Vinyl Care & Dust Removal, How to make vinyl sound good?? Options

[ViPER1313]

After reading the thread found here [ http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....t=7953&hl=vinyl ] I was blown away by the recording quality of the sandra.mpc sample. How do you get vinyl to sound so dust free and rich? All the vinyl that I have recorded has at least some dust crackling in the background, and some recordings sound extremely harsh (especially in the vocals - almost like clipping except there is no clipping going on.....) Do you use digital correction? Filtering? I use the following equipment -

Marantz TT1060 Turntable w/ unknown cartridge/needle (the cartridge/needle are replacements, less than 6 months old - I have no idea what brand / model they are, but they seem to be of decent quality.)

Marantz PM325 Receiver

SB-Live soundcard fed from phono -> receiver -> line-in (This is not the weak link I am concerned over - I know it has crappy quality recording, but I am worried about the record playback quality itself . I have also tried phono -> line-in directly and was not impressed with the quality at all.)

The cartridge seems to have good frequency response and be of decent quality, but I can not get rid of dust no matter what I try - I have a diskwasher and have tried a 1:5 alcohol/water solution, but the dust persists. Any tips?

[vraxoin]

The brushes from the Discwasher kits are designed to remove heavier surface grime, but they don't effectively sweep out particles caught deeper in the grooves and thus I would also second Pio2001's suggestion regarding a carbon fiber brush. I've been using the Hunt EDA brushes for years and they are very effective. A slightly less expensive carbon fiber brush which had also been recommended to me, but that I haven't used, is from Audioquest. Either of those will certainly outperform the Discwasher brush.

Also, you mentioned creating your own vinyl cleaning solution and I just wanted to make sure that you were using distilled water and not tap water which will usually do more to foul up your records than help. Plus, make sure that you use absolutely pure Isopropyl alcohol.

Finally, if you are having no luck and still want dead silent records, get one of these.