Brand new vinyl - what’s acceptable to you?

@mgrif104 

With respect to the scratch on the Norah Jones album, when played is the scratch audible? Vinyl inevitably has visible surface features that when played are usually inaudible.

Sometimes for one reason or another during pressing, packaging etc., at the pressing plant the surface becomes contaminated with foreign matter that may or may not be audible. The patch of noise you hear a 1/4 way into the first track of your Miles Davis album may be just the case. A close visual inspection under good light, preferably on the turntable noting the position of the tonearm when you heard the noise may only require physically removing the offending foreign matter. I gently use my pinky nail followed with a pass from the edge of my silicon roller to remove leftover debris from the scraping. This often achieves complete silence after such a procedure and such is the nature of vinyl, perfect yet flawed!

“How much noise do you accept on a new pressing?”

Zero noise. As many pointed out, every record I purchase gets treated with UCM bath, fresh MoFi sleeves before it gets played. I am using Degritter MKII with distilled water to clean my records.

As far as Norah Jones, not sure which version you purchased…I found AP’s Vinyl version sounds the best! 

Also, what are you using to clean your stylus? 

@billstevenson My rationale is that by using the Loricraft first, I am removing gross contamination from the record before it goes in the Degritter. It gets vacuum dried by the Loricraft's clever mechanism. Then when it goes in the distilled water in the DG there should be very little for it to remove, and thus very little left to be dried on the surface.

I did go as far as taking the wet record from the Degritter back to the Loricraft for a vacuum dry, but there were two problems: I have to place a wet record down on the platter and dry the uppermost surface, then flip it and put the newly dried side onto the wet platter. So I got an extra platter mat. Using this contributed to the second problem: it took too much time to go through the whole process and began to make me want to play CDs and SACDs more. So I struck a happy compromise and I find the results very acceptable. I have had conversations here with Neil. He had me do things like air dry a drop of the used solution on a mirror and look for residue (there was none).

@faustuss 

unfortuantely, yes the scratch is audible - though not for the entire length of it which crosses several tracks. But you’re right - what’s visible isn’t necessarily audible. In this case, it is.

Any (new to me) record goes through my Degritter II.