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Can You Live With Crackling & Popping Noise?

I just got my first turntable, a Rega P5 and not sure whether I'm supposed to be delighted or otherwise. When I put on my first record, there was intermittent popping, hissing and crackling noise at low to moderate volume levels. Having lived with digital for half of my life, I find this to be somewhat annoying. For a while I was feeling disappointed and pondering whether I would end up selling this thing. After a while I thought what the heck, since I had got this thing home I might as well turn up the volume and enjoy the music. I started to crank it up to reasonably high levels and all the hissing, crackling and popping noise began to drown and disappear into the background music. Somehow the annoyance turned to musical bliss, well almost.

My question, especially for those who own high-end turntables, can you live with all the crackling and popping noise? I reckon all these noises will be quite noticeable especially when playing some clean vocals with minimum background music? What actually cause all these noises? Is the noise caused by dust sticking on the surface of the record assuming the record is in good condition? Is there any way these crackling and popping noises can be reduced or eliminated completely by cleaning the records?

The manual states as follows:-

"Don't worry about visible dust on the record surface, this is brushed aside by the stylus and any that collects on the stylus can be easily blown away. In general, record cleaning is overdone and one should not believe all the claims made by record cleaner manufacturers."

Does this mean that cleaning records is pointless? If that is the case how do we get rid of the crackling noise in the event the dust and fine particles are the ones that are causing these noises? Is there any easy solution to clean the records by ourselves?

For any newbie who wants to take the turntable route, I would urge you to reconsider your options particularly if you have minimal tolerance towards popping and crackling noises. Even all my good old cassette collection that ended up in the rubbish bin years ago didn't exhibit all these popping and crackling noises.

If all these noises do not exist in records then analog is really the one to beat.

Thank you for your patience.
ryder

Showing 1 response by tfkaudio

tfkaudio
591 posts
 
Art Dudley of Stereophile has, on several occasions, poked fun at the Rega "philosophy" of letting the cartridge stylus clean the record. "May your purgatory be a restaurant where they don't wash the plates, but rather let the forks clean the plates" (or something close to that) was one of the more hilarious takes on that philosophy.
No, you really do gotta clean records if you want them to sound their best.

Keep in mind, if a record is old and wasn't really cared for and was played on a turntable with a badly mis-aligned or overworn cartridge, the noise is probably there to stay.

But, for most others, the popping and hissing can be greatly reduced, if not eliminated, by a good cleaning.

Yesterday, my girlfriend asked my to give her a formal introduction to the music of the Beatles. I played the first 7 studio releases for her, and I heard a "pop" one time on side two of "With the Beatles". One pop on six albums*. Could you live with that?

* One of the seven albums, "Beatles for Sale", was played on CD (I don't have a vinyl copy of that one). After listening to it after playing the first 3 albums on vinyl, it was obvious how dry, unmusical, and uninvolving the CD was. I could tolerate a whole lot of popping and hissing before my experience was as unsatisfying as that.

Hopefully you have a good number of albums that are in good condition that will have little to no popping or hissing.

Cheers
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