High Peak artifacts added to wave file -

I wanted to know if anyone has experienced this problem, and if so, what if any cause was found, and how it was corrected.

I record a file from a vinyl album in decent but not perfect shape. I run groove mechanic over the file, and artifacts are created which cause peaks in the music that greatly exceeds the average amplitude of the file. When played, these artifacts are NOT audible, but unless I manually go into the file and reduce the amplitude, I cannot normalize the file to anything near 0db, because the peaks are brought to 0db, but the remainder of the file - the average music level - is not.

I have sent files to Norm at Coyote, and he says that the original files contain a high amount of high frequency content, which is contributing to the problem, but I am an experienced listener, and althought the album tracks contain clicks and pops, the source material sounds pretty good to me - I honestly don't see this as the problem.

My base record level is usually set to about 80% (.8 of the 0db level) so I should not be "overdriving the sound card". I do notice that when I lower the initial record level to a max amplitude of 50% the problem is greatly reduced, but not eliminated. I would rather record at a higher initial level than that, as the final .wav file result seem to be best at this level.

I use:
An Ortofon cartridge - about two years old but not used much since purchased, other than when transfering vinyl to CD.
A Technics SL-3300 direct drive turntable.
An RCA solid state stereo amp purchased last year.
Gold connections to the computer.
A Creative Soundblaster sound card.

Has anyone out there had or seen this problem before?

Any help would be greatly appreciated -
P.A.B.