I would say every so often, but in all reality “somewhat often” is likely more accurate, a post will show up on Reddit asking about “what is the perfect album?”. This is quantified as an album that’s flawless – all tracks are fantastic, nothing needs to be skipped, no filter – just pure bliss. The answers are always the same and in the end it always seems to come down to personal preference. (There’s always a handful of “I can’t believe I had to scroll this far to find XYZ” posts).
I don’t participate in these threads, mostly because I’m still soft boycotting Reddit over the API fiasco, but in part because I don’t like to post on Reddit even at the best of times. I do pause however, and think about my personal favorite albums that I’d consider perfect. With those albums in mind, I’ve always maintained they’d be excellent turntable albums because in my mind, a vinyl record is something you’d put on and just let it play. Ideally in a recliner, eyes closed, lights dimmed, volume up.
For most of my life, I haven’t owned a record player. I’m a product of the cassette tape -> CD -> mp3 generation and when vinyl made a comeback in the 90’s (I want to say most notably with Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy album), I was one of those know-it-all kids who scoffed at the notion. “Vinyl’s dead man – digital is where it’s at!” So it was safe to say I had to reach my forties and be in the midst of a solid mid-life crisis in order to get a record player, and procure some of those (in my mind) perfect albums.
It started with Alexisonfire’s Crisis album. I’m not sure why this album in particular, but I knew if I could find it on vinyl it’d feel like a real accomplishment. So I started looking for it at every music store, flea market and vintage shop we’d come across. This went on for a period of time, nearly a year, before I finally caved and bought some other albums that I knew I’d love – specifically Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” and “And Justice For All…” albums. My kids found this endlessly amusing. “But dad, you don’t even own a record player!” And so, I started looking.
Buying a record player in 2023 was an interesting prospect. I quickly found out that because record players aren’t most people’s daily drivers the way they were in the 70’s and 80’s, selection was a weird mix of ridiculously cheap to ridiculously expensive. The problem I found was that there didn’t seem to be a good offering at the $200-ish range – it seemed to quickly spiral out of control very quickly. And so, I approached the process from an analytical standpoint.
I knew I wanted a belt driven turntable with a good stylus/cartridge, with an anti-skate mechanism and an auto stop mechanism. The platter had to be reasonably heavy weighted. I also knew I didn’t want an automatic tone arm movement – I wanted this to be manual. There were some reasons for these choices:
- I wanted belt driven because I wanted to minimize noise from a direct drive motor, plus I liked the appearances of an exposed belt mechanism.
- I wanted a good stylus/cartridge out of the gate because I didn’t want to upgrade almost immediately.
- Anti-skate was crucial – I didn’t want my records being scratched because the needle slid across it.
- Automatic stop was also crucial because if I got distracted while listening, I didn’t want the record to keep spinning for hours.
- The platter weight was important to me for acoustics and speed consistency.
- I didn’t want automatic tone arm movement because it feels gimmicky and is something I could see breaking easily.
With this list in mind, I was really close to something like an Audio Technica AT-LPW50BT. I also was looking heavily at the AT-LP120XUSB but I realized for both of those I’d be compromising on some of my feature requirements. I then took a really hard look at the ProJect Carbon EVO offering – and I was really close to pulling the trigger. What made me pause was while reviewing the ProJect Carbon EVO, people kept comparing them to Fluance products.
I’d never heard of Fluance before, but they seemed to be solidly in the mid-grade audiophile market and oddly enough they’re Canadian. That sealed the deal for me – their offices are about 3 hours from my house and I thought that was pretty cool. But the problem I was faced with was which Fluance turntable do I go with?
An interesting game you can play in your head is the “But for only a little bit more…” game. With the Fluance turntable offerings, I did this a number of times and eventually arrived at “It has to to be the Fluance RT85.” Here’s my logic flow:
- All Fluance turntables are good and I’d probably be happy with any of them, but…
- The RT80 and RT81 series are “high fidelity” turntables and have built-in pre-amps (which I’d also decided I didn’t want, because I’d read these are often underwhelming).
