Rekkord Audio F300

Verdict

There’s so much to admire about the Rekkord Audio F300, from the way it’s built via the way it operates to much of the way it sounds – but it’s well short of what sporting types call an all-court game and, in sonic terms, is giving too much away to the best of its price-comparable rivals.

Introduction

Germany’s Rekkord Audio might seem, on the face of it, to be a step too far. After all, it’s operated by ‘Mr Pro-Ject Audio Systems’ Heinz Lichtenegger – and if anyone would seem to have the whole extensive range of turntables covered off, it must surely be him. 

But Rekkord Audio intends to fill in some of the gaps in the Pro-Ject range – most specifically the gaps where fully automatic models might sit.

The knowledge that the Rekkord Audio range is hand-built in the same Black Forest facility where Dual constructed its ubiquitous automatic turntables during the 1970s and 80s adds a hefty dose of credibility to the enterprise – and if Rekkord Audio can replicate the reputation for quality, convenience and value that Dual established back in the day, it will be on to a winner…

Availability

The Rekkord Audio F300 automatic turntable is on sale now, and in the United Kingdom it costs £549. This translates to $599 in the United States, and while no Australian pricing is currently published, a quick glance at today’s exchange rates suggests AU$1049 or thereabouts is the likely price.

This is the sort of money where the bigger turntable brands start to get involved – but Rekkord Audio reckons the F300 is equipped to compete… 

Design

• Clear Perspex dust-cover
• Decoupled sub-chassis
• Single-piece MDF plinth

The F300 is available in three finishes: silver, satin black and stirling oak wood veneer. My review sample is in that last finish, and it’s quite heavily grained and textured. The plinth itself is fashioned from a single piece of MDF (a good choice of material when it comes to resonance or the lack thereof), and it makes the Rekkord Audio seem quite sturdy.

The standard of construction is well up to snuff, and the F300 is quite a good-looking device (as much as it’s possible for a reasonably affordable turntable to look distinctive in any meaningful way). A clear Perspex dust-cover adds to the visual appeal as well as being a practical addition.

Take off the aluminium platter (or have a good look before you position it) and the major differences between the F300 and the less expensive models in the Rekkord Audio range is revealed: the floating sub-chassis platform that’s decoupled from the rest of the chassis. 

Isolating the automation mechanism, the tonearm and the platter itself from external and internal vibrations as much as possible has obvious theoretical benefits to the precision and reliability of the turntable’s overall operation, and Rekkord Audio has done as thorough a job here as can reasonably be expected.  

Features

• Fully automatic operation
• Prefitted Audio Technica AT91 moving magnet cartridge
• 211mm balanced aluminium tonearm

It’s not, strictly speaking, unique – but nevertheless, fully automatic operation is not remotely common in turntables at any price and it gives the F300 an unusual selling point. If your hands aren’t as steady as they once were, or if you’ve a tendency to let a record reach the end of its side and then allow the stylus to sit in the locked run-out groove for a while, this is a very worthwhile feature. Being able to throw a short-travel switch and have the whole start and stop process happen automatically is not, for many consumers, to be sniffed at.

And better still, the F300 gets the job done in a quiet, stable and reliable manner – which is by no means a given in some automatic turntables I’ve tested. Bear in mind, though, that the F300 is of the unshakeable opinion that 12-inch discs turn at 33.3rpm and 7-inch discs at 45rpm – so if you want to play, for example, a 12-inch single that spins at 45rpm, you’ll have to resort to manually putting the record on and taking it off again. And it has never heard of 78rpm discs of any size.

The F300 is a belt-driven turntable – the platter is of fairly hefty aluminium and arrives with a felt slipmat on top. The belt is pre-fitted, as is the Audio Technica AT91 moving magnet cartridge to its headshell. It’s pre-adjusted on its 211mm ultra-low mass aluminium tonearm, which features steel-tip bearings – anti-skate can be adjusted, and the tracking weight will need setting, but otherwise the set-up experience is about as painless as the automatic operation.

The Rekkord Audio is hard-wired with stereo RCA connections and a grounding wire. Again, this all adds to the plug-and-play convenience of the F300 – but as with the tonearm, which would appear to be designed to work specifically with the AT91 cartridge, it does rather close off the usual upgrade avenues.  

Sound Quality

• Fluent, flowing overall sound
• Decent rhythmic expression and detail levels
• Not especially dynamic or remotely punchy

When it comes to music, the Rekkord Audio F300 most definitely has its preferences. It has a comfort zone, not an especially large one, within which it’s right at home – but get outside of it and this record player sounds uneasy.

A nice heavyweight reissue of Marvin Gaye’s timeless What’s Going On is the sort of thing the F300 enjoys. The high-gloss sheen of the overall sound is right up its street, and it laps up the rolling rhythms and naturalistic tempos too. This record just flows when it’s spinning on the F300 – detail levels are high, the midrange fidelity that’s on offer is impressive and there’s just about enough high-frequency bite to keep things interesting. Integration of the frequency range is convincing, and while the overall tonality is on the warm-ish side, that suits the recording nicely. 

About the only areas in which the F300 doesn’t sound entirely fit for purpose are low-frequency rigour and dynamic expression. In the most simple terms, the Rekkord Audio doesn’t hit hard enough at the bottom end – if anything, it shoves. There’s no real alacrity to the attack of bass sounds – the F300 somehow meanders into low-end information rather than snaps. And while it’s detailed enough to make the dynamics of harmonic variation reasonably explicit, there’s insufficient headroom available to put a great deal of distance between quiet and loud or to track changes in intensity effectively.

And when you give the F300 something less obliging to deal with – a copy of Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus, for example – it really doesn’t sound happy. It’s not responsive enough to low-frequency information to hit with the sort of determination the recording demands, it’s unable to handle the ferocity of the dynamic variations, and its attempts to impose its rather laid-back overall personality on the music results in an uneasy compromise that suits no one. 

All of which means that the F300’s undoubted ability where soundstaging, detail retrieval and tempo management, while still admirable, can’t make up for its shortcomings where the more visceral aspects of the recording are concerned. The music, ultimately, ends up sounding rather neutered.

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