Is it possible to have vinyl nearly noise free?

A thousand pardons. No, make that 10,000.

Atmosphere, obviously some uncompressed LP can have have more dynamic range than overly compressed CDs. However, a lot of LPs are overly compressed, too. It’s difficult to make generalizations. Even SACDs and hi res downloads are being aggressively compressed.

It’s difficult to compare apples to oranges because of all the variables that affect the real S/N ratio in the room in a real system, including what domain the recording was made, vibration isolation, room treatments, RFI/EMI protection and all the rest. Optimizing S/N ratio is an art.

No matter how much you have in the end you would have had even more if you had started out with more.

OK, let me put it a different way. Digital has the potential for much greater Signal to Noise Ratio and Dynamic Range than analog. I really don’t foresee analog system getting any better than 70 dB. But digital systems can achieve 90+ dB (potentially). Obviously, the intentional overly aggressive dynamic range compression for digital and analog doesn’t help in terms of dynamic range. Of course, there are many sources of noise and distortion in any audio system, so a lot depends on the desire and ability of the person to achieve his system’s true potential.

The elephant in the room, of course, is even if you eliminate all of the surface noise or can play vinyl that’s noise free, there is still the sticky wicket of the Signal to Noise Ratio for analog systems being much lower than the SRN for digital systems. In theory, anyway.