Snap crackle and pop

Vinyl's achillies heel

 

when I loved vinyl that was always a torn in my side...but, the choices back then were minimal and the snap crackle and pop remained in the songs for years after getting into digital! old habits die hard...when I did wake up the pure listening experience of digital was an awakening...

 

Not sure "pure" is the right word.

 

it works for me...the word that is...there are some CDs that sound incredibly pure...

 

Hey, I do agree with that.

 

I have purchased thousands of LPs-- new and used-- in all conditions through the years. (I much prefer the background silence and dynamic range of properly mastered CDs). Not mentioned so far among LP faults is off-center pressings-- sometimes found on only one record side. A visual inspection of the LP is useless in ferreting out this ruinous problem, which results in a whole side of wavering "sea sick" sound. (Classical music is especially vulnerable to this defect). I know of no equivalent CD fault.

 

: )

 

What about Groove Glide or other lubricants? I have a friend who cleans with a Spin Clean then gives a light application of GG for records with repeating ticks or light scratches that make pops.clicks,etc.. He claims it really tames SN.

I replied today in the How's Your Luck Been In The Used Bins Lately. Post #6975,page 279 about some nice Jazz titles I thrift picked this morning. The covers were beautiful but the vinyl had some marks and light scratches that give some SN on a few titles and while it's annoying a bit on the soft passages of Coltrane's Alabama on Live At Birdland , for example, for 63 cents I can't complain and it's OK I can live with it for now. Plus, I only lightly hand cleaned; A good RCM cleaning will probably improve it a lot. It might drive others crazy and they'd not be able to listen... and/or get rid of it... but for me it's a joy to finally have a copy of a great record that I have very little $ in and has only slight random SN.

 

I'm guessing you meant 'unlistenable' I'm still waiting for my Spin Clean to do that.

Miserable. Thanks for asking.

 

True enough, but then again you will never experience the benefits either. In almost all things in life, there are the pluses and minuses. I am a staunch vinyl listener, and can't really stand digital music. But to be fair, I can't imagine anyone who grew up with digital music being able to get past all the issues one can experience with vinyl. I can picture myself listening to CD's and then somebody getting me to listen to vinyl that has it's usual pops and clicks. I would probably start laughing at the guy trying to convince me this is better!

I was raised on vinyl, so I think you just learn to ignore the defects to a certain degree. That's where the grey area comes in. I tolerate an issue here and there as the benefits I know I hear outweight them, but I can't defend vinyl to the average listener of digital music unless they are an audiphile, in which case they already know the what those are. A lot has to be right in order for vinyl to sound better. You really have to love good sound to put up with it. And CD's can sound amazing, but they simply aren't generally mastered to sound that way. I think things have settled to two camps: vinyl is mastered (generally) for people who care about how the music sounds, and CD's are for everyone else. And that's the larger, by far, of the two crowds. I consider vinyl lovers lucky that they even care about us!

 

What really gets me is comparing spending up to $50 for a new LP while the CD with the same mastering costs about $12 (or less used), and then those with the LP are upset that it has all the expected defects. (and I am a person with nearly 100,000 LPs, and maybe 60,000 CDs)

 

So... don't buy LPs that cost fifty bucks, maybe? My rule is that if a new LP costs less than ten bucks more than the CD, I buy the LP. So I buy the LP instead of the CD about 90 percent of the time.

To stay on topic, I tend to agree that if you grew up on vinyl (raises hand), it's much easier to hear through any surface noise. I barely register anything that's short of an actual skip or stuck groove, both of which are vanishingly rare if you clean your records and take care of them.

I always say, if you're hearing the surface noise, that means the music isn't holding your attention.

 

Right on. I was going to say: Just get the recent UMe reissue. It sounds great. There was speculation that it’s based on the MoFi work before UMe canceled that project.

 

Well, of course I do not. Not $20 either. I will spend that on a rare original pressing though, if it is something extremely special. Replicas do not interest me.

