In response to the "noise" aspect of vinyl, I have found that "clicks and pops" are reduced when you have a properly designed phono stage input section that does not overload on the wideband splash that the "pop" creates. This is a major step in vinyl noise reduction. You then hear only a minor "tick" on light scratches and the like. An excellent player/arm/cartridge combination also helps by remaining in control when it hits a "pop" and not careening out of control and sending all manner of oscillations into the phono stage. The best players and phono stages make vinyl listening a pleasure with minimal noise, but they can't compensate for the wear of used records that were played on some "vinyl lathe" that carved the high freq's off. Unfortuately, this is all too common on used records today.
Am I assuming too Much?
I recently added my old Dual turntable with Stanton 500 cartridge and NAD phono preamp to my 2 channel system. Just wanted to play some old stuff I hadn't heard in a while and to transfer some to CD. However I was quite shocked that my TT sounds very near as good as my $2200 CDP. Tharefore my assumption is that if my old TT with a cheap cartridge sounds 98% as good than a table ie Music Hall MMF-7 should make my records sound even better than my cd's. Does this seem like a proper assumption