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Posted by Paul S on
08-13-2021
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Accommodations were apparently made with Stereophile, and Michael Fremer finally filed his official "review" of the TechDas Air Force Zero via Stereophile, Vol. 44, No. 9. I skimmed through it, and this sounds like a more "buttoned down" version of the Caliburn, or whatever that was, still pretty much "over the top" in terms of parts and features. MF said something about TechDas being in the middle of a run of 40 of these. This "ultimate" version of the Air Force TT has been "rolling out" since 2019.
Paul S
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
08-13-2021
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I do not know, Paul. I have some feedback from people who
has it and I have my reasons do not share what they say. In reality they are
two different subjects. The TechDas Air
Force Zero and Michael Fremer. The TechDas is what it is and Michael Fremer is
mouth running idiot who emblemized the worst in high-end industry. Regardless
his “experienced” opinion about the TechDas you might learn that juts a few
weeks before Fremer engaged promoting Caliburn first TT for
$140K the Australians come to US and were asking for Caliburn $25K. Generally,
whatever has an admiration from Fremer I consider to be a corporate
garbage pretty much loosing interest. Any respected him manufacturer, if he
cares about product and not only about sales, would stay a mile away from this “promoter”.
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Posted by Paul S on
08-13-2021
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I have a lot of respect for several TT designs, including the Micro 8000, for example; but I am very suspicious of this particular TT. The reason is that this TT appears to be more of an intellectual exercise than a "best solution" for the greater problem of "properly presenting an LP to an arm/cartridge combination". Though I have heard nothing bad from the few AF1s I have "heard", this AF Zero seems to present itself with a whole new host of problems to overcome, just because of the absurd masses involved. Perhaps this one will turn out to be "plug and play", but, honestly, this would surprise me. On the face of it, I'd guess that few if any new owners will ever get more from this than they might from far less complicated and/or less costly TTs with well proven and reasonably accessible and consistent performance. Of course, "value" is not a consideration here. Of course, it's not my problem. Just saying...
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
08-13-2021
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Sorry, live is too short to waste it to pay attention to the
wisdom of idiots. I do not need to question his experiences of judgment; I question
his motivation. That clown, along with many other “audio-professionals”, express
his experiences and wax empty verbiage only in case somebody brought to him a
new item to sell and said “fetch”. Then the Framers get “poetic” and begin to go
“intellectual” or “spiritual” over his target audience. Consumers think that
they navigated by love but instead they navigated by a very pity man who put “Kamasutra
for Dummies” as a manual for McDonald style operation. I do not read anything
he said for good 15 years, and I did not miss anything valuable.
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Posted by Romy the Cat on
08-20-2021
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To me the problem with this it is not about that specific turntable but presence of this turntable and presence of the Framer as class action case which defeat a notion of public service. I do not advocate this or other design and I do not advocate any specific firm. What I do advocate that somebody like Framer should exist as it should serve well-defined public service. You know that, that evaluation of turn tables and their quality is very complex subject. None of the people who are willing to pay dozens of thousand dollars for a new turntable have an ability actually to try it or experiment with them. Even if they do they do not have an ability to make an objective decision as the whole subject of analogue reproduction is super tweaky.
We all, buy turntables based upon perceived reputation of a given model. I see bunch of the people with speakers that acoustically clip at 40 cycles advocate one or another turntables produce more profound lower base. This is sort of intellectual BS which is exploited by the industry, nothing wrong with this as the cost of subscribing this BS is purely voluntary. But we are not talking about satisfaction an individual person get but we are talking about public quality control, sort of consumer advocacy which should be rendered by the people who put themselves in a position of audio reviewing. If a music critic which is payrolled by an organization writes a glorious review about horrible performance Saturday night then it is only something that pays his mortgage and boost ego of somebody who need it boosted. When an audio reviewer driven explicitly by objective to sell product and is that objective to inject into consumers drive to buy an audio object which is pretty much impossible to try, then it is not a quality control, not a line of defense for consumer but infomercial and to present it as a reviewing is a consumer terrorism.
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Posted by Paul S on
08-20-2021
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Yes, it would be nice if audio publications/reviewers leveled with people and actually spoke about the personal aspect/responsibility of setting up and tuning a hi-fi, and TT/tonearm/cartridge in particular, especially considering the absurd prices the "best" of these components now fetch, not to mention the technical complexities. But I guess that's what we try to do here, to "air it out" and at least make an effort to "put it out there" that NOBODY is going to take home the touted parts, hook them together, and wind up with anything more than sound in his/her listening room, at least to start with. On the other hand, one can just cruise YouTube to hear the stuff people listen to in order to "advertise" and/or make their purchasing decisions. Might be the blind are leading the deaf. How to help these people?
Paul S
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