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

Allow me to draw a metaphor of sorts. As a recording engineer and vintage studio gear enthusiast, I find tape hiss to be a relatively small price to pay for the benefits of a great 4,8,16 track machine. Listen to the drums on the White Album and you'll know what I mean. That sound came from a Fairchild compressor and a 4 track tape machine. Now, is there some hiss on the recording? Maybe, but the good far outweighs the bad.

Similarly, I find occasional pops on my LP's to be a small price to pay. But this is usually not a problem for me as I try to buy only new, reissued vinyl if at all possible. Thus static is more my problem but it is much easier to cure than scratches.

Moral: The good outweighs the bad in both analog recording and playback.

At least, as someone else noted, the hiss is "below" the music and not "within" it.

inpepinnovations@ I'm sure you understand that I am not talking about tape hiss. As Tom and Marty pointed out, tape hiss is audible on CDs to, but it is not part of the recording, it is a fault of the recording medium. As people have gained a better understanding about what was needed to preserve tapes without degradation this is less of an issue.

Hiss was not part of the music recorded in the studio. Where it is audible it is typically caused by poor cared for LPs.

Marakanetz is right, LP playback is not for the lazy. It requires a little effort to totally surpass the sound quality of CDs, but only a little! Many of our 'microwave' generation do not have the patience to obtain good music. That's their choice, but don't fool yourself into thinking that CDs will ever be of the same sound quality as LPs.

Kemp, just use clean LPs!

Folks who say to get CDs are partially right.
It's realy easy to built a nice sounding system arround CD-player where you can use pocket one with line-out connected to the Grado Headphone system and it will sound nice and this is where you can't do the same arround records.

Analogue playback setup needs EFFORT much more than money!
Records as well as CDs should be properly STORED and PLAYED thus will need almost no cleaning(well only sweeping before placing styli). As I remember using cartriges with replacable styli I was change it real often not to create further damage to vinyls. Tracking and alignment plays the vast role in this case as well.
Applying a large effort to clean already damaged records probably used as sleepers or stored with no inner sleeves in one carton jacket or any other kind of mis-use with bad styli, improper cueing can only bring little-to-no success.

Having to shop for the loved records either online or in local stores, checking condition and than taking proper care of the new "normal" collection, without even thinking or examining replacing an old cartrige or styli, also having possible replacement of an old tonearm aged throughout years for even any cheap new will eliminate the vast vast noise from your records.

I guess that I just listen to the music. If you want to make a big issue out of a few clicks, and destroy the musical experience for yourself, then that is your right. At least, on an LP, the music is there to begin with. Is the experience of listening to a live jazz club event destroyed because someone tinkled the ice cubes in their drink at the next table? Is a live performance of classical music wrecked because somebody coughed in the audience? If your LP has the sound of bacon frying on it, then clean it, or get a new LP. LP's never claimed "perfect sound forever". They just have the best sound obtainable, for as long as you take good care of it.

Actually hiss is recorded on vinyl, its tape hiss, which can be audible on (ironically) a quiet disc! Must be part of the "extra" information that is retrievable from vinyl. BTW, you won't hear tape hiss on a vinyl disc that was recorded digitally.

Salut, Bob P.

Sean is right on with his comments. The issue is not LPs it is more likely the LPs you have. I have LPs that are decades old and still sound very good. Many LPs that people played for years without any proper care are going to sound 'beat', because they have been abused. I refer to the damage done to the groove by dragging a dirty cartridge through them, not some terible form of violence. The problem is not the format, it is the miscare of the the medium.

Pops and hiss are not recorded onto the LP, and unless an LP has been abused it will be easy to clean. At which point it will be vastly superior to CDs and even SACDs.

How good would the average digital based system sound if the CDs were tossed around or abused??? At least the LPs will play. The CDs aren't even usable.

Any medium or product will last a long time, and sound good as long as it is well cared for by it's owner.

