Vinyl Pops/Cracks/Static - At a bit of a loss here

Hey all.

I've got a bit of a problem with cracks and pops coming from my vinyl player. Before anyone lambastes me too harshly, I've been searching these forums, as well as at least 4 others, for the past week. I've tried just about every proposed solution that I can think of short of taking them to a professional record cleaner and paying $5-$10 per album.

The issue is just random pops and clicks throughout all my albums. Some are worse than others, but it's always present. I've been playing everything from Daft Punk (Tron) to Def Leppard Hysteria, to Fleetwood Mac Rumours to the Beatles Abbey Road. The issue persists.

My hardware setup is currently:

- Rega Planar 3 (2016), Elys 2 Cartridge, Stock Felt Mat
- Tracking force set to 1.75g (digital scale) with matching bias adjustment
- Cartridge alignment with a protractor set.

- Phono Stage: Project Tube Box DS
- 40dB Gain, with stock 47pf input capacitance/47kohms input impedance

- Denon AVR S720W
- Sennheiser HD 600/Klipsch R-15M

I'm working on getting myself a proper headphone amplifier and perhaps a better set of speakers but, from everything I've surmised, they wouldn't cause the problems I've been having.

Here are the steps I've taken:

- Spin Cleaning with the included cleaner and distilled water
- Spin Cleaning with just distilled water.
- Air drying on a dish rack with neoprene rests.
- Vacuum drying with the Vinyl-Vac
- Carbon Fiber Brush
- Milty Zero-Stat
- Onzow Zerodust stylus cleaner gel thing
- Canned Air
- MoFi Master Sleeves

I'm a little new to vinyl and am just at a complete loss for any further steps I can take. I know that vinyl can sound much cleaner than what I'm getting. One friend and one of the show-rooms I demoed.

I guess I have a few questions about where I could continue looking:

1. Could the felt mat be partially to blame? I have a friend loaning me an Auditorium 23 Standard Mat that should be on my TT sometime next week.
2. Could my gain/capacitance settings be wrong on my phono stage?
3. Could there be something wrong with my cartridge?
4. Could it just be that somehow all my vinyl is affected by something I'm not accounting for?


Thanks for any help anyone can give me.

 

It doesn't appear that your equipment or its set up is causing these issues.

Your vinyl just appears to be noisy, that's all.

If you did all that and you still have noise, you will likely always have noise, with these records.

Clean all you will, there will still be noise. I know that, because I cleaned and I cleaned and they are still noisy.

If you look in the Equipment For Sale forum, you will see that one of our esteemed members, after 49-years, has gone completely digital, guess why?

Just for yucks, why not select an average noisy record, and send it out to be professionally cleaned, and see if that makes the noise go away?

 

i too had issues when i had the Elys. All issues have vanished since i git rid of it. If you can borrow another Cart it might be worth a try

 

Just putting this out there - my "pops and crackles" have increased since switching out a Manley Chinook to a Lounge LCR mkiii. I wasn't totally buying what makes a phono pre able to "deal with" noise like that and kinda shove it to the background, beyond the music, but now I do believe that's a thing. Unfortunately the juice isn't worth the squeeze with respect to the price of admission. I'm not necessarily convinced this is the same issue you're having, but like I said, just putting it out there.

 

Assuming your setup is good...

Vinyl has clicks and pops, especially "standard" run of the mill pressings.
Buy yourself an "audiophile" piece of vinyl. Some from Music Matters (Jazz) or Analogue Productions (Rock or Jazz). If you like The Doors the new AP releases are notably quiet.
This will give you a good idea of how good vinyl can be. Most of my discs are near silent but I seek out quality issues.

 

Im listening to Robin Trower Bridge of Sighs right now,..not a click crackle or pop to be found,ahhhh.
And then I have a couple that no amount of cleaning will silence them, only a couple though. Noisy ones go away.
As a matter of fact the last four albums I've played today were dead quiet.
I only get my used albums from my trusty local record store, and he usually has very clean stuff.
You can also develop an eye for pristine vinyl. Good luck

 

Show me a record that doesn't have pops and clicks and I will show you it has.

 

There have been hundreds of millions, if not more vinyl produced. Do you understand how completely unreasonable it sounds to suggest at least a few squeaked by without fault? Come on, man.

 

Sounds like you need to improve your vinyl buying karma and/or avoid dodgy digital nu-vinyls for awhile and see if your luck improves.

Pro tip: When buying vintage used pressings, look for that tell-tale uniform shiny sheen on both sides. (Your eyes will recognize this more often with practice.) Dull looking vinyl almost always plays dirty.

Good luck.
God speed.

 

You misunderstand.

 

My previous setup had similar issues, had lots of static problems that I couldn't solve. I think it may have been grounding related but after I upgraded my table and cartridge, the issue resolved itself. I'd take a record you have that is particularly noisy and play on someone else's rig. See if its the record or your setup...that's pretty easy to verify where the problem is found...your record or your rig...

I also hate to say it but if you are expecting $5,000 performance from your Rega setup, it isn't going to happen. In order to get my sound into the next level, I had to pretty much upgrade everything in my setup for a trouble free listening experience.

 

I grew up with records, joined Columbia House record Club in 69. Sounds like you have a lot of scarred up records. I don't listen to records as often as digital, but I don't really notice the ticks and pops the way I used to unless it's a loud one. It's just something to get accustomed to.

