Broken before it left the factory

My turntable is not the problem. My cartridge is not the problem. My cleaning is not the problem.

I clean every record in a $4,000 Degritter with lab-grade distilled water before it touches my stylus, and I never touch the playing surface. Some brand new, factory-sealed premium records still sound terrible. The problem is baked into the vinyl itself before it ever leaves the factory.

Here's what goes wrong. Non-fill, when the vinyl never fully fills the groove walls; stamper damage, copied identically onto every record pressed from it; inclusions and bubbles, invisible on the surface, that the stylus finds anyway. The defect is the groove itself, and the incentive at the plant rewards speed and volume, not quality.

Cleaning still matters, and I am not giving up my machine. An ultrasonic cleaner removes every possible contamination so you hear exactly what the pressing gave you. It cannot give you a better pressing than the one you bought. What it does give you is certainty about who to blame.

Do not blame your cleaning routine for problems that were manufactured into the record. Blame the factory, and send the record back.