I beleive Sean has nailed this one, no amount of cleaning or snake oil can ever restore a damaged LP. Sometimes when I read the posts I beleive some people dont want to hear the truth, the truth is anolog takes a lot of effort and time to get it right. But if done right it can be truly heaven. I noticed in the post your father said it allways sounded that way, it sounded that way for me also until I began to take it seriously. I beleive a a good example would be if you take a Yugo to the racetrack,it will go around the track but you may be last. You need good equipment to WORK IN CONCERT with each other. If all are done right, incudeing the LP`s condition all a person can say is WHOW. David

If the records are permanently damaged, no cleaning will bring them back to life. If the records are properly cleaned and your vynil rig / phono section is of good quality and properly set-up, surface noise is not a problem at all. A decent linear tracking table, even a mass produced direct drive model, will make this fact oh-so clear to you. Pivoted arms are harder to work with in terms of cartridge geometry and more likely to be misaligned, doing further damage to the record with each playing. Sean
>

You can pretend you are listening with a big roaring fire in the listening room.

Charlie

Switch from classical to rock to drown out the sound of the hardware.

i politly disagree, i believe noise can eliminated. i rarely hear noise on lp's. many are used and i might hear a few pops or ticks on 1 out over every 5 or 6 lp's i play. the proper turnatable, arm and cartidge, and thorough set-up can get you there. even if you are using a lesser set-up now, look forward to the day you can hear the amazing quality of music that only an lp can offer.

Surface noise can be minimized by careful cleaning, and care of the records, but it will never go away completely. Some people learn to listen through it, while others (like me) find it distracting. CD's are the best answer.

There were various electronic devices that tried to reduce record surface noise. Phase Linear (Carver) made a dynamic multiband noise filter (Autocorrelator) which was very clever and fairly effective. There were also "Pop and Tick" eliminators.

Only one approach really worked...DBX records. However this was a compression/expansion dynamic range control system (similar to the system used for tape recorders) that required specially processed records to be played back through their electronics. It failed in the marketplace because too few records were available, and CD's came on the scene. I picked up the electronics and a dozen or so records for $25 just to see how it worked, and I was greatly impressed. Not only was surface noise completely eliminated, but the more uniform groove modulation of the compressed signal did wonders for performance of the phono pickup.

My poor reputation having no doubt preceded me, I will refrain from commenting on this provocative topic.

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.

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.

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.

Your dad is right ... scratches & audible pops were pretty much the way it was with LP's. The Stereo Magazines (Stereo Review; High Fidelity; etc.) used to advise you to make a tape copy of the LP and play that, because LP's were so easily scratched (usually after the first play). The LP was to be saved for special listening occasions. You were usually OK, unless the disc was really scratched up and then it was outrageously annoying. Also, LP's were warped beyond belief (RCA Dynagroove comes to mind) and there was not too much you could do about that.

Cleaning the LP's, the turntable, and cartridge helps. But if the record is scratched, it's scratched. With 180 gram audiophile records and + $1000 rigs, scratches may be less of an annoyance ... but now you are getting to the same place where you are with a cd player ... get a + $1000 cd player, for the best redbook sound and less digital glare.

I found all this way too frustrating and I gave up on LP's about 10 years ago and spent my time getting the best sound out of CD's.

Regards, Rich

Kevin,

I second the cleaning, and it may be worthwhile to have a tech give your 'table a once over. Once you have the rig running nicely (and probably with a new cartridge) you ought to re-look at the records themselves. There may be a local used record store nearby, if you like the records why not replace them ($3 or $4 a copy)? The used emporiums I frequent are very fussy about what they take in, and will refund your money or give you a replacement if the record snap-crackle-pops. Welcome to the dark side my friend, Jeff

Clean everything. The record, cartridge....maybe the cartridge needs replacing? I have found that the better the cartridge the less likely that you will hear pops and hisssssssss. Have fun good luck!

I recently grabbed from the janitor's basement a huge oldies collection with albums from 60's and played it on my Michell. They looked ugly but sounded with very small surface noise only at the beginning and almost nothing was heard in the middle or end of record.
Arm/cartridge plays the vast role in analogue setup on that issue.
I even have records with deep cuts playing descent with only a small pop.
Aged cartridges will certainly make a noise on even mint records so the cartridge replacement should stay first.

If you eat a bowl of Kellogs Rice Krispies while listening you hear nothing but the music.