Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Allison Stewart. We continue our Record Store Day Coverage with a conversation about how to play all that vinyl you'll be collecting over the weekend. In other words--

[music]

Alison Stewart: [unintelligible 00:00:22], that's the wrong one. Oh, that's the wrong one. We had it all ready to go. Put the needle on the record and drop. All right. Maybe you are new to Modern Age audio options. You're looking to expand your current system. We've invited someone to the show to help. Joining us now is Brent Butterworth, senior staff writer from Wirecutter. He's an audio specialist with some suggestions at all different price points. Thanks for being with us, Brent.

Brent Butterworth: Thanks for having me on.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, what kind of setup do you have? When did you start collecting vinyl? Is there a particular record player that you like, particular speakers? Maybe you have some advice for someone who wants to get into vinyl. How to get started. 212-433-9692. 212-433 WNYC or hit us up on social media at All Of It WNYC. You are a specialist, but I'm going to start with some real basics first. Okay, Brent?

Brent Butterworth: Okay.

Alison Stewart: What am I looking for in a turntable?

Brent Butterworth: You want one that sounds good and won't destroy your records, basically.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: What parts of the turntable are important so that that doesn't happen?

Brent Butterworth: The most important thing probably-- There are some pretty cheap turntables under, say, $100 and if you're going to play your records at Christmas or something, then, whatever. If you want to not destroy your records and you want good sound, you need to get a turntable that has an adjustable tonearm. The tonearm is the thing that swings out and has the cartridge on it and has the needle at the end of it and you lower that down and that plays the record.

If you have an adjustable tonearm, you can actually set the force, what they call the vertical tracking force, of the amount of pressure that's on the needle onto the record. If you have a lot of cheap turntables, they'll be at seven or eight grams, which is enough to tear your records up pretty quick. Whereas a good one, it'll have a good cartridge on it and it'll let you set the proper tracking force so that your records will last many, many years.

Alison Stewart: Say, somebody just goes on a Google search before we give them some guidance, and they see record players from $200 to $2,000, what is it that you're actually paying more for?

Brent Butterworth: Well, a lot of different things. You're paying more for more adjustability. The $200 turntable, and there are some good ones, will have a basic amount of adjustability. Then, really, the $500, $600 turntables will have a fully adjustable tonearm where you can get in there and completely geek out and absolutely optimize it for the best sound. The ones that are $2,000, $3,000, and $4,000 they're very heavy. They have really, really consistent speed. They don't pick up vibrations from the floor and they also look really, really cool.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] That was one of my questions. We'll get to looks in a minute. What is a good starter turntable, one that is affordable but not junk?

Brent Butterworth: The industry standard for those is a company called U-Turn. They make the Orbit Basic. It's $200 and it's pretty bare-bones, but it works pretty well. Also, they have a lot of accessories that you can upgrade it with. You can spend $200 and then spend another $50 or $100 or whatever down the road and upgrade it, which is a little bit unusual in turntables.

That doesn't have any speakers or anything built in, you'll have to hook it up to a system. There's one from a company called Angels Horn called the H019, I think. it's also $200 and it has built-in speakers. You don't have to do anything at all. You just take it out, unpack it, do some really, really slight adjustment to it, and start playing records. It sounds actually pretty good.

Alison Stewart: Wow. The next nicer model you have, a step up, is the Fluance RT82. I'm going to read the description. Fluance RT82 Reference High fidelity Vinyl Turntable Record Player with Ortofon OM10 cartridge, speed control motor, high mass MDF wood plinth, vibration isolation feet. That's a lot. There's a lot going on there. What's going on there?

Brent Butterworth: It means they put some work into designing this thing and they didn't try to cheap it out too much. It's got an Ortofon cartridge. That's a good cartridge. They start at, I think, about $50 and they go up to probably $10,000, but that's a very well-regarded company. It means if it has that cartridge, you can't have that cartridge without having a reasonably adjustable tonearm.

It's going to be solid. You hear MDF fiberboard, so it's going to be heavy and dense and so it won't pick up a lot of vibrations from the ground and it'll also be a lot more stable in terms of maintaining a consistent speed on the record. It's just going to sound a little better in my experience than the ones that are $200 and maybe not as good as the ones that are $500.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. Line 2 is McKee calling in from Manhattan. Hi, McKee.

McKee: Hey, how are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm doing great. Tell us about your setup.

