Record scratch: Ikea now sells turntables
- Reference: 1654956008
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/06/11/ikea_record_player/
- Source link:
Introduced as part of the upcoming Obergränsad collection, the [1]turntable was designed in collaboration with Swedish electronic music group Swedish House Mafia, and serves as a reminder of how much vinyl has surged in the past several years.
Record collecting has been growing in the past few years to the point where in 2021, [2]Statista said , LP sales jumped by more than 50 percent year-over-year to beat both digital and CD album sales. Keeping it in context, that figure shrinks to a meager 4.7 percent when streaming and downloading of music is included.
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Over the past year, vinyl sales spiked another 61 percent and [4]topped $1 billion for the first time in more than 35 years, with the top-selling records coming from new artists like Adele, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish.
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Photographs of the device show what appears to be a replaceable Audio-Technica needle cartridge, manual arm, RCA stereo out jacks, and a USB port that provides power. It also has a built-in preamp and works with Ikea's Eneby Bluetooth speaker, though without Bluetooth: the turntable only appears to support wired speakers.
In other words, those who are serious about actually owning a physical music collection are reaching into the analog past for the technology to do it, and most weren't even alive when records were the standard format. [7]It's young people buying the records and the players, boosting not only vinyl sales, but the new turntable market as well - it reached [8]$361 million in 2020.
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Compared to vintage turntables, modern ones aren't that different - there's only so many ways to drag a needle over a disk. Where they differ is internally - modern players will often include a Bluetooth antenna and support for external media stored on an SD card or USB drive, or additional options to fine-tune the sound.
Just as they did in the past, modern turntable and record player prices vary wildly. A basic all-in-one record player from [10]Crosley starts at less than $100, while roughly equivalent models from Audio-Technica, a well-established turntable maker, cost just a bit more. Technics, a Japanese Panasonic subsidiary and long-time maker of high-end turntables, offers models that run well into the thousands of dollars, as do other manufacturers.
[11]Vinyl sales top CDs for the first time in decades in America, streaming rules
[12]Master boot vinyl record: It just gives DOS on my IBM PC a warmer, more authentic tone
[13]THX Onyx: A do-it-all DAC for the travelling audiophile
[14]A kitchen splashbork on sale at the Cardiff IKEA
Victrola, which has also long made and sold record players, [15]said that vintage players are often less expensive, though that [16]isn't always the case . When vintage players are cheap, buyers beware.
"Often, vintage record players, which have been used heavily during their lifetime, have flaws that must be addressed (read: paid to fix) before they can be used," Victrola said.
New players, on the other hand, cost more up front, but will probably come with a full set of functional parts. In addition, the parts for modern players are still readily available - yet another element in their favor.
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But what of sound quality? According to Victrola, modern players aren't manufactured with the same attention to detail when records were the primary source of home music, meaning modern players don't sound the same. That doesn't mean worse, necessarily: New players are generally considered to sound cleaner, while vintage ones are described as sounding "warm."
Whether an Ikea record player will find a spot among other brands is unknown, especially without a price. or any idea how it sounds. For what it's worth, Ikea hasn't made a record player since the year Lynyrd Skynyrd released Freebird. ®
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[1] https://about.ikea.com/en/newsroom/2022/06/09/ikea-swedish-house-mafia-obegransad-record-player
[2] https://www.statista.com/chart/7699/lp-sales-in-the-united-states/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YqS8IGxeEeQZ-qAn-N-8LAAAAM8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/05/06/magazine/why-it-seems-like-everyone-you-know-is-buying-vinyl-record-players/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YqS8IGxeEeQZ-qAn-N-8LAAAAM8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YqS8IGxeEeQZ-qAn-N-8LAAAAM8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-millennials-want-their-parents-vinyl-records-11647061260
[8] https://www.emergenresearch.com/industry-report/turntable-market
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YqS8IGxeEeQZ-qAn-N-8LAAAAM8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.crosleyradio.com/turntables
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/14/vinyl_sales_boom/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/26/pc_boot_record/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/06/thx_onyx_a_doitall_dac/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/03/bork/
[15] https://victrola.com/blogs/articles/vintage-record-player-vs-new
[16] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/check-your-attic-these-old-items-could-be-worth-some-money-2018-07-18'
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YqS8IGxeEeQZ-qAn-N-8LAAAAM8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Digital transmission?
