With over 650 records in my collection, I’m obviously intrigued by what the market has to offer in terms of turntables. One turntable that captured my attention lately is Love – the world’s first intelligent turntable.
At first glance, the turntable seems to be the result of a one night stand gone wrong between a Furutech deStat Antistatic Device and a Shard VZ boombox with record player. But it’s so much more.
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Designed by Yves Béhar, Love promises ‘the intimacy of vinyl with modern day convenience’ and it ‘reads vinyl with a stylus, connects to bluetooth and wi-fi, and is controlled by your smartphone’ .
To listen to your records all you have to do is sync the turntable to an audio device and place the record on one of the two complimentary 7″ bases. The turntable scans your record to determine the size of the record and number of tracks and you’re good to go.
If you want to listen to track two, for example, all you have to do is tap the turntable two times. Or, select track two from the companion app on your iPhone.
With the app you can play, skip or repeat tracks, select the record’s RPM, turn up or down the volume and display the album artwork.
The turntable can connect to any bluetooth audio device and wi-fi multiform systems, including speakers, headphones and stereo systems. For traditional speaker systems, the turntable also comes with a 3.5mm or RCA adapter.
This is definitely a step in the right direction. Let’s be honest, no matter how much you love your records and you think vinyl has the superior sound ( debatable, because in order to have a superior sound it depends on so many factors… from source, to mastering, to pressing to what you actually use to play those records etc ) there are times you wish you can manipulate the turntable from the comfort of your fat lazy ass via some sort of a remote. And Love offers us just what we want.
However, there are also a few things I don’t like about the turntable. The two major issues I see with the turntable is when it comes to the bases and audio playback.
I don’t understand why the turntable comes with two bases and both are 7″ in diameter. They say that the two bases “fix a problem that many people encountered: not knowing where to put their next record while the other one was playing” – that’s bullshit.
Also, why not a 12″ base and a 7″ base? What will happen when I want to listen to a 12″ or 10″ record… half of the record floats in mid air? They have an explanation for that too… “LOVE puts no weight on the vinyl record’s tracks ensuring your record is safe”. OK… the device itself puts no weight on the record, but the stylus needs to track the grooves right? I see two outcomes here. 1. The first couple of tracks on the record are not being tracked properly by the stylus ( probably not at first but with time ) 2. Possibly a mild record warping.
When it comes to audio playback… listening to a vinyl record through bluetooth? That’s simply not for me. I’ll let you do your own “audiophile” research and decide why when it comes to fidelity wires are there for a reason ( as much as we hate them )
That being said, Love is simply just hype for people who buy $40-$80 records to play on a Crosley Cruiser. And for $600 you can certainly do better. But, like I said this turntable is certainly a step in the right directions. We’re just not there yet.
For more info and get your own Love turntable for 50% off check out the video below and visit the official Kickstarter project page here.