Looking for a technical explanation...


As I posted over in the Cables forum, I dropped a whopping $40 into a DeoxIT / DeoxIT GOLD Kit and spent the next 5 hours treating every cable and socket on every single piece of equipment.

Here's what I can't explain: My LP playback is MUCH more quiet (not only a "blacker background", but pops-n-clicks). I was honestly considering a less-sophisticated stylus profile because I thought all the "transparency" of an Optimized Contour Line Contact stylus was revealing stuff I didn't want revealed.

The only explanation I can come up with is that I'm using an Ayre P-5xe phono stage (balanced from the cartridge to the phono stage) and the oxidation was asymmetric with respect to the legs, exaggerating any playback imperfections(?). I don't know. Looking for thoughts. 

nrenter
As a wild guess, a connection which was becoming a semiconductor due to tarnish.  Meaning large transients get through better than lower level signal. So every click and pop, which is an explosive transient passed easily. Where the music, being a smaller voltage was muted even more by the semiconducting nature of the tarnish.
When you cleaned the connection, that layer of semiconducting tarnish was removed. Now the signal and the pops and clicks are equally being transmitted. Thus the apparent lowering of the noise vs the music.
The better ground connection was my first guess, but elizabeth posits an interesting explanation. I find the whole thing curious, but regardless, emphasizes the importance of clean connections. 
Significant gains can be achieved by treating all non-audio wall connections - fridge, computer, air purifier, floor lamps, TV.
Impossible to remove pops and clicks from a record that way. If they were reduced it wasn't because of that it was something else you did 
Even biplane a record multiple times the act of the stylus moving through the groove will dislodge garbage that you may hear initially but not the second time because the stylus has cleaned it out the first time.