1 Records he's got from the different garage sale basements sound increadible with no clicks noise and pops.
He's now using RadioShack battery-powered phonostage. Overall the analogue setup was less than $100 including phono. To beat this setup you should realy get CD-player above $200 used or $400 new. Having Thorens table it's more than possible to bring it back alive with carefull cartridge and arm setup. Go to www.turntablebasics.com, examine your cartridge's condition or better-off replace it for any descent new one since cartridge ages when it's not played. I'd recommend looking-up www.turntablebasics.com for proper setup.