 

Make sure the stylus is clean, and also that the head shell on the tone arm is on tight. Also, my experience has been that some newer vinyl pressings lack some basic quality control and have sporadic clicks from start to finish. The MOFI releases should be a good indicator of whether or not you have a problem with your actual setup.

 

Given your initial statement, I'm not surprised. What did you mean, then?

 

I have a Planar 3 I bought used with two cartridges - a Rega Exact MM and Sumiko Blue Point HO MC. I listened with the Exact for a while, thought it was good, had what I thought was probably average pop and crackle, but figured it was just the deal with vinyl. On a lark I changed out to the Sumiko, less expensive cartridge, couldn't be as good, right? And to my ears, a great deal of the problems have disappeared. And that is with increasing the gain on my Schiit Mani Pre to mate the output of the Sumiko. Perhaps some Cartridges are noisy?? I am very novice and may get blasted for this, but I'm just summing up my very brief observations. And I use almost identical cleaning profile to what you describe.

 

I had exactly the same!!! My Elyse was horrible, loads of snap crackle and pop. Bought the Exact; the problem remained. Finally bought a cheaper Sumiko Pearl and i am now in heaven! Weird but true

 

Yes, and yes.

cracks and pops (the sound of it) could be caused by static. the mat could be blamed for it.
Maybe, some carts are more susceptible to static than others.

And furthermore, vinyl usually has some surface noise. Some needles are more likely to pickup that crackle than others.

Best regards

 

It was an intent to be a bit of a humorous paraphrase, but with some truth to it. I see it as soon as we are starting to play a record, it will have some clicks and pops.
Not that it bothers me, I have since many years learned to listen through clicks, pops and surface noise.
As for the OP, I have not the slightest how it sounds in this case.

 

My apologies then, I did not catch the humor (you're usually so straight-laced!) And I see what you're saying.

 

No need to apologize, it wasn´t Your fault. I try not to write so many unnecessary words usually. I feel when English isn´t your first language, you need to be more precise.

 

There are several things that may help. First is to not have unrealistic expectations. I have been collecting Lp records (vinyl...) for almost 40 years now. I have used tons of hi-fi gear to play these back on ...literally. Many of my favorites records are older, rather well loved pieces in my collection, so they have some noise even though they are mostly all in very good condition. I have some new records still and some that are vintage but look new as they never really got played much. I always clean my records before play with a simple wet/dry wipe from a Discwasher. I have vacuum cleaned records but I don't do it all the time. I have thousands of records and if I took as long as some people do to clean them, based upon what I have read here, I'd never get to listen to them. They all have some noise. Even new records have some noise. I have some equipment that really helps to reduce that, but it can't be totally silent. So based on my quite extensive experience, I find it unrealistic to expect any sort of absolute perfection.

Now, there are some equipment changes that will help to lower the noise level a bit for you. The first thing that you should do, as it is free and you can do it immediately, is to look at your phono stage and make sure your settings are correct, not just assumed to be. You want 47k loading, but a very low capacitance setting. Check your manual to see how to achieve this. I see mention of 47pf but no indication of that on the rear (I suppose that is with no jumper?) and I see 100pf. Try both of those. The lower the capacitance, the lower the noise of the pops. The next thing that you can do is to get a cartridge with a fine line or line contact stylus. These can be rather expensive, at least the better sounding ones. AT makes a rather affordable one but it sounds thin by comparison to your Elys. The ones that I recommend are the Dynavector 20x2L for LOMC, or the Ortofon 2M bronze for MM. These are just shy of $1k and $500 respectively, so it is a bit of an investment. These fine stylus profiles track wonderfully and get deeper into the groove, avoiding many surface imperfections. The ones that I have mentioned have a warm and full sound as well as extended highs. The last piece are the loudspeakers. The Klipsch speakers are very efficient and use horn loaded tweeters that really emphasize sound in the frequency range of those ticks and pops. getting some less efficient, smoother sounding speakers will improve the experience also.
-Bill

 

Absolutely. No vinyl record will ever play without any surface noise. It is not possible. There are only shades of grey here. Fortunately, there are some ways to minimize this.
-Bill

 

I think there is a big difference between vinyl with clicks and pops and noisy vinyl. None of the clicks and pops in the records I own bother me but I do know a noisy record when I hear it. I am not sure if the original posters expectations are too high or if there really is a problem.

 

To hear some people talk you would think perfect sounding vinyl is achievable if you throw enough money at a system or clean your LPs with some magic machine.
There is talk about bad pressings and good. How would you know which are the "good" ones? Even if you found one for sale, who is to say how well it was taken care of by the previous owner?
How many times do we see threads where someone bought a brand new LP (recent pressing) but there is surface noise?
If getting perfect sound or even close is your goal, vinyl is going to lead to more frustration than you will want to deal with. I would think that by the time someone jumped thru a bunch of hoops to get a "unicorn" copy, they would not even be able to enjoy it after all the hassles and "critical listening".

But, sticking to the facts in the OP's case - perhaps a different mat will help issues. If not, then might just have to accept that analog just isn't perfect.

 

I've found that there is a big difference in brands of distilled water.
This could be part of the problem. Kroger brand left a lot more pops than the stuff I got at CVS. Gerber was pretty good too.
The best water I found was out of a machine at my local Marsh store that filtered, deionized, and all kinds of stuff to the water. Then I'd run it through my own Zero water filter. It made a big difference with pops in my case.