How do you get past the pops and hiss of LPs?

Motdaturd, seems your apologies are not addressed to the right person. Every fact that ever there was is tortured by subjective audiophiles, be they vinylists or proponents of digital, to the point of being unrecognizable. As I have said and repeated: you eat what you like and I'll eat what I like, don't tell me it's chocolate if it's Ex Lax. The original poster says he hears the noise and appears not to like it. I can only tell him that, except when the planets align and the moon is holding water, he will always hear surface noise from lps, if it is not present when the record is brand spanking new, he just has to wait and eventually the surface noise will be audible. Telling him to learn to like such noise is disingenuous at best.

Is it so hard to understand that different individuals have different priorities and different prejudices?

Exactly. I do find it interesting that there seem to be a lot of people still into LP replay and we should ask why. If we sweep aside the far fetched reasons like mass hypnosis we are left with a couple of obvious things. It certainly cannot be the stability of the media. No one in their right mind wants to be careening a hard rock around a soft vinyl groove and all of the attendent cleaning, preening and aligning that goes along with it. So it is safe to say that it is not convenience either. Some would suggest nostalgia. But there are a lot of younger people into vinyl. I am the only one I know that uses an 8-track player in a high end system. There aren't many people posting here that the compact casette, elcasette or open reel tapes are the way to go, these would seem to engender nostalgic feelings too if that were the reason. Then why so many proponents of the LP? It must be that some prefer the sound, known technical shortcomings and all. But it may also be that some great music is only available on LP and will probably never be reissued on CD, just as there is great music on CD that will never be issued on LP.

inpepinnovations@aol.com Your rig is entry level, you will not be able to retrieve the lower 2 or 3 octaves on this turntable combo + a lot of other music.
I have not used a BPS, many like this budget cartridge.
We talked about this LP noise problem some people have,
a while back, and one of the fellows that was complaining about lp noise was using a BPS. "
Remember I said;

"The low frequencies are the hardest to trace for the cartridge and track for the arm. It takes a superior combo to dig the information out of those groves. Twl's moded Origin Live silver arm and a Shelter 501 cartridge (Retail is $1,600) with the hi fi mod increases the low end with at least another octave"

Eldartford
"Rockinroni...Perhaps your phono pickup could track LF vertical modulation of an LP groove, but there isn't any because the recording engineer was producing the LP for people with ordinary playback equipment."

Eldartford I think you will have to take my word for it. I Can now, get tons of LF, bigtime! The Origin live arm is reported to be one of the best arms right now and Twl's mod alone got me another octave. I personally have heard it this. It is not a point of view, it is fact. A lot of lp's have great bass.

ePbb,"xcept when the planets align and the moon is holding water, he will always hear surface noise from lps, if it is not present when the record is brand spanking new, he just has to wait and eventually the surface noise will be audible"
This statement is misleading because you will not "Always" hear noise. I and others here have stated we hear little or no noise from most lp's we have, many of my LP's are 30 years and older. What has been stated here is (and not very clearly) on a 70's technology turntable you will hear a lot of noise. On a modern high end, properly setup analog rig you will not.
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Unsound
"Is it so hard to understand that different individuals have different priorities and different prejudices?"

Also and more to the point, people have there opinions biased upon their experiences. All have had different experiences that is why we have different opinions. If those who differ with me could hear what I listen to. I believe we would have the same opinion.

Viridian, 8 Tracks SUCK bad, talk about noise.

Until you reach a certain level of digital playback quality using redbook cd's, a very reasonable vinyl system with records that have been cleaned and taken care of will provide a far higher level of liquidity, transient response, separation of notes & instruments and proper tonal balance. While the CD may win several categories in terms of "absolutes", the LP wins in most categories in terms of "natural presentation". If your results with LP differ from what i've stated here, chances are, you were using gear that was pretty horribly designed, pretty horribly set-up or a combo of the two.

Several people were completely blown away when they heard how good a $150 direct drive linear tracking turntable that came complete with a "reasonable" MM cartridge off of Ebay could sound when teamed with a good quality but used $200 preamp with built in phono section. After hearing a system that i put together for a friend, the same comment of "I don't remember records ever sounding this good" was repeated by two different people at two different listening sessions. These were the first words out of their mouths after hearing less than one full song. All of this with records that had never seen a VPI, Nitty Gritty or Sota record cleaning machine.

Part of the reason for this is that Linear trackers will place the stylus in different areas of the groove than a pivoted arm will. One can take worn LP's that are somewhat "noisy" on a standard pivoted design and play them on a Linear tracking design and instantly drop the noise floor quite noticeably. Obviously, the shape of the stylus being used has something to do with this, but the fact that tracking error is reduced and the cartridge now rides more uniformly in the center of groove has GREAT benefits. Sean
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