USB is often for recording (at 128kbit!), and for playing back mp3s.
Sadly the chips inside the cheaper units seem to be made-in-China parts so it's not possible to tell how much of the audio path is analogue and how much is digital.
Re: Digital transmission?
harsh sybillant sounds
Bassssssil?
It gets more fun...
When you don't just buy a vintage turntable buy amp and speakers too.
I say this as someone with a modern Onkyo hifi that's now in the spare room mostly unused, instead in my study and front room 70's Pioneer amps do the noise making duties. Both were recapped and both sound better than any modern amp I've found that's less than 4 figures.
Also, having a fully automatic turntable (70's Dual affair) is a big smug thing compaired to almost all modern decks.
Still looking for Garrard 401 to own though... One day maybe..
Beware sub par efforts
I have a deck that is very similar to the infamous Crosley Cruiser ($100? I paid €40!). It can play from Bluetooth (but not to it), it can play from USB and sort of record to USB (it's a bit hit and miss) but the main problem, the insurmountable problem, is that they are using a cheap ceramic cartridge with a fairly high output and wanging it straight into the amp. Due to the lack of proper equalisation, the treble is overly bright and the bass is (often extremely) distorted. The end result is rather shit. And this isn't possible to fix by fiddling with the tone and volume because the problem is the connection between the needle and the amp.
I tried sticking a resistor in there to limit the output, but it didn't make any difference. I'm not good enough with the theory to know what would work, suffice to say, this unit as sold will not make your grandparents Abba records sound worth listening to.
That vinyl sound
I often ponder about sound on vinyl. For the vast bulk of those vinyl disks, in the recording process the analog sound is digitized and stored. This is even true for those really old direct to disk records where only a few records and no digital master exists. They play it and digitize the output to use to make copies.
The recorded digital signal is then mixed and edited until it's the way the producer wants it. The digital signal is then used to control the cutting head of a type of lathe to make a metal mold to stamp out vinyl disks. The groove in these vinyl disks then vibrates a stylus that is then amplified and fed to a speaker to make sound.
Why do all of the audiophiles agree that the vinyl sound is better? Perhaps it does but it's just a digital signal that has had some strange processing steps (not magic) added to it during the process of converting it back to sound. Couldn't an equivalent bit of distortion and filtering be applied during the digital to analog processing of a pure digital recording to mess it up enough to sound like vinyl?
Perhaps this could be a good use for machine learning: determine the processing required to convert a purely digital recording to match the sound of one that has been pressed into vinyl.
Re: That vinyl sound
The analog sound is digitized ?
Maybe it is [1]today , but back in the day (ie when I was young), the process was to make a master record, then use it to imprint the production line to make copies.
There was nothing digital in that process. They didn't have the technology for that yet.
I think.
[1] https://www.furnacemfg.com/how-to-make-vinyl-record/
Re: That vinyl sound
I remember the arguments in the early CD days, where all-digital ("DDD") recording and processing was said to be so much better than part-analogue ("ADD" or "AAD"), so I'd agree that most older LPs, up to the 1980s at least, were probably wholly analogue.
Re: That vinyl sound
It "sounds better" for much the same reason that gold-plated oxygen-free copper cables "sound better". The owner has paid a lot of money for it, and has to justify it.
With good A-D and D-A convertors there is no discernable loss or change from using digital techniques, that can be proven mathematically. It may well be that people prefer an analogue reproduction, because they like the way it changes the sound, but it isn't objectively "better" than a digital recording. That's not unlike the way that a studio recording can sound "better" than a live experience, because it's been tweaked to sound better.
Re: That vinyl sound
Why do all of the audiophiles agree that the vinyl sound is better?
There is a long history of audiophiles agreeing that CDs sounded much better than vinyl, followed by a long history of audiophiles arguing about which DACs sounded better still, culminating (presently) in their agreement that compressed, hissy sound from vinyl sounds wonderful, provided it's digitised and played back through some bluetooth speaker with a frequency response curve like a bathtub.
See also instant film vs. digital imaging.
It's the same process that brought you the mullet and clackers.
Digital transmission?
From an audiophile perspective, or for anyone who simply doesn't like the harsh sybillant high frequency sounds of digital recordings being converted back to analogue, why would the manufacturer embed bluetooth/usb connections? Unless mega expensive, these are just likely to degrade the sound quality in the same way mp3's do. Just use analogue outputs.