Crackle and hiss on some albums

@lewm 

No, I cannot say that with absolute certainty as it was from a series of upgrades of different tables and cartridges etc on different tts when I was moving from mid-fi to audiophile stuff. It all seemed to contribute to different degrees. The solidly stable tt seemed to significantly reduce surface noice. The cartrige when having a tiny stylist would significantly reduce the pops and more obvious discrete noise.  

@lewm 

Neither can I. But that has been my experience. 

So with your cheap turntable you did not hear lots of noise?

First, typically the noise goes down the better the turntable with a big drop when you hit high end… let’s arbitrarily say around $5K depending on the type of table. But then, you say that some are very quiet… so it doesn’t seem to be the table quality. Although many of my very noisy records became silent with a high end table and high end cartrige. I believe the cartrige has a much smaller stylist and it drops down much deeper into the groove from where damage had been done. I have a surprising number of beat up albums from the 1970’s that sound great.

Then there are albums themselves. There is a category of non cleanable albums that sound like you say. For me they have been less than 1 in a hundred when buying used records. But I have lots of experience. 99% of the time you can tell a trashed album at the store by taking it out and reflecting the lights from above across the album. A clean / non-destroyed album’s grooved area will be bright and shiny. Really high volume (in the music) area will show exaggerate grooves… so not quite as shiny… but overall bright and shiny. Trashed albums will be dull looking.

So, if you have a little noise, or constant surface noise a better turntable may take care of them. But if a constant noisy albums with pops and hiss. Even a good record cleaner ( a must if you will be collection… VPI sells an expensive if noisy vacuum cleaner) will not fix these. You need to figure out how not to buy them.