Help educate Analogue rookie

Yes noise is a reality, varies greatly depending on the quality of the vinyl. Be prepared to invest time and effort to clean the vinyl to get the best sound. Even at that in my experience you must learn to live with a least a minimal amount of noise.

With that said, let me say do it! You will not believe how much better vinyl sounds. I've got a couple of 10K CD players and my used 700.00 turntable/arm/cartridge smokes em. I have a hard time getting excited about digital sound at all at this point. I was bothered at first by the clicks/pops/noise, but it's slowly not bothering me as much and I'm improving it greatly by learning how to clean the vinyl right. I have yet to find out if a better setup will improve on that or not. How CD sound ever passed for perfect I'll never know. I can only imagine what vinyl loving audiophiles must have thought when CDs were introduced and subsequently cut into the stock of available vinyl. CDs are still neccesary and great of course since most new music is only available there, but there are also a lot of older recordings only on vinyl too.

I'm no expert on what to buy, but if I were spending 2500.00 I would try for a used Nottingham Spacedeck (real unfussy to use for a vinyl newbee) and spend the rest on a cartridge of your choice. I bought a Nottingham Horizon and it's fantastic.

I have a friend who vists and hears my system a lot. He is amazed by the improvment vinyl brings over CD. His comment on it was.... Listening to digital is like looking at a very high quality photo print. Listening to vinyl is like looking at the real thing through a slighty dirty window.

Unless you have a collection of vinyl, I would seriously question getting into vinyl. The $2,500 could get you a nice turntable/arm/cartridge and a handful of records, but you'd probably be better off spending that money entirely on new music. In other words, you could spend the next few months enjoying listening to 200+ new CDs or spend that time figuring out the intricacies of turntable vibration isolation and cartridge alignment while listening to a small number of vinyl records. The upside is that those few records could sound wonderful. I'm not saying either choice is wrong, but it is something for you to consider. If you read the archives you'll see that not every convert to vinyl was entirely happy with their attempts. If you still want to go with vinyl my recommendation is a used Well Tempered turntable and tonearm. Can be had for less than $1,500 and there are numerous upgrades and tweaks available.

If you are saying that you want no background noise at all then I would recommend that you pass on vinyl. Yes, background noise is a vinyl reality. However, except for some occasional ticks most of this noise is only heard between tracks and sometimes during very quiet passages. It depends on the condition of the LP and/or how well it is cleaned. It depends on the quality of the bearing and how well the table sinks vibrations. It depends on the stylus shape and tracking parameters. It depends on many things. Vinyl is a commitment of time, effort and money. When one get's it right, nothing comes close to vinyl playback short of reel-2-reel. Not HDCD, SACD, DVDA, etc. I suggest finding someone close to you with a decent vinyl setup and try to arrainge a few listening sessions. Decide from experience as it were. If you do choose to give it a try you will find many good people here that will be happy to help you along.