Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

Vinyl listening is getting simpler with The Plus Record Player from Plus Audio

Brendan Hesse
By

Collecting vinyl is easy — all you really need is some extra cash and a trip to your local record store to really get into the hobby. Listening to vinyl, on the other hand, is a different beast entirely. From finding the right turntable, to wiring up your amps and speakers, going from your first vinyl record to your first spin can be a process. There’s always been an easy mode to this game, however, and that’s all-in-one turntables — but if you’re serious about sound quality, these can be a dodgy choice, at best.

However, following a successful over-funded Kickstarter campaign, audio company Plus Audio (stylized as +Audio) is gearing up to launch its own all-in-one hi-fi turntable, The Plus Record Player (stylized as The+Record Player), which aims to bridge the gap between all-in-one simplicity and full-setup fidelity.

Recommended Videos

Designed by Scandinavian designer Alexander Ahnebrink, The Plus Record Player  is a sleek, wood-finished turntable sitting a top a large 100W bi-amplified speaker system that Plus Audio claims is capable of hi-fi playback quality. There will be two version of the device. The standard version includes an aluminum tonearm and Ortofon Om10 cartridge. The limited Carbon Edition swaps the components out for a carbon fiber tonearm and upgraded Ortofon 2M Red cartridge.

Related

While those features are impressive, should you want to expand your setup, a number of different inputs and outputs are included for a variety of listening options, including both digital and analog formats to create a customized listening experience.

For instance, The Plus Record Player includes an optical digital input and Bluetooth connectivity for playing music from external sources, as well as USB input and output connections so you can rip your vinyl records to your PC or MAC as digital files. The device also includes special auto signal sensing line input and 5-Volt power supply, and integration with Amazon Echo or Google Cast.

For those looking for an even bigger sound, there is a volume-controlled pre-amp output so you can connect an amplifier or external-powered speakers and/or subwoofer to The Plus Record Player.

Both versions of The Plus Record Player will be available in early 2018. The standard model will run $1,000, while the limited Carbon Edition will cost $1,200. Both will be available with Maple or Walnut wood finishes. And Plus Audio will also be showing off the device at the 2017 New York Audio Show, November 10-12. If you’re interested in more information, you’ll find more details at Plus Audio’s official webpage.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Brendan Hesse
Brendan Hesse
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Brendan has written about a wide swath of topics, including music, fitness and nutrition, and pop culture, but tech was…
The Sound Burger is back. Audio-Technica revives its vinyl Walkman for a new generation
Audio-Technica AT-SB2022 Sound Burger portable turntable.

Update, November 8: Well that was fast. Quicker than you can say "I'd like fries with that," the newly revived Sound Burger has completely sold out. In less than a week, Audio-Technica received orders for its entire 7,000-unit run of the retro record player. Digital Trends will update this post if the company decides to reward people's enthusiasm with a new release of inventory.

If you're old enough to remember the birth of the first portable cassette players, you might also remember Audio-Technica's AT727/770, a quirky portable record player that was better known by its other name, the Sound Burger. It hasn't been made in decades, but that's about to change: Audio-Technica (A-T) is bringing the Sound Burger back in all of its retro glory as a $199 limited edition model, to celebrate the Japanese audio brand's 60th anniversary.

Read more
Ikea wants to help you create a home music studio using a chair, a desk, and … a record player
Ikea Obegransad desk close-up.

Ikea has been venturing deeper and deeper into the realm of home audio with its Sonos-powered Symfonisk speakers and its collection of Eneby Bluetooth speakers.  But the Swedish furniture maker has now decided that its next frontier is to help those who create music, and its solution is something of a head-scratcher: A chair, a desk, and a turntable, all under the new Obegränsad moniker, that have been designed in tandem with house music supergroup Swedish House Mafia.

Ikea says the collection has the versatility to offer solutions for the home setup whether you are a music producer, DJ or musician – as well as provide solutions for simply relaxing and listening to music. “The design supports creating, playing, enjoying and even just setting the mood,” says Swedish House Mafia.

Read more
Astell&Kern blurs the line between headphone amp and digital audio player
Astell&Kern Arco CA1000 headphone amp and digital audio player held in someone's hand.

For audiophiles, dedicated headphone amps are a key component in their personal audio arsenal, one that lets them get the most out of their preferred wired cans. But Astell&Kern (A&K) clearly believes we haven't been expecting enough from these devices, so it has launched the $2,199 A&K Acro CA1000, a so-called "carriable" headphone amp that packs its own internal rechargeable battery as well as a full-featured, hi-res audio digital audio player. The pricey but capable hybrid gadget will be available January 24 at authorized Astell&Kern dealers in the U.S. and Canada.

The Acro CA1000 ticks an enormous number of boxes for folks who want maximum flexibility for controlling and enjoying digital music. It has two sizes of balanced outputs (2.5 and 4.4mm) and two sizes of unbalanced jacks (3.5 and 6.35mm), which should work with a majority of both general use headphones as well as audiophile-grade models. The built-in digital audio player -- accessed via a multi-angle touchscreen -- pumps data through a quad set of ES9068AS digital-to-analog converters (DACs), and they'll handily crunch any file you throw at them, including WAV, FLAC, WMA, MP3, OGG, APE, AAC, ALAC, AIFF, DFF, DSF, plus there's full rendering support for the MQA format and bit-perfect playback of up to 32-bit/384kHz PCM and native DSD512 (22.4MHz) tracks.

Read more