The upshot is that any sub-$1,000 turntable really needs to be pretty easy for even a novice to put together correctly.īy arriving with a pre-installed moving-magnet cartridge that’s already fully aligned and ready to go. More recently, turntable manufacturers have realized that most people these days buy their turntables online, and most of us don’t have a friendly analog expert to help us out. You could go to your local hi-fi emporium, pick out a turntable and cartridge, and the resident turntable guru would put it all together and align it for you. If you went back some 35 years to a time when turntables still ruled the audio world, you’d discover that You to record your records onto a computer while listening to them through your hi-fi system. You can even connect both the digital and analog outputs simultaneously, allowing You can connect to your phono preamp– equipped amplifier, or through its own built-in phono preamp at line level. Of course, the basic appeal of vinyl is its ability to bring us back to a pure analog world, so naturally, the PS-HX500 can also function as a standard analog turntable delivering either a cartridge level signal that That’s a whole lot easier than lugging a portable record player and a pile of hip vinyl around with you. Or take with you on the road in a personal music player. Debating the merits of DSD versus PCM is beyond the scope of this review, and it’s a moot point anyway, because in addition toĭSD, the PS-HX500 can also deliver PCM signals in various quality levels all the way up to 192-kilohertz/24-bit high resolution.Ĭonnect the PS-HX500 to a computer running its companion Hi-Res Audio Recorder software for Windows or Mac OS X, and you can turn your records into digital files that you can play on your audio system But this one is definitely the first that can spit out both high-resolution DSD and PCM digital signals.ĭSD or Direct Stream Digital is the digital signal format used for Super Audio CDs (SACD) and is fundamentally different from the more common PCM signal used for CDs and most other forms of digital audio recording. Decent-quality turntables with a digital output have been around for quite a few years-my colleague Mark Fleischmann reported on a USB version of the Pro-Ject Debut back in 2008. Most of these new offerings look like they could have come straight from the manufacturers’ 1989 catalogs, but Sony’s latest vinyl spinner, the PS-HX500, has one foot planted firmly in the 21st century. Most of the big consumer electronics companies dropped out of the turntable business decades ago, but suddenly in the last year we have seen ambitious new turntable introductions from big players like Onkyo, Pioneer, Technics, and now Sony. There is, however, one surefire way to tell the difference between a fad and a real movement, and that’s when the big boys stop snickering from the sidelines and decide to start playing along. Detractors love to say that the current resurgence of vinyl is nothing but a bunch of bearded hipsters with Crosley Cruisers, trying to look cool in their mid-century bachelor pads.
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