THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO… Wireless turntables

These hard-working wireless turntables aren’t the dusty old record players you might remember from your parents’ attic – and the right model can make your favourite vinyl truly sing

- Olivia Tambini

We are in the midst of a musical revolution, with innovations in digital music, streaming and wireless connectivity dominating the world of home audio over the last decade.

However, many of us are looking to the engineering of the past in our quest to achieve audio nirvana, hoping to find the perfect way to combine modern convenience with old-school cool. The answer? Wireless turntables.

These incredible audio gadgets give you all the palpable charm and sonic fidelity of vinyl, without the need for complicated setups and annoying cables, using Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to stream the music from your record player to your speakers or headphones wirelessly.

That means these days, you don’t have to be an expert to indulge your passion for vinyl, with super simple setups making record players accessible to everyone from tech-savvy teens to those who remember the first time turntables came into vogue.

WHY VINYL?

Lovers of vinyl will often talk about its ‘warm’ sound; music played from a record often sounds richer, and more immersive than digital MP3s and even CDs.

This is because vinyl is a truly lossless format – in other words, you don’t miss out on the tiny details and subtleties of the original recording, which most digital music files can’t fully convey. Lossy files like MP3 are compressed, making it possible to download them quickly, and store lots of them on your laptop, mobile phone or portable music player – but for all that convenience, you lose a great deal of the information stored on the original recording.