Thank you for your comment! I am all about vinyl preservation! I own over 4,000 vinyl records and I know what a difference clean vinyl makes in presenting the best overall sound. That is why I just purchased a Spin Clean manual disc cleaning kit. It is awesome! and so easy to use.

My previous method had been cleaning everything by hand using a Stanton anti static brush and Groovy vinyl cleaner, but it just wasn't giving me the best results. Spin Clean easily blows it out of the water. I can't believe the difference. To dry my records I tend to have very pleasing results with my brush and placing them on racks to dry for a little while, always a good brushing afterwards to remove static buildup and other nasty particles that may settle in the grooves.

As far as programs to "clean up" my recordings I am using what I think is an amazing program from Alpine Soft that delivers better results for me than Audacity did. Though I still find myself using Audacity for little things here and there while I get use to finding my way around the other program. I took a poorly recorded wav file and ran it through this one and VIOLA! it sounded so good again, took like 20 minutes and it was a few button clicks.

My new headshell for the brand new Ortofon 2M Red cartridge is suppose to be here today so by this evening I should have it installed and ready to break in. Good to have my old Pioneer back after a 3 year absence.

Hope you enjoy the project and that you have some small insight into my rigorous cleaning method, which at this point isn't all that demanding. Takes about 30 min per record from cleaning them to spinning them on the platter. I tend to batch clean about 5 at a time.

Look for a major update to the project in about two-three weeks from now once my system is all set up and burned in.

Cheers,

Adam