Review Details

RT85 Reference High Fidelity Vinyl Turntable

Product Rating:

Product Review (submitted on December 11, 2021):

Quick background: I have had a Technics P-Mount turntable and a Pioneer PL-512 for a while now. Even though my Pioneer has the very great Nagaoka MP110 paired with the Schiit Mani phono preamp, I still wondered about the Ortofon Blue cartridge. So many other-the-top reviews of that thing.... Also, the high respect Fluance gets in general... Made me want it. If you are like me, you are always keeping on eye out for anything that will take your HiFi analog audio system to the next level. I could never relax and appreciate what I was hearing when I played vinyl. Are you like that too? Well, that OCD behavior ended when I got this TT!Pros: * The acrylic platter - dampens vibrations so WELL and also the static is way less because of it. * The thing is so darn quiet. You turn it on and it starts spinning and you cannot tell it's even on! Quiet as a mouse. * the thing is just so crustal clear. I definitely noticed a big time improvement of sound once I got maybe 30-40 hours of play time on the Ortofon Blue. * No SIBILANCE! Maybe the first TT I have ever had that pulls that off completely. Now, many think it's the Ortofon cartridge, but I think it's more in the quality of the TT itself. The tone arm is excellent. The TT tracks so well. The TT ships pre-aligned with the cartridge head alignment (or the VTA) spot on. I did have to adjust the Counterweight Balancer to get it within the 1.50 - 2.00 grams. I feel the things I mentioned above to be the real reason Sibilance is gone completely on my records with this TT. Records in various degrees of condition (good, mediocre, bad) all track so well with this cartridge and TT. * No Inner Groove Distortion (IGD). The inner most song on each side of a record can suffer from distorted sound. Since the tonearm and cartridge come so perfectly aligned... that is the reason I feel there is no IGD. * The feet (3 of them) are so easy to adjust to get your TT leveled (which will make a difference). The RT85 comes with it's own leveler to help you see how level (or not) your TT is! * looks aren't super important to me, but I gotta say this thing looks awesome (I got the "lucky bamboo" model).Cons: * the TT has "auto stop". I have had many turntables with auto stop. Comparatively, this is the WORST auto-stop you can get. The manual claims 30 seconds after it gets in the "filler" grooves that the TT will stop spinning. 30 seconds is a long darn time. I've had it go into the record's label and the sound was sickening when that happened causing me to run to the turntable to get it to stop. I wish you could adjust this 30 second thing. I am used to it now, but at first, it was nerve wracking. I cannot believe how awesome the deck is engineered and they couldn't get auto-stop to work correctly (bizarre!).* The tone arm lifting lever is a thin piece of plastic. it seems so cheap....so again, why? Could they not have put a metal tonearm on this?For once, I put a record on and I never have the feeling I need to tweak something. I seriously can listen to my records now instead of over-analyzing my system and not even paying attention to the music that is playing. I thought I'd never get to this point, but I have. Get this TT...you will not go wrong!