 

Did you say what you were playing your records on?
Snap, crackle and pop is the inherent nature of records. Even with new audiophile records sometimes.
The record companies and those who press the records don't use high-dollar, fancy playback equipment, just average stuff. If you go to the websites of those behind the records, you will see pictures of lot's of Technics 100o and 1200's, Audio Technica AT-LP120's and 1240's, etc.
When you are talking about vintage vinyl from the 50's and into the 60's, the records were cut to be played with 1 to 2 mil conical/spherical needles in dedicated mono crystal or ceramic cartridges, which have a much narrower frequency range. Played this way, s,c&p, wasn't a real issue. Big hi-fi and stereo home furniture type consoles were what the regular above the crust people attained to have. Your s,c&p ,again, wasn't a real issue because many of the adverse sound effects were covered up.
There were the hi-fi geeks around also with there McIntosh tube amps and Garrard 301 turntable with the latest, most modern Shure and GE VR cartridges. Yeh, the hi-fi geeks complained about snap, crackle and pop back then too. A diamond stylus was big stuff back then with the average joes having to suffice with osmium and saphire stylii.
Most LP's into the early-60's were designed to be played on automatic record changers. You might notice on your Sinatra LP, if an original pressing, when the tone arm moves into the run-out area, near the label it will start wig-wagging back and forth. This was put there because many record changers were of the velocity rejecting type and a large movement of the tone arm was necessary to start the reject cycle. Oh, the vinyl dam around the outer edge of the record was also put there for automatic record changers so the stylus wouldn't slip off the record on set-down.
To make sure that the record sounds as good as it can on whatever you play it on, ya gotta give 'em a good cleanin,' foist.

 

@Richard--W , have you tried posting a WTB post on this site? There’s a chance a Sinatra collector here might have an extra copy of what you’re seeking. And could pledge to the sound quality.

 

Many older CD's are sourced from vinyl so they are out there. It depends on what you listen to.

 

you're grasping...: )

 

Yup...you really have to love good sound to justify it. But if it was truly snake oil, they wouldn't get people to keep spending it. It's one thing to say it's better, but when people put their money where their mouth is, it's hard to not see that something about vinyl must be better as many of us here continue to spend stupid money on good pressings. I spent $99 to pre order the coming Simon & Garfunkel Bridge album, and $89 for the MFSL Billy Joel hits album. But the Joel album is simply amazing, and I expect the S&G will be too. Regarding your comment about expecting defects, most here will agree that experienced buyers DO expect, and usually get, outstanding quality when we start spending north of $35. They know people won't tolerate defects at that level and typically only quality pressing facilities are used for those types of albums. You're point is dead on, however, for standard big selling artists like Taylor Swift, etc. You just aren't going to typically get quiet defect free vinyl when a double disc album is $21. I just have lower standards for stuff like that, but many would say those too should be well done. And yes, they should. I don't think any company should put out a compromised product, but it's just the way it is.

 

I love it when I get records that have almost no noticeable "snap crackle and pop". But it happens. If it's serious surface noise I may seek out a better copy. Otherwise, it just becomes a part of the sound and I don't sweat it. Besides, some records cannot be heard without some snap crackle and pop present- especially roots and old blues mucis transferred to new vinyl on labels like Biograph, Folkways, Rounder, Yazoo, Takoma, etc.

 

Great post!

 

I guess I'm hyper-sensitive to surface noise. Even when I was a kid, just one pop during a song really bothered me, and crackle drove me absolutely bonkers. It was just the way things were, though, so you learned to live with it. I did become rather obsessive about cleaning my records, for sure.

Once the CD format came along (high school years for me), I abandoned ship on vinyl. Hearing music with such quiet, perfect clarity made my sensitivity to surface noise even worse, I think. No more inner-groove distortion. No more sibilance. Snap, crackle, and pop gone for good. CDs have their own set of shortcomings, but, for me, it was a worthwhile tradeoff -- especially in those early years before the loudness wars started.

 

Many older CD's were NOT sourced from vinyl, but a few were. What you might be thinking about is what they did do, at least in the U.S., was to use the album master tapes as a source. Often the album master tapes were 2nd and 3rd generation, being equalized for LP production, not CD production.

 

i was raised on vinyl too, got my first 45 at 12 years of age and never stopped.

there is nothing, literally nothing, that could ever make me go back to listening to vinyl.

maybe my old ears just aren't any good anymore, but i have zero problem listening to CD's, in fact i love them.