C. H. Pinhas holds a lifetime passion for vinyl and is excited about the comeback records have made in the last ten years. When doing consumer research before buying a new turntable he was dissatisfied with the choices available. Record players used forty year old technology, and fully manual playback systems let the user listen to the music in only one way. Deconstructing the design requirements of a vinyl record, he decided to make a stylus turn while the vinyl itself is static.
Developing a totally new method of listening, LOVE was born as a smartphone controlled record player. The team is running a Kickstarter campaign to fund their first run of production players, accommodating 7, 10 or 12 inch records and playing at 33 1/3 and 45 rpm speeds. A sensor inside the base of the unit works with a standard stylus cartridge to scan a record for size and find the different songs. The smartphone app can skip tracks, repeat tracks, modify the volume, and change speeds. LOVE works over both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The units in the campaign video sit on a base that comes in 45 and 33 1/3 record sizes, while the LOVE unit rotates around the record. Sound is broadcast to speakers, headphones, and receivers. The page says that LOVE is compatible with Sonos but not yet working with Google Home or Amazon Alexa. iOS6, iPhone 5, iPad2, and Android OS 6 are the minimum requirements to run the app.
LOVE is said to have 0.2% maximum wow and flutter rates, sampling at 44 kiloHertz, with 20 Hertz to 18 kiloHertz bandwidth capabilitiy. The channel separation is 25 decibels at 1 kiloHertz. The internal battery is expected to allow users to listen to fifteen sides of 12 inch records before needing a recharge, and the recharge takes 1.5 hours. The page says that design intent is for LOVE to accept warping deviations of up to 1.5 millimeters while still providing smooth feedback.
LOVE looks like a great addition to the world of nontraditional turntables, many of which we’ve covered here at ENGINEERING.com. The design looks sleek and elegant and even though standard users won’t generally see it the sensor scanning system below the unit looks precise and smooth. A big plus for me is that the hisses and pops of the vinyl record will still be present in the playback. I don’t like the fact that the unit doesn’t have its own internal speaker but expect that is not an issue for most heavy audiophiles. The campaign ends on March 8 and first units are expected to ship in October 2017.