It is shown that a direct spectral optimization scheme can be implemented to obtain improved heteronuclear dipolar decoupling schemes for solid-state magic-angle-spinning NMR experiments. The resulting schemes, which turn out to have a particularly simple form, are shown to be applicable over the whole range of commercially available spinning speeds (from 5 to 35 kHz), and are shown to improve on the performance of the best existing sequences. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.