A product to enjoy vinyl without noise

Personally, I think the OP should try and figure out where the pops and clicks originate.

I used to think they were on the surface of the record and inherent. Through experimentation I found that not to be the case.

I realized how little I understood when I took one of my nice LPs over to a friend's house that had a real high-end turntable. It was night and day.

After that, I started to upgrade my system and eventually the annoying clicks and pops were much less annoying. For two reasons--one they were connected to various problems in the transducer, e.g. various mechanical issues that high-end systems are designed to deal with. Second, I found that a high resolution system (e.g. good speakers like big magnepans, other planars, etc.) reduced the subjective effect because the music always stayed in focus but the clicks and pops were common-mode.

Something to think about?!
 
A dirty record is a dirty record If you have many used records, it makes sense to buy a record cleaner then it is always good to review the setting of the tonearm. If you have a tonearm where the only thing you can do is VTF and anti-skating, you have to check that the cartridge is mounted correctly.

Another thing you miss is the connection cartridge and phonostage and then I mean not only settings but how phonostage handled every pop and crackle. it's about how well a ps handles the voltage level of a crack, so what is a crack? Dirt of course or a wear of the track but what the cartridge does is translate it to an electrical voltage of several mV higher than what the music delivers it you see clearly when you measure, it also increases if you have a worn needle.

Then the question is how does phono stage handle this in two ways in my experience when a crack reaches phonostage then the voltage have rised several mV to it's maximum level and then quikly it fades off or a rise and fall is slow. The slow one is much more noticeable and annoying than the fast one. How do you avoid this annoying phenomenon? Yes, you have to try it out because I have no good answers other than that you have to look for a phonostage with the right features or a device that the OP is interested in.

Then fortitudine is right that better equipment can affect for the better because I myself have noticed that when I have upgraded, yes it is this constant hamster wheel that you are in to look for better solutions.

What should I upgrade it is always a question of whether to upgrade a bit like Meaning of Life by Monty Pytons.
 
non (less anyway) resonate arms

My affection for the Rega 300 series and SME IV/V arms may well be partially based on their non-resonate tapered/cast arm tubes -add in very good to excellent bearings and fit. This is one of the advantages of the J arm tube on the SL-1200 as well -the magnesium arm on the 1200GAE-really dead arms. I do think this does help with not replaying really extreme clicks n pops -there's going to be some noise -but at least it's not bouncing around as much inside the arm structure. Most ultra light low mass arms (notable exception : SME series 3) do tend to ring -especially when used with today's relatively stiff cantilevers.
 
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There are tons of modern professional compressors which are vastly better than old days DBX or SAE5000, but they are pricey...yet very good cleaning of the record and digitizing it will be the way for the next years to come because the old way of full dynamic rendering by high voltage phono preamps + high power amplifiers plus high power damped speakers is kind of extinct, while dynavector damped cartridges are way too expensive for usual listeners...The cheapest way of having a good vinyl sound is to make all the records 45 rpm and be read with a dj rigid cart which makes the SNR to overcome the dust significantly but we are in a completely different era. One of my worst dissapointment was to buy a Tori Amos record which was cut so dense to get more music on a record that i can hardly listen to it unless the turntable is set perfectly and no compression system works with that damn recod i payed 20 pounds as new in the shop.


If nothing works build a tube phono preamp in such a way that you have natural compression on clicks and pops.Not all valve preamps do that sucessfully though...You could try using a variable mu valve usually used in valve compressors for the first stage and that would work admirably as some of my friends experienced.
 
Yes, I have a Parks Audio Puffin.
"Magic" declicker works fine, although as said earlier, the better your setup the smaller the benefit. Anything you can do to reduce "ringing" after a click also improves overall sonics.
Anyway, back to the Puffin: Sounds fine, and well worth it for all the extra features. I have the digital out version feeding into a MiniDSP SHD. So I don't tend to use the Puffin's DSP features.

One not-well-known benefit of using DSP or a declicker is the delay it introduces. A delay of 20msec or so works wonders in eliminating acoustic feedback...and you'd be surprised at how this affects the "sound" of many turntables and tonearms and even which sounds best...:devilr:

Cheers,
Mike
 
I was one of the original kickstarter financiers of Sweet Vinyl -own both a SC-1 and SC-2. And have been very happy with them -my goal is to come home at the end of my work day -pour out 2 oz of bourbon -pop on a record and relax. I understand and have a number of good friends who really enjoy working with computers - that's fine. I work with computers pretty much every day and think the customer who said "God created computers 'cause we quit using mules" pretty much got it right. So -to support my audio obsession I work 7 day work weeks.
A few months ago I bought a Parks Audio Puffin with SPDIF output. BTW-mine delivers a 24/96 and the even newer TOSLINK version delivers that via optical out. Both are extra cost options from Parks Audio.
The Majic noise reduction that Shannon Parks implemented in the latest software in the puffin works nicely - I switched it in and out on the same records and decided I just couldn't hear it except it knocked almost all the clicks n pops off of decently treated/handled LP's. For the last few months I have done all my listening thru the Puffin ( at least a couple of hundred hours in total ) with the Majic noise reduction on. Obvious question -why own a Sweet Vinyl box too ? The difference is that Shannon Parks decided on what threshold to set the Puffins noise reduction to and seems like he made a good call on this -no pumping/gating -transparent to my ol nun handles. BUT-BIG BUT! -I have bought thousands of thrift store treasures - a fair number of these have been loved to death. In particular I have great old jazz records that cleaning helps -but they sound like the movie theater lobby's popcorn machine. This is where the adjustable threshold feature of the Sweet Vinyl boxes really comes into play - pretty darn unlistenable terribly damaged LP's are musically pleasant to listen thru with a Sweet Vinyl box. let me be clear on this -the reason I have donated back to GW several thousand LP's is that those LPs are in my experience no longer enjoyable because they are so horribly damaged that nothing can make them musical to me. Not cleaning , not stylus tips , not the Puffin ,not the SC-1 or SC-2 . Records are irreplaceable -please treat them as such.

mikey_audiogeek said:
("Yes, I have a Parks Audio Puffin.
"Magic" declicker works fine, although as said earlier, the better your setup the smaller the benefit. Anything you can do to reduce "ringing" after a click also improves overall sonics.
Anyway, back to the Puffin: Sounds fine, and well worth it for all the extra features. I have the digital out version feeding into a MiniDSP SHD. So I don't tend to use the Puffin's DSP features.

One not-well-known benefit of using DSP or a declicker is the delay it introduces. A delay of 20msec or so works wonders in eliminating acoustic feedback...and you'd be surprised at how this affects the "sound" of many turntables and tonearms and even which sounds best...

Cheers,
MIKE ")


SO I was wondering are you using the Puffin as your main Phono preamplifier and how does it compare to Analog tube or Solid State in the Amplification of your cartridges. Not just as surface noise reduction. PS Who is GW?

Would you rather a true Phono Stage rather than a DSP if you were to choose just one?
 
Yes it's my only phono at the moment and it's what I would choose if I could have only one. It's got an unbeatable array of useful features.
The alternative is to use a conventional phono into the A/D of the MiniDSP SHD. However I have not been inspired to resurrect my 417a/JFet phono for comparison. Yet.

GW = Goodwill