It can accelerate wear on the stylus, if you are continually playing scratched and dirty records. Huge pops that cause a large dynamic peak could be damaging to the speakers if you have the volume turned up real high when it happens. That's about it.
Those pesky gouges in vinyl.
A number of threads, both recent and old discuss defects in vinyl in terms of listener tolerance. Some people can live with a few clicks and pops and some can't. Being one of the ones who can tolerate a fair amount of noise in an LP if the performance is good, I constantly wonder if some of my thrift shop treasures could be damaging my equipment. How much can a cartridge take? Are different cartridge types (MC vs MM) better able to withstand scratches and the occasional divet in the LP surface? How about moving up the signal path? Is there anything on the way to and including the speakers that can be damaged by playing noisy LPs? Thanks.
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