Audiophilepure

https://www.stereophile.com/content/ps-audio-aspen-fr5-loudspeaker

With the volume up, as the event deserves, the FR5s did a fabulous job. The large orchestra was spread deep and wide, and the solo voices were up across the front from speaker to speaker and a bit beyond. Each voice was clearly defined and naturally balanced, and the FR5s had no problems with the wild dynamics. My only cavil is the lack of impact of the low bass—which is hardly surprising, and I was never aware of any tonal imbalance.

I could not resist another guilty/not guilty pleasure: Andreas Vollenweider’s White Winds (16/44.1 CD rip, Columbia MK-39963). Again, the FR5s created a vast soundstage with immaculate detail, evidenced by the water drips and splashes that pass from left to right on the opening track. Everything seemed open and spacious, and the impact of Vollenweider’s low strings was solid and weighty. The acoustic and synthesized lows were full, too, but they lacked weight and definition. Of course, that judgment comes from experience with larger speakers. I wonder if people without such prior experience would miss it.

https://www.soundstageultra.com/index.php/equipment-menu/1253-keith-monks-prodigy-plus-record-cleaning-machine

The controls couldn’t be simpler: an on/off switch on the right of the front fascia starts/stops the suction and the platter rotation; the supplied remote control turns the lighting on or off. The cleaning process is straightforward too: you place the record on the small rubberized platter and screw down the rubber clamp; put a few drops of cleaning fluid on the record evenly; start the platter rotating, and then hold the brush on the record for about a minute to disperse the fluid across the disc and dislodge contaminants; then, you simply place the suction arm on the inner run-out groove of the record. The arm will traverse the record from end to start in one minute, sucking up the cleaning fluid and foreign matter, leaving the record perfectly clean and dry and instantly playable.

On the Prodigy the platter direction isn’t reversible (it is on the Loricraft), but for my relatively clean collection, a single pass in one direction has always been enough. The Prodigy platter is also quite small, not much bigger than a record label, and offers no direct backing to most of the playable part of the record (the larger platter on the Loricraft supports the entire record surface). In practice, therefore, you can’t bear down hard on a flimsy record to scour it, not that I’ve ever needed to do that—neither brush benefits from being pressed down. The advantage of the smaller platter, other than allowing the machine to be more compact, is that it doesn’t contact the cleaned side when the record is flipped over.