Aeverything has been there before. At that time, the music machine was called Phonosuper Braun SK4 or, in poetic diction, Snow White’s coffin. It combined a radio tuner, a tube amplifier, loudspeakers and, enthroned on the upper deck, a record player with a Plexiglas hood, which served as a template for the nickname in the vernacular at the time. Designers Hans Gugelot and Dieter Rams helped give the device, which saw the light of day in 1956, its style-defining form.
You would hardly have bet that two generations later, the HiFi guild would still quote the basic concept of this music system, often in a rather unworthy way. Even at low prices there are now vinyl generalists who, with plastic tonearms and wobbly mechanics, emit whining noises via droning mini loudspeakers. But there are also devices with much higher ambitions.
The most recent example is unfortunately somewhat cumbersome, The+Record Player and comes from the English manufacturer +Audio. We asked the compact device combination, which costs around 2000 euros as a special edition, into the listening room. The turntable section comes from the large manufacturer Pro-Ject, so not from bad parents. The turntable is driven by a belt, the motor is suspended from pre-tensioned rubber cables for mechanical decoupling. The speed is changed with somewhat cumbersome mechanical procedures. To do this, the turntable is lifted off and the belt on the drive wheel of the engine block is threaded onto a section with a different diameter. The tonearm of our turntable edition is a high-quality model with a light, rigid carbon fiber tube.
The pickup is called Ortofon 2M Red, the name identifies it as a member of the upper class. There is no automatic start-stop. The platter simply starts spinning as soon as the front panel input selector shows ‘Phono’ and only stops when you switch to a different program source. The turntable unit rests, invisible from the outside, on four absorber feet, which are intended to ensure sufficient decoupling from the loudspeaker department. Can they do it? First, more details about the device architecture.
It also works without additional boxes
The electronics of the compact system invite analogue and digital devices to play along. A radio tuner, for example, can be connected via cinch sockets, a CD player can deliver the music via an optical interface, and a mini-USB interface establishes contact with a computer for signal transfer in two directions. The computer can send music for playback, but the turntable can also output the sound in digitized form for recording. Programs such as the free software Audacity then convert the data stream into digital files. Even the smartphone can play along via Bluetooth radio and in this way also establish a connection to streaming services. And if external active loudspeakers are to be used for playback, they can be connected via cinch outputs. The built-in sound converters can be muted with a small toggle switch on the back. But even without the support of additional speakers, the system sounds remarkably mature, with a lively temperament, clear high-frequency reproduction and a not too lush, but appropriate bass foundation.
The width of the stereo panorama can still be expanded electronically, but we mostly did without this help because it sometimes seemed a bit too reverberant in our test program. And what about decoupling? You can feel it with your fingertips on the turntable: It doesn’t work completely at high playback volumes, but we didn’t hear any annoying feedback over the built-in speakers.