The Agony of Surface Noise

[Primalsea]

One of my main bug bears with vinyl is surface noise, it seems to be a constant battle to get rid of it.

I phoned Mantra Audio one and asked if there were any cartridges that were known to have minimal surface noise and the answer seem a bit counter intuitive. They said that cheaper cartridges have less contact with the record and so have less surface noise. The more contact the needle has the more surface noise you will get.

I thought that more expensive stylus's contacted the record much deeper in the grooves where any surface scratches would have no effect. So as long as the record was clean there would be less noise.

Maybe someone could shoot me with their Point of View Gun on this one.

[Clive]

As an experiment can you find somewhere to clean a couple of your records? Maybe they simply need a good clean. I use an RCM and don't have any real noise problems, even with most charity shop purchases.

Whats the RCM clive?
Surface noice bugs me too, even on brand new records silent passages and the run in/out are nowhere near silent.

[Clive]

Hi Graeme,

My RCM is a Loricraft (Record Cleaning Machine), it's rather expensive but there are machines that are much cheaper and do almost as good a job. The Loricraft is great for me as I can clean records at night without waking up the whole household.

A lot of new vinyl is noisy, there seems to be even less care taken with its manufacture than there was in the 70's.

[Cobblers]

In this respect most MC's are better than most MM's.

[Stratmangler]

I'd disregard the advice of Mantra Audio on this one !

The better the stylus profile you have, the less problem you will have with surface noise.

If you have a problem with ticks and pops then a RCM will much improve the situation.
If you have a problem with vinyl "roar" on the run in and lead out sections of the groove with little or nothing in the way of ticks and pops, then there is not much you can do apart from get a better stylus profile and possibly better isolate your TT.

What is your TT setup ?

Chris

[Allen]

Maybe double-check your azimuth too?

[David Mccallum]

I've found that phono stages can affect the noise reproduced,the NAD phono stage reproduced more surface noise than the White Noise stage i now use.Even so when i use my headphone amp and can's i still hear a lot of noise,one of the drawback's of the format i'm afraid.Goldring's exstatic brush is good and very durable too,it help's to vastly reduce crackles etc,the carbon fibres get right into the groves.Over a year's hard use now and still fine.

[Clive]

I always thought that the SS Linsley Hood discrete phone coped well with pops & clicks, I put this down to it's high overload characteristic.

[Primalsea]

I tend to get pops and crackles with used records that are in good condition and have been cleaned with a Clearaudio record cleaner. The shop I have used lately cleans all records that I buy.

Sometimes it can be difficult to know what is dirt and what is record damage. I find that cleaning often just lifts the dirt up which allows thew stylus dig it out of the grooves. I usuall find that after about 3 noisy plays after a good clean much of the noise is reduced.

Some records have surface scratches and a quick check with a micrscope shows that this does not go as deep as the lower groove walls. I was hoping a better stylus would miss the scratches.

The noise has got worse since I leveled the VTA, when it was tail up is seemed to be reduced but I did'nt like the overall sound of the adjustment.

If you want to see info on my TT read my recent Modified RB250 post in this section.