Classics Clarity Vinyl

I have four of the 45rpm box sets and all of them were noisy out of the box, after a wash. I washed them thrice more and the Holly Coles are still noisy (I have both).

For this kind of money one should get dead quiet vinyl without needing to clean it at all. An example, I bought The XX's debut lp for about $15 and this was on flimsy vinyl from a garage rock band and WOW so quiet! Not audiophile grade mastering but the LP was black like a CD. I paid $120 for my Holly Cole Temptations set... Great dynamics, i's are dotted, t's are crossed save for the vinyl itself. This concoction is in my opinion far more hype than anything else.

That said, I have regular older 180g black vinyl from Classics (like the Harry Belafonte Live at Carnegie) which are superb! So a hit and miss company. When I'm paying a premium for their so-called top offerings, I expect what I get from say Music Matters, let alone from a band like XX on whatever indie label they are on.

I purchased a couple of dozen Classic 180gm and they were all perfect. When they went to the 200gm I got about 1/2 that were from good to perfect,(a few pops to perfectly quiet) a few that were bad but not worth the trouble of sending back and about a third that were absolute garbage. My purchases were from Music Direct, Elusive Disk and Accoustic Sounds. Each of these companies completely backed the product and I can highly recommend them. I did get two sets of clarity vinyl and they are both fine but I again have written off classic records, primarily due to their response to this problem. They seem to completely ignore it and continue down the same path.

Just to add more datapoints.....

I own the following three Classics Clarity releases:

Cannonball Adderley, Somethin' Else
John Coltrane: Blue Train
Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington: ? (I forget which one)

Each of these sounds superb.

While it does sound a bit hit or miss, I guess I have been very unlucky.

I don't think it's tracking force (running a Dynavector XV-1s at 2.01) and other vinyl titles are fine.

I do seem to get more problems with 45 rpm though. Doug, what is the slow play test?

Ian

I have the "Somethin Else" Mono 45rpm set on Clarity. It's the only Classic record I have that sounds perfect. No noise, no pops. Beautiful. But the other six I've had(black vinyl 200g) range from "listenable but not really acceptable" to "complete rice crispy garbage".

The most frustrating thing is when someone who's never experienced it suggests you're doing something wrong like "your antiskate is off" "your vtf is too light". You mean my vtf is a problem for records made by one company but not for the hundreds of other records I have?

I'm really happy "Somethin Else" turned out right though. It sounds amazing.