Some may remember that for our special Vinyl Week in April, I finally set aside two decades of hesitance and decided to try out a turntable at home.
This wasn't a straightforward experiment, though (as most who know me will tell you, nothing is ever straightforward with me), because my living room is really dedicated to home cinema rather than hi-fi.
Not traditional home cinema, either, but a fairly minimalist, lifestyle-first home cinema featuring Sony's HT-A9 wireless speaker system which, it transpired, has no physical audio inputs.
The solution, much to my concern, was a Bluetooth turntable – the very capable Pro-Ject T1 Evo BT. Why the concern? I simply assumed that the richly layered charm of analogue vinyl would somehow be lost in the calculated ones and zeros of wireless Bluetooth transmission.
It turns out I was wrong about that – at least in a broad, conceptual way. Bluetooth carries across the little pops and crackles that help make the vinyl listening experience unique, and none of the hardness I had expected was evident in the delivery.
There was a problem, though: my Sony system's lack of aptX support meant I was limited to a relatively low 327kbps Bluetooth bitrate.
Given that limitation and the general nature of the speaker system itself, the sound was surprisingly decent, but I was clearly leaving detail, dynamics and texture on the platter.
That simply wouldn't do, particularly as my family and I had been instantly bitten by the vinyl bug.
A capable, compact solution
Rather than return the turntable, then, it was time to source an alternative system to partner the Pro-Ject. I didn't want to replace the Sony HT-A9, which had served me well as a home cinema system, and I didn't want to move the turntable from its approved position at the back of our living room.
In other words, I was going to have to stick with Bluetooth, and whatever I added was going to have to be minimalist enough to fit in with my existing AV kit.
After much research, the solution I settled on was the five-star KEF Coda W speakers.
To my eyes, the angular Coda W aren't quite as pretty as KEF's smoothly sculpted LSX models, which have always appealed to me, but they prioritise Bluetooth over wi-fi streaming and have built-in aptX HD support. A perfect match for the Pro-Ject turntable.
They're also quite a lot larger than the LSX II LT, producing a bigger sound that would potentially work well in my decently sized living room, while still being compact enough to fit into the nooks of my existing bookshelf-cum-TV-stand. No furniture upheaval required.
Sure enough, the unpacking and installation of the new Coda W speakers took all of five minutes, and connecting them to the turntable was simply a matter of putting the KEFs into Bluetooth pairing mode and switching the Pro-Ject on. Bingo-bango, I was ready to rock.
Analogue charm with wireless convenience
As a nascent vinyl collector, I'd been listening to more or less the same few records since I first took the turntable home in April, so I was intimately familiar with how they sounded through my Sony speaker system. The upgrade provided by the KEFs was vast and instantly apparent.
Playing my much-spun copy of On Circles by Caspian, the huge improvement to dynamics was what struck me first. The Coda W are capable of creating a large, spacious sound, but within that, they deftly handle dynamic shifts both grand and small-scale.
Detail levels, too, were clearly massively improved, thanks to the combination of the revealing nature of the KEF speakers and the upgrade to aptX HD Bluetooth.
In fact, the sound quality improvements were across the board, as you'd expect with a switch from a lifestyle-oriented home cinema system to a pair of powered hi-fi speakers. Greater punch, rhythmic drive and tonal balance – it was all there, along with those subtle imperfections that for many people represent a big part of vinyl's character.
In other words, I'm hugely impressed – and surprised – by the performance that a minimalist, Bluetooth-based turntable system can clearly offer.
I'm not saying that going wired wouldn't be better – it no doubt would, and I may well look into a switch to cables in the near future. But I am saying that the need to go wireless and generally build a system around your lifestyle no longer precludes you from enjoying an excellent vinyl experience in the way that it would have done just a few short years ago.
Back then, a turntable system simply wasn't an option for me. Now, it is, and I’m loving how much less compromised it is than I was expecting.
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