The whole vinyl revival thing is getting very busy. It's like everyone has suddenly woken up. No one in the industry thinks the rebirth of vinyl will ever occupy anything but a niche market, yet it seems there's still plenty of room on the bandwagon.
New products are coming along likes ants at a picnic. I began to fret this time last year when Gramovox came up with a vertical turntable. It's technically interesting and it lets its owners make a highly visual point of their love of vinyl, but really it's just one more sub-$1000 turntable in a sea of them.
Shortly thereafter Pro-Ject announced vertical turntables that can be table or wall mounted and are available for both the right and left-handed. They'll be on the market shortly.
And now people are pouring money into an idea for a turntable that isn't even a turntable, I guess it's best described as record player. It's called Love and the Kickstarter campaign for it has currently raised more than 10 times the target amount of $50,000. At last look the total pledged was hovering around $670,000.
It's roughly the shape and size of a fat and slightly flattened hot dog bun. It balances on a spindle towards one end that supports its weight and while the record remains stationary it spins counter-clockwise around the record's surface at 33-1/3 or 45 rpm. The conventional stylus and cartridge contained inside gradually track their way along the groove from start to finish. It's powered by a rechargeable battery good for 15 LP record sides.
The Love transmits the sound it picks up by Bluetooth aptX or Wi-Fi to whatever you have that's capable of reproducing music through the air. These days that can be just about anything, and given that it transmits the signal digitally there is no need for a phono pre-amp. And it identifies breaks between tracks, so can be set (with an app or by tapping) to skip to particular songs.
I haven't heard a Love player, but my first question is this: Can anything that relies on digital signal transmission capture the particular sound quality that has made analogue enthusiasts reject digital music reproduction? It's interesting to note that the specifications included on the Kickstarter page quote a sample rate of 44 kHz/16-bit stereo, the same as CD, and bandwidth of 20 Hz to 18 kHz, fractionally less than CD.
What concerns me about the specs is that's there's no mention of the cartridge being used, just a reference to "quality cartridges" that are "the most widespread on the market". I also wonder how it will cope with even slightly warped records.
There's no denying that the Love is a new and radical way to play records that will start a million conversations and mark buyers as the freshest of early adopters. Last time I looked, almost 2000 people had sunk money into the idea and 91 were from Australia.
None of them are me. I have a brilliant old Thorens turntable with a Garrott cartridge and stylus acquired before the Garrott brothers' sad departure from this vale of tears, and I doubt a Love could come anywhere close to matching it. But, to be fair, the Love should be compared with conventional turntables around its price ($US599), which is around the cost of a Rega Planar 2 at $849 locally.
One's a punt that will impress your mates, the other is from people who have been making turntables since 1973. Call me conservative but I know where my money would go.