To Loricraft users

AudioTop Vinyl One is certainly very good. I've been doing informal experiments for some months now, keenly conscious of how difficult it is (because one can't do an original cleaning to the very same record side twice in a row) to know just what it is that one is comparing: side 2 vs. side 1? One Bosendorfer vs. a different Bosendorfer? 2nd cleaning vs. 1st? DD brush vs. LAST brush? A truly controlled experiment is impossible.

Because of the outrageous cost of the AudioTop I'd been using it quite sparingly in these experiments, which meant that it remained on the record only a fraction of the recommended time. Used thus sparingly, it seemed sometimes to make a difference, but a small one--and even then I wasn't sure whether the difference I was hearing was due to the AudioTop or something else. On the other hand, I've also been keenly aware than my Rega P3 isn't doing any of my records, no matter how beautifully cleaned, any favors, and that what may come through as trivial differences in my system could very well, with a more reasonable turntable, sound entirely different and worth every penny. When I've used the AudioTop, it's been in part as a gesture towards a utopian future in which my contemptible P3 will be no more. But most of the time, facing the possibility that the P3 may be all I'll ever be able to manage, I've stuck with my basic cleaning routine: carbon fiber brushing, Premier spray, second carbon fiber brushing, RRL Super Deep Cleaner scrubbed around with DD brush and Loricrafted off, RRL Super Vinyl Wash scrubbed around with second DD brush and Loricrafted off, and and another carbon fiber brushing at the turntable.

But today, nudged on by your question, Tbg, I decided to put aside my horror at the cost of the AudioTop and use it as lavishly as I needed to keep the record surface wet for the requisite couple of minutes. When I did that (calculating all the while how much of my salary was evaporating poisonously into my lungs even as I stood there) the difference it made was more clearly audible than I had ever heard it before. I applied it (using a LAST brush) twice, first as a third step following the Premier and RRL routine, then (on the reverse side of the record) immediately following the Premier and with no intervening RRL washes. Both times I listened to the same bit of record between each step, pre- and post-AudioTop. And then I listened to the two sides (different instrumentation and different dynamics, of course) side by side. It was clear that using AudioTop was better than not using AudioTop. But since side one (the RRLed side) and side two (the nonRRLed side) sounded entirely different even aside from how they were cleaned, it wasn't clear that using AudioTop instead of RRL (as opposed to in addition to it) was the winning choice.

So then I went back to side two (Premier and AudioTop but no RRL) and did the RRL plus DD brush. This made further improvement. Was the improvement due to the RRL? To the the DD scrubbing? To the mere fact of additional cleaning? Who could tell? So then I went and did yet another AudioTop cleaning (the second on this side). But there the experiment died. I couldn't hear any more differences. Maybe the AudioTop had already done all it could do; maybe the RRL (on top of the first round of AudioTop) had left the second AudioTop nothing to do; perhaps playing that poor bit of record half a dozen different times had finally taken an audible toll, or perhaps the improvement had simply passed out of range of what the P3 could register. I have no idea. Nor do I know what lesson to take away from this, except perhaps for the impractical one to do still more cleanings (of whatever kind) than I already do.

I really would like to know the answer, but at least until I upgrade I think it's going to remain out of my reach. Anybody else want to try?

Susan

Tbg, as a happy and experienced AudioTop user, would you be willing to help me understand where I may have gone wrong with it? My experience with it, while by no means bad, has not been quite as wonderful as yours. This may have to do with the fact that I am playing my records on a not quite so fabulous turntable (Rega P3) or with the fact that I am using the Vinyl 1 all by itself (unable as I am to talk myself into paying $350 for the whole system) or perhaps with the fact that, with Vinyl 1 running $150 a bottle, I can't quite bring myself to use it as lavishly as perhaps it needs to be used--and as it is quite volatile, it does seem to want to be used *very* lavishly. Although the directions call for it to be left on the record surface for a couple of minutes, unless I spill quite a bit on--and by quite a bit I mean two or three times as much as I would use of an RRL fluid--it evaporates before its soaking time is up. Because of its volatility too I refrain from scrubbing with DD brushes--too much surface area for the fluid to evaporate from--but try to get by with LAST brushes instead. Even so, given the time it takes for the Loricraft head to traverse the radius of the record, I am not always sure there is significant fluid to be vacuumed up by the time the head reaches the record's periphery and fear that the fluid has largely evaporated, leaving its load of too briefly dissolved junk behind.

Does any of this correspond to your experience at all? And how ever in the world do you manage to use the AudioTop in an atomiser without having it all evaporate before it hits the record?

Susan

Tbg, yes, it is the cleaner alone of the AudioTop system that I am using. I would have liked to try the Vinyl 2, but I doubted I would be able to get it onto the record surface before it evaporated, and the price made experimentation impracticable. Probably I should either have gone whole hog or stayed away completely, and between the two the latter would have made more sense, since other things about my system need more urgent attention than the last degree of perfection in vinyl cleaning. But cleaning, at least as I find myself doing it, is sufficiently laborious that I want to do it right once and for all, not so much so for the sake of the difference I can hear now (though of course that matters) as for the sake of the difference I hope I may be able to hear later with whatever I end up getting to take the Rega's place. Already the thought of all those lps I cleaned when I was first starting out, when I believed a single brief scrubbing was all they needed, weighs upon me. How common is it, I wonder, for people to clean their records to the imaginary standard of a system they don't have yet and may indeed never have?

I can well believe that AudioTop behaves more reasaonably in Texas. Here (Buffalo) it's 2 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and if I hadn't been simmering a pot of beans all afternoon the air would be like broken glass.

Loricraft plus AudioTop Vinyl One is one of the combinations I've used. But I tend to keep the AudioTop for special occasions--such as when amnesia strikes. The volatility is a headache. Really the AudioTop people ought to sell the stuff with a special hyperbaric chamber to use it in.