Help me stay with Vinyl.

I buy most of my vinyl from one of my local record stores. However, I'm not much of a jazz fan and my record store does not focus on jazz. That said, I buy quite a bit of vinyl from dealers on Discogs. My findings are that they are almost always over-graded by one or two levels, i.e. NM- graded records are actually VG+, etc. Rarely have I ever bought a M or NM used record that I considered accurately graded.

Discogs is pretty good. But it all depends on what you really want. If its good clean silent vinyl, good luck. The record you buy and open and it plays silent is a myth. That never was. No matter how much time and money you put into it, the best you will ever do is get it down to a dull roar. 

So my advice is, chill. A certain amount of noise is inherent in the medium. Fortunately, along with the noise comes the magic. The magic is the whole reason for putting up with the noise, and its totally worth it.

I do find it a bit depressing however that everyone notices the noise varies from copy to copy, but no one notices the magic varies as well. Lots of pressings are dead quiet, but have dreadful sound quality (cough cough MoFi cough cough) and a lot of guys actually seem to prefer that to noisy records with unbelievably beautiful sound quality.

Go figure. Whatever. Know thyself.

If you want silent you are doomed to a life of frustration. Unless you go digital. Then you are doomed to a life of no magic.

You pays your money and you takes your point of view.

I get  most of my vinyl from Acoustic Sounds; never had a complaint. All the digital guys talk about how digital has gotten "better" recently. Fine, but it will never be a real time linear reproducer like vinyl is; it will always be little chops of zeros and ones. If we had digital ears digital reproduction would be superior but that's not what we're dealing with. I do have more cd's than records, but I keep a log of time on my gear, mostly for tube time of use, and my log shows more than twice the hours with analog than digital.

tomic601

I also do well at discogs.

after the page comes up, click/sort on the word 'condition'
then, down the list untill ......

https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/9824525?sort=condition%2Cdesc&ev=rb

Equipment, phono settings, cables and cartridge make a huge difference on the amount of noise you hear.  My first system was an old Krell phono/pre, Clearaudio Moving Coil, and Krell amp.  This setup had a soundstage that wrapped around me 270 degrees, was from the floor to the ceiling, and a couple of city blocks deep.  The sound was crystal clear unlike anything I have ever heard, then or since.  It also reproduced every pop and tick with supreme enjoyment and the groove noise sounded like surf on the beach.  I enjoy my vinyl almost 50% of the time with CD's and streaming splitting the rest.  The stylus size must be small to avoid previous groove wear.  I am currently using a Benz Micro Wood SL that I bought rebuilt on Agon, using the 400 ohm setting and a Clearaudio Charisma MM cart, and I am playing records I felt were too noisy with great enjoyment.  Good Luck.