Review Details

Reference RT85 High Fidelity Vinyl Turntable with PA10 Phono Preamp and Ai61 Powered 6.5” Stereo Bookshelf Speakers

Product Rating:

Product Review (submitted on April 15, 2023):

First on this part shipping may very but I am only 3 hour drive from the shipping center in New York. Ordered the system on a Tuesday, had two boxes, the speakers and turntable at the house by Thursday. No preamp weight or brush, but you know how shipping is, waited a couple of days, nothing, UPS status was not encouraging. Looks like the package was loss, this was a UPS problem not a Fluance problem. So I called Fluance Customer Experience and talked to a nice women called Julie, she opened the missing package ticket with UPS, and kept me informed during the whole process. Julie is what customer service is about. Any ways, I had the missing pieces in about a week. So on to the product review.

One more item, this is a secondary system for me, for my home den, which is a small 9 foot by 11 foot room. My primary system also has the Ortofon 2m blue.

RT85 - This is a solid built turntable, this turntable is the reason I went with Fluance. Knowing the price of the Ortofon 2m Blue, I don’t know how they make a turntable of this quality at this price point, mind blow. Although and I know this may be hard to believe, buy in my 50 years of buying audio equipment, this is the first belt drive turntable I have ever owned, all the others have been direct drive, I can not believe how quiet it is. This is a solid built turntable for sure.

PA10 I was going back and forth on if I wanted this Pre-amp or another brand, but I figured I was already getting there speakers lets go the whole route. I am happy with the pre-amp, sounds great, no hiss, does what it is suppose to due, if it only came in bamboo to match the rest lol.

AI61 With this one I was wondering if I wanted this pair, or the AI81’s, glad I went with the AI61’s plenty loud for the room I am in. BUT they do need the 20 hour break in period for the bass they were not laying about this. The Bluetooth sound is weaker compared with what you get off the turntable, but I guess that is compressed vs analog. I do wish they had just a tad more bottom end, but hey for the price, I think you would be hard to find anything sound better in this price point. I do think I am either going to add an EQ or a Sub Woofer or both. Also an external DAC to stream some High Res files audio files to them. If this was my main system, I might of gone passive speakers, but then that is added cost, and takes space I don’t have.