Buying records is the fun part. Cleaning them is the chore. Record Doctor’s latest machine, the XI, is aimed at making that second part a little less annoying.
Billed in the launch announcement as a 25th-anniversary model, the Record Doctor XI is a $599.95 vacuum record cleaner. The announcement says it will ship in October. Its main pitch is straightforward: clean both sides of an LP at the same time, and make less noise doing it.
According to Pangea Audio, the XI uses dual vacuums and two-way automatic rotation. Cleaning fluid, felt cleaning strips and suction do the work of removing residue from the grooves. The company recommends applying fluid to both sides of the record, so this isn’t a drop-it-in-and-walk-away machine. You’re still part of the process.
The hardware includes a direct-drive, high-torque motor, an aluminum top and a large clamp designed to protect the record label. Pangea lists a goat-hair cleaning brush and a 4.5-ounce bottle of its RxLP cleaning fluid among the included accessories.
The more interesting claim is the noise. Pangea calls this its quietest Record Doctor yet and says it can clean an LP in under a minute. Those are manufacturer claims, not results from a hands-on test. There is no measured noise level on the product page, so “quieter” doesn’t tell us how pleasant it will be to use in a small room.
At nearly $600, this is a purchase for someone who takes record care seriously, rather than an impulse accessory. The appeal is easy to understand: two-sided cleaning could cut some of the handling out of the routine. Whether it does that well enough to earn a place beside your turntable is the question a review needs to answer.
For now, the XI looks like a practical update built around a familiar annoyance. Less flipping and less vacuum racket would be welcome. We’ll need more than a launch announcement to know how well it delivers.