Crosley turntable

Before having kids, I was really getting into vinyl. I got a couple of very used turntables and some of my favorite albums in vinyl. Unfortunately, imagining my kids scrape a needle over the albums inspired me to put it all in storage.

However, I’ve continued to check in on how the market is evolving. I think vinyl has grown at +20% per year the last 5 or so years. Pretty impressive. Hardware has come slowly and often disappointed. There have been cheap and bad turntables (~$100) and expensive and good ones (~$500+) with nothing in between. So, I was surprised when my wife said she spotted a Crosley (cheap and bad brand) with good reviews.

Not much to look at, but modern turntables rarely are. It seems to go fro $300-400, right in that no-mans land zone. It’s actually from a higher end brand, but I guess Crosley is hoping their faster inventory turnover can compensate for their lower margin.

I think the Crosley is a cheap knock off of the Pro-ject series.

http://www.project-audio.com

Pro-ject I believe are legit turntables and every good audio shop I know sells them. I looked into them once and think they are pretty reasonable, about $3-500.

The cheapest one is actually the most unique looking.

R

I think pro-ject actually makes it for them… There is another new affordable price turntable out there, I’m blanking on the name right now… make sure you get some good speakers too :slight_smile:

[ Deleted ]

Yo: Indeed, they are made by Pro-ject. In fact, the arm still says “pro-ject” on it!

Keno: I love that Sony TT. That looks great.

Keno, I said good speakers :slight_smile:

You know, like Polk or Definitive… my personal definition might be biased :slight_smile: But Pitchfork did do a piece on setting up a simple venial system (they did recommend Polks too :slight_smile: )

[ Deleted ]

I’m debating paying $300 to ship my giant 1970’s Fisher speakers from my parents or just buying some new speakers.

I’m not a fan of studio monitors, mainly because I’m not a fan of lifeless music with no bass, BOOM :slight_smile: but don’t take my word, take Pitchfork’s man.

[ Deleted ]

There is a lot of preference, but our nerds would argue that studio monitors are only designed to be used in a studio very near-field, which is why they also listen on home audio speakers in the studio. The goal of home audio is try to create a more lifelike sound, like the music or the action in video content is happening in the room. Purity vs immersion. What is interesting is to see what a lot of musicians have in their own homes. It is all over the place.

I’m digging this thread! I am a hobby musician and I use both types of speakers and I totally agree that monitors are for a specific listening purpose, while mixing and mastering a track. (Not to say I don’t pipe music and instruments through mine from time to time.) I have a pair of the Yamaha HS monitors and the reason I got them is to be able to tweak the EQ of each track so that it sounded good on the flat “bad” monitors first, knowing that when the same audio is played through speakers tuned for the listening experience they would sound even better!

As an example, if you tried to produce audio on a pair of “listening” speakers that had really good bass you wouldn’t feel like you’d need to raise the bass in the track EQ as much. When someone tries to listen to your audio through iPod headphones they might get almost no bass or impression of bass. Same thing goes for high pitched whines that tuned speakers might be filtering out. Play it on another system and you might hear a distracting whine during the whole song, but with the monitors you’d catch that right off the bat.

I have a cheaper turntable ($99) complete with Dieter Rams’ idea of the clear top covering.

I’m not a vinyl expert by any means so I wonder what kind features, materials, and designs would be in the $100 to $500 market. Maybe a dual needle arm on the top and bottom so you don’t have to flip the record! One cheap turntable x 2 = $200 the math checks out! :wink:

[ Deleted ]