Is it possible to have vinyl nearly noise free?

Atmasphere,
I’ve  recently experienced a dramatic reduction of ticks and pops after modifying
my system with the acquisition of new speakers (GoldenEar Triton 1’s) and a new amplifier (Benchmark AHB2.)
My preamp has been the same for over 20 years (Conrad-Johnson PV 11 recently modified with new Teflon caps.)  And same  turntable (Rega) and cartridge (Grado Sonata.)
Does this make any sense?

That's a new one on me...

so the simple answer to the OP is Yes, but you have to spend your cash wisely.

+1  That's it in a nutshell.

Atmasphere responded and explained that many phono stages use *active* negative feedback to reduce measurable distortion, but as the signal is recycled through the feedback loop, it lengthens the duration of the ticks and pops, making them louder and longer than they occur on the record surface.

I did used to think that was why- but it turns out it really has to do with stability in the design. So feedback isn't the culprit: poor overload margin and poor resistance to RFI are.

Our little UV-1 preamp employs feedback yet no ticks and pops.

In a nutshell, proper use of stopping resistors, good layout and blocking RFI at the input all contribute to a stable design. As I have often mentioned before, if the design is stable the need for loading resistors (if used with LOMC cartridges) won't be needed either. 

Can you recommend some stand-alone phono stages that have the design features you describe? Don’t think I’m smart enough to figure that out for myself, but it would be interesting to give one a try. Thanks!

I know Nelson Pass makes a stable phono section; not sure if its a stand-alone product or not. IME a simple way to sort it out is to see if installing a "cartridge loading" (its really 'detuning') resistor makes the sound different. If not, then the phono section is probably stable.
FWIW Jonathan Carr and I had a nice conversation about this topic at Munich a few years ago. There was a nice thread on the What's Best forum about cartridge loading in which he was active (his moniker was JCarr) that goes into the 'cartridge loading' aspect of this issue in some depth. The advantage of not having to load the cartridge that he brought up with me was the simple fact that energy has to come from somewhere, so loading the cartridge with a low resistance was going to make the cantilever stiffer and less able to track higher frequencies. He and I have both written a lot about this topic; its pretty obvious that I simply have to post an article on our website that goes into it with more depth so I don't have to keep repeating myself.

Atmasphere, I have never heard a phono stage make tics and pops. I would think that ultrasonic ringing would cause steady state distortion/overload if the unit’s frequency response went that high. Granted my experience with multiple inexpensive phono stages is limited. My first preamp was a Dynaco PAS 3X and I was using a Pickering cartridge. I was listening through AR 2ax speakers which had a horribly muted high end so pops and tics were wonderfully suppressed. If the phono stage were at fault all records would make noise so if you have some very quiet records but others are noisy you can forget about the phono stage. Some cartridges seem quieter than others. It would seem stylus shape would have something to do with this.

With regards to your opening comment my response is ’-that you know of...".


In the case of LOMC, there is a peak caused by the inductance of the cartridge and the capacitance of the tone arm interconnect cable. This peak is often well past the bandwidth of almost any phono preamp, so what happens in the case of the RFI generated by this resonance is that it is rectified by something in the phono input. This is how RFI messes with any audio circuit by the way. Bandwidth has nothing to do with it.


With MM high output cartridges, the resonant peak is much lower in frequency but is still often ultrasonic. However its still often 20db higher than the actual signal and can easily overload many phono stages. Imagine a phono circuit being overloaded by an ultrasonic signal (something you can’t hear)- what do you think it would sound like? Its not that hard to hear the difference- the first time I heard it I was running a Grado cartridge that made 5 mV. It is true that some cartridges are quieter- it might have a different stylus shape but it can also have a different inductance. You might find this interesting:
http://www.hagtech.com/loading.html

Isn’t the purpose of loading resistors to damp the primary resonance of the moving system in a phono cartridge?

In the case of a LOMC cartridge, no. The primary resonance is well outside of the audio band!

you will find others like Ralph, that do not clean their records and claim that guys like me are wasting time and money. You will also find guys like me. If we could actually get Chicago guys to get together, we could do some kind of A/B, shootout etc. The Chicago Audio Society is worthless. I have reached out to Chicago guys, to get together before and have had no responses. So, it is a lone endeavor to clean records or not. Your choice. IMO, I agree with slaw, that Ralphs take, is a bit of overreach.

I'm not saying you're wasting your money. I'm saying that if you have a stable preamp you get a lot less ticks and pops. In my case I found that far outweighed the benefit of cleaning. It true that we experience more oticks and pops at shows- our LPs there tend to get a bit more beat up and I've retired a few over the years on that account. At home I am used to hearing entire sides free of that sort of thing unless the album side has some damage.

The next obvious question...Do you ever/feel a need to clean your stylus?

Yes. I dust it before every album side. I also clean it with LAST.


I used to use a record cleaning machine as I mentioned before. But once I sorted out what the phono preamp's role was in surface noise, I did as much as I could to make sure that my preamp ticked all the boxes. At that point that made more difference than the cleaning. Of course I use a dust brush which probably does reduce ticks and pops by my goal there is simply to prevent dust buildup on the stylus.

All things being equal, are you saying unequivocally, that there is NO need for record cleaning at all?

Well I'm not sure what things would be equal; IME in audio its a rare thing where that happens.


But I've not had to clean any LPs in the last 20 years to get them to be silent. OTOH my phono preamp doesn't care if RFI comes into its input (so I don't need to mess with loading resistors) and its very stable so I don't get any ticks and pops unless there's a scratch. ...And cleaning won't do anything about a scratch...

