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?

[Continuum]

Regarding wet playback and other things, here is a page that you may find interesting: (I guess the site's now down, so it's Google Archived only)

How to Clean

From the link:

Playing records 'wet'.
a) DON'T! - during playback the stylus and groove does in fact heat up a bit, and this is essential for the vinyl to be able to flex when the stylus can't really follow the groove. IF you cool the pickup by using the Lencoclean wet play back device, then mistracking (it always happens, cutting heads always can and will cut more than any pickup can track on playback) will lead to a chipping type damage of the groove wall that is irreversible instead of the usual recoverable bending.

Could someone elaborate on this? I find it hard to understand and harder to believe. The second explanation he gives sounds more reasonable to me.