- The RT80 and RT81 series have Audio-Technica cartridges and stylus.
- Therefore these aren’t much better than the Audio-Technicas I was looking at before.
- The RT82-RT85 series are a “reference” turntable – meaning better components and no baked-in pre-amp (intended for Audiophiles)
- The RT82-RT84 can be upgraded over time to all of the same components that come with the RT85.
- Therefore buying the RT85 represents best value at this time.
For reference (no pun intended), here’s the cost analysis breakdown of an RT82 and the upgrade path to an RT85 turntable:
RT82 street price (at time of this post) is $404.99CAD (list). The RT82 comes with an Ortofon OM 10 stylus and an aluminum platter. The two major upgrades offered with the RT85 out of box are the acrylic platter at $161.99CAD, and the Ortofon 2M Blue stylus at $283.99. This makes the cost of the RT82 + the upgrades total $850.97. The list price of an RT85 at the moment is $674.99CAD, so basically $175 cheaper than the RT82 with upgrades.
I made sure to watch a lot of videos and read a lot of articles about the RT85 before I presented this working theory to my wife. When I’d first mentioned I was looking at a turntable I’d told her they retail for about $200, $250 tops. I knew selling a concept at more than double the projected cost would be difficult, and I also knew I’d have another battle on my hands – I also lacked speakers and phono pre-amp.
I’ll fully admit I may have rushed into this last decision; mostly for the sake of convenience. From Black Friday to Christmas in 2023, Fluance had a promo package with the RT85, dual powered Ai61 speakers, and a PA10 phono pre-amp. Somehow I was able to convince my wife it was a good idea and about a week later, multiple large boxes appeared on my doorstep. After some extremely careful assembly everything was setup and I was ready to play my first record.
The sound is fantastic. It’s everything I’d hoped it would be (although I did find the Ai61’s lacked some bass depth so I did add the cheapest 10″ I could find, because I was already pushing my luck), and more. On White Zombie’s Astro-Creep: 2000 album I can honestly say I’m hearing subtle vocals and effects in the background of tracks that I’ve never noticed before, and I’ve listened to that album hundreds of times on CD. I haven’t done a proper CD to MP3 listening comparison, but I’m fairly confident the vinyl has more depth than the CD/digital version.
One mistake I made is I really started to dig into reviews of the gear I’d purchased after they’d arrived and were assembled. I’m not sure why I do this to myself, maybe I’m trying to confirm I’d made the right purchase, who knows. I stumbled across some really irate Redditors who hated everything Fluance stands for and were strongly opposed to all Fluance products. I’ll admit I was panicked – I worried that I’d made the wrong choice and maybe the ProJect was the right way to go. Finally, I stumbled across a voice of reason “Don’t listen to these guys, they’re just mad that Fluance is doing at $600 what most other companies are doing at $2000.”
That ended my Fluance review diving. I know the PA10 pre-amp isn’t the best – I’ve seen a ton of reviews on this. The Ai61 speakers are by any definition “good, mid grade speakers”. I’m sure there’s quirks about the RT85 and the Ortofon 2M Blue. But – for my purposes, in the room I have it setup in, it sounds fantastic and that’s exactly what I was looking for no. No regrets here.
Oh, and I did finally find Alexisonfire’s Crisis album – I cheated and found it online in a store located about an hour from my house. I figured it still counted and made the drive down there. As it turned out, the owner had two copies available, so I grabbed one for my friend Ryan as well, who is also a huge Alexisonfire fan. When I told the owner at the store we’d had a heck of a time finding this album, he said “You know what’s weird – these just arrived here in our regular shipment – I haven’t seen a copy in years, and then these two just showed up. I called my supplier for a restock and they said they didn’t have any copies Canada-wide, and didn’t expect to see one again anytime soon. Pretty lucky you showed up when you did!”
Pretty lucky indeed.
Photo by Mr Cup / Fabien Barral
