A simple question from the new guy ....

Where do you live? There are bound to be audiophiles with good vinyl setups near you who would be happy to share their experiences. Personally, I have not found the whole pop/click issue to be significant compared to the improved quality of vinyl over digital but that's just my opinion.

P.S. you also need a very effective record cleaning system or just forget about vinyl. It sometimes takes me 3 or 4 cleanings of old jazz records from the 50's before I get them to the point where there is acceptable noise ( vinyl is never perfectly quiet because the source was not perfectly quiet) but on 90% of my old records the level of noise (pops/clicks etc) is so low compared to the dynamics of the music that I think anyone would prefer them to CD.

You've already gotten great technical advice from
the above posts.I just want to reinterate that analog sounds so much better to me in terms of 3-d imaging and timbre.That the pops and ticks are insignificant.

The only thing that matters to me is hearing wonderful music.If , the noise from a analog frontend was that bad there is no way I would spend my $$$ on it.

I have a cary 306 sacd player and to my ears it is the best digital i have heard.However, I still prefer my analog frontend.If I have a choice on source thats what I go with.The Cary is there for music I can't get on vinyl.