1st, you will never rid your vinyl of Snap, Crackle & Pop tho money & time can reduce other elves causing problems
2nd, at a certain point, the mastering and recording processes will pre-dominate over any increases in system quality (which come at increasing cost per ’unit’ SQ improvement - the law of diminishing returns...), so you need to be careful about what versions of an LP or CD you buy
very early CDs (mid-80s) were not well recorded, and very recent releases may have a lot of compression (masted for gag-tunes)
the CD layer of an SACD may well sound pretty good as more care is often taken for SACDs
I have kept a couple dozen LPs (special recordings, MoFi etc.) and have ripped my 2,000 CDs onto computer using Apple Lossless, so that tells you where I’m at on this
2nd, at a certain point, the mastering and recording processes will pre-dominate over any increases in system quality (which come at increasing cost per ’unit’ SQ improvement - the law of diminishing returns...), so you need to be careful about what versions of an LP or CD you buy
very early CDs (mid-80s) were not well recorded, and very recent releases may have a lot of compression (masted for gag-tunes)
the CD layer of an SACD may well sound pretty good as more care is often taken for SACDs
I have kept a couple dozen LPs (special recordings, MoFi etc.) and have ripped my 2,000 CDs onto computer using Apple Lossless, so that tells you where I’m at on this