this time: more confident recommendation
Put yourself in my place: you’ve unboxed the AFI Flat.Duo and it’s time to try flattening a warped record and give the “relax” a record feature a whirl. But at the same time a manufacturer is doing a turntable installation that will take some time, so rather than delay the audition, you do it during the install, so he’s witness to the whole thing.
That’s how the original review in the hyperlink above went down and the results were as reported there. He heard what I heard on a few “relaxed” records, and I couldn’t very well write anything other than what I reported in that review because it’s exactly what happened, and what happene…
this time: more confident recommendation
Put yourself in my place: you’ve unboxed the AFI Flat.Duo and it’s time to try flattening a warped record and give the “relax” a record feature a whirl. But at the same time a manufacturer is doing a turntable installation that will take some time, so rather than delay the audition, you do it during the install, so he’s witness to the whole thing.
That’s how the original review in the hyperlink above went down and the results were as reported there. He heard what I heard on a few “relaxed” records, and I couldn’t very well write anything other than what I reported in that review because it’s exactly what happened, and what happened was that for some reason while the warped records flattened nicely and remained quiet, the “relaxed” records were after relaxing afflicted with pops and ticks.
The manufacturer was turntable designer/manufacturer Dietrich Brakemeier who was installing the Acoustical Systems A*Stellar turntable for a review in The Absolute Sound. He was as curious as I was about the AFI Flat.Duo. He heard what I heard. How could I not honestly report what I’d heard?
Super Clean Plate Spelled the Difference
Did you grow up being told to “clean your plate”? I did and I should have paid attention to that but nothing in the instructions said anything about cleaning the plate upon which the record being either flattened or relaxed was placed upon. So after unboxing, I used it as instructed.
When I got back to testing the “relax” mode, I first cleaned the plate surface with some highly diluted “Simple Green” and relaxed a record. Here are the two files. Not saying which is which, or even if they are different files or the same one repeated twice!
I recorded side one of this 4 LP one sides reissue of the famous Reiner/CSO stereo recording of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” recorded in stereo in 1954 but not released in stereo until 1960 As LSC-1806. After recording it I put it into the AFI Flat.Duo, set it to “Relax” mode and once it had been relaxed, I recorded it again. The cartridge was the Audio-Technica MC-2022 (single piece diamond cantilever/stylus) mounted on the SAT CF1-12 tonearm on the Wilson-Benesch Prime Meridian turntable. Phono preamp was the Luxman E-07 under review. At $7000 it’s the least expensive link in the chain.
So have a listen and please post your comments