So apparently in my case I don't need a record cleaning machine. I gave mine away after it sat for 20 years unused. As I think I mentioned in one of my prior posts, we have a whole generation of audiophiles that grew up listening to unstable phono sections that generate ticks and pops all on their own, so they think that's normal. It isn't- just poor design.

I haven't used a record cleaner in 20 years. No need.

So, I’m a little confused by the remarks by @atmasphere . I clean my records religiously. I think Ralph's "90%" is an overreach.

@slaw You have to hear a stable phono section right beside one that isn't to know what I'm talking about. Scratches- can't do anything about that. I just use a dust brush and that's all that's needed.

I really don’t foresee analog system getting any better than 70 dB. But digital systems can achieve 90+ dB (potentially).

16 bit is -96 dB, but analog can and does get to -85 dB down. The reason this is so is not because all LPs are that quiet (people often mistake personal anecdote for all the media).

When the LP is mastered, the resulting lacquer can be so quiet that the phono preamp is the noise floor, regardless of the phono cartridge or preamp. That's pretty quiet and -85dB is being conservative. Most of the surface noise occurs in the plating/pressing process. QRP (which is the pressing plant set up by Acoustic Sounds in Salinas, Kansas) has modified pressing machines that are mechanically damped to eliminate any vibration as the vinyl cools. As a result, they can make pressings that are so quiet that their noise floor is also lower than the playback electronics.


Most digital releases are compressed in the digital domain using DSP. This is because there is an expectation it will be played in a car where there is a higher background noise. As a result, LP often has greater dynamic range.

this is groove echo caused by modulation bleeding through from the adjacent track -- you can hear it both pre and post (one on the left, the other on the right) and it disappears completely on loud passages where the grooves are widely spaced -- luckily it’s rarely this bad. The 2 second lag (one revolution at 33RPM) is also a give away

@folkfreak I've cut a few records and not experienced this. My lathe is a bit older- so it only has fixed groove spacing. We modified it so we can run variable groove spacing but either way never get print-though issues. When you look under a microscope at the grooves you can see why- unless you over cut the record the grooves are spaced from each other. Overcuts (grooves too close) often results in distortion. If you really are getting print thru from an LP, its poorly mastered!

On an original Berglund Sibelius ASD3216 the continuous foreshadowing through long quiet passages rendered the disc almost unlistenable -- maybe late 70s quad pressings make this phenomena worse but in a highly resolving system you'll begin to notice it all over the place

@folkfreak , this is called 'print-thru' and its an artifact of the master tape. Its not endemic to LPs.

Still, one has to admit, the way the phono stage knows to make the tick happen every time the record comes around, is pretty impressive.

@millercarbon,

If you have a scratch, that's a different matter. I'm not talking about that but as a general rule, don't scratch your LPs :)

Yes.
I am very used to playing entire album sides without ticks and pops.

I don't use record cleaners either.

What most people don't know, including phono preamp designers, is that the phono preamp itself is often responsible for about 90% of the ticks and pops often heard. I know this sound outrageous but I've seen this play out quite often.


How it works is like this: The cartridge and tone arm interconnect cable form a tuned resonant circuit (called a 'tank circuit' on account of the fact that the circuit can store energy at a certain frequency) due to the inductance of the cartridge and the capacitance of the cable. The resonant peak is outside of the audio band- in the case of LOMC cartridges might be over 100KHz up to several MHz. It can be as much as a 30 dB peak!

If your phono section has poor overload margin this can cause ticks and pops. And to illustrate what is meant by '30dB', this is a peak that is 1000 times higher than that of the signal itself. If you have a moving magnet high output cartridge, this peak exists at a lower frequency (in some cases might even be at the extreme upper region of the audio band) and less profound, but it can still be 20dB which is 100 times more powerful than the signal. Either way the cartridge energy sends the tank circuit into 'excitation' (oscillation) and you can get a tick or pop when the phono section briefly overloads.


There is more- some phono sections have stability problems. What many phono preamp designers don't get is that a good phono section is more than just enough gain, proper EQ and low noise. It must also resist RFI (Radio Frequency Interference, which is generated by the the tank circuit) and to do that, devices known as 'stopping resistors' (and sometimes 'RF beads') must be employed in the design. These resistors are placed at the input of a tube or other active device to prevent oscillation. If not there, it is possible for the active device to ring (oscillate) but only slightly- not oscillating all the time (if it did the design would not have gotten past quality control); just on certain input signals.


So if your phono section is stable and has good overload margin you will experience a lot less ticks and pops. I've seen this be pretty dramatic- upon hearing such ticks and pops it might seem as if the vinyl is noisy, but on a good phono preamp the same record is silent. A side benefit is that if this is so, its highly likely that if you are running a LOMC cartridge you won't have to engage in the 'cartridge loading' exercise, since that loading is all about detuning the tank circuit at the input of the preamp and thus preventing it from generating RFI.


Further, when you load a LOMC cartridge (100 ohms is common) you are making it do more work than when it drives the standard 47,000 ohms. The energy to do that work has to come somewhere and the result is that the cantilever of the cartridge and be stiffer and less able to trace higher frequencies.


Unfortunately most of the phono sections in many vintage solid state receivers were unstable and so an entire generation of audiophiles has grown up thinking LPs are loaded with ticks and pops. Usually they aren't- when an LP is mastered, the lathe cut is sent to a pressing plant and a 'test pressing' is made in order to find out if the mastering and subsequent stampers worked out properly. The artist or producer has to sign off on this test pressing and that means the test pressing had no ticks and pops so neither did the stamper. As a result, most LPs are silent when purchased but you will see many audiophiles upset about ticks and pops in vinyl and even going digital to get away from them, when quite commonly its just a poor phono section that's causing it.