McKee: I have my turntable that I bought when I was in college, which is many, many years ago. It's a Denon. I'll read it, the model number right off of the thing, it's DP-60L. You can still buy them used on eBay for quite a few hundred dollars. I have a Grado cartridge on it and I always like to call out Grado because they're a local company. I love my setup.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for the shout-out. Appreciate it. My guest is Brent Butterworth, senior staff writer from Wirecutter. He's an audio specialist. We're talking about getting a setup going. If you've been inspired by Record Store Day and think you want to get in on it, listeners, we want to know what kind of setup you have, when you started collecting vinyl, what it is you like about your setup. Maybe you have some favorite speakers you want to shout out or advice for someone who wants to get in on all this. 212-433-9692, 212-433 WNYC. The next step up model you have on your list, Brent, is the Pro-Ject Debut Carbon EVO at about $600. What am I paying for here?

Alison Stewart: That's fully adjustable. If you want to geek out completely and get it absolutely dialed in and go buy yourself a tracking force gauge and a little protractor and all these things, it's fun. It's not that hard. It's pretty complicated, but you can find out how to do this stuff on the internet pretty easily, but you're going to spend half an hour or an hour or something like that. That thing will give you full adjustability. You can get everything dialed into absolute perfection. It's going to take a huge range of cartridges. It's going to have a nice stable base, it's going to have a really good heavy turntable, the actual platter on there that you're putting the records on.

It's going to have really consistent spin speed. It's not going to have rumble. Some of the cheap turntables, you'll hear [mumbles] to the speakers. Not that loud. [laughs] It'll be subtle, but it'll be annoying. To me, that that level of turntable is where you're starting to get to where everything's working great. You can spend more, but the improvements are going to be smaller once you spend more than that.

Alison Stewart: Am I wrong to care that that turntable looks really cool? You can get it like a candy apple, red, shiny.

Brent Butterworth: It doesn't look as cool as my turntable, so you're not wrong.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: We can talk about looks. It's okay?

Brent Butterworth: Yes. Sure.

Alison Stewart: Okay. Let's talk to George on Line 4, calling in from Montclair. Hi, George. Thanks for calling All Of It.

George: Hi, how are you? Thanks for taking my call. Listen, I've never stopped having a record player. In fact, I go back to the days when the record wouldn't tack, you'd put pennies on the tonearm, if you've ever done that?

Alison Stewart: Oh, yes.

George: Anyway, I think that [unintelligible 00:08:41] very, very pricey things. I'm still listening to all my old records. I just recently got tired of my old Yamaha belt drive because I just could not get the exact belt for it, and it was always wobbling. I just replaced it with an old new JVC direct drive and I couldn't be happier. I think it was $35 and the shipping was more [laughs]. I think the shipping was more than the thing. So everybody out here--

Alison Stewart: George, I'm going to dive in because your line is a little rough. I want to thank you for telling us what worked out for you. Let's talk speakers real quick. This is a real naive question, Brent. Do your speakers have to match your turntable in terms of brand?

Brent Butterworth: Not even slightly.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Okay, good.

Brent Butterworth: Not at all.

Alison Stewart: I knew that, but I just wanted to say it out loud.

Brent Butterworth: No.

Alison Stewart: What am I paying for when I buy speakers?

Brent Butterworth: You're just basically paying for quality. When you spend more money on a speaker, you're going to get one that's really been engineered carefully. If you buy a really cheap one, it's going to be slapped together and they're probably going to be inconsistent, and they're not going to have a lot of the little electronic parts inside that fine tune the sound. Also, a cheaper speaker is going to be smaller and going to have less bass. If you want that satisfying bass sound, you're going to have to spend more money.

Alison Stewart: If someone wants to do a little bit of an investment in speakers, what would you suggest?

Brent Butterworth: I would suggest-- there's two different kinds of speakers nowadays. There's what they call passive speakers, which require an amplifier. Then there's also what they call active or powered speakers, which have the amplifiers built in. A lot of people really like those. There's just so many examples of so many good speakers nowadays. My personal favorite is from a company called Triangle Audio. It's called the Borea BR03. It's about $400 a pair right now. We conceal all the products when we test it at Wirecutter so that people don't know what they are.

This thing has just beaten up on all the competitors in all these tests. You have to hook up an amplifier to it. These days, you can go get a good amplifier for a couple hundred dollars. The amplifier will probably have Bluetooth built in. It might have WI-FI built in for streaming from Airplay or something like that. For about $600 to $700 or something like that, you can have a really fantastic stereo. Then, of course, you can plug your turntable into there as well.

Alison Stewart: We're getting the same question over and over again from people. It says, "Needle, please. Needle, needle, please. We need to know the needle." You so gently wrote back to me, "It's not a needle." [laughs] All right, so help us out. All these people who have needle questions.

Brent Butterworth: If you don't want to be shunned by audiophiles, you better call it a stylus, but they'll know what you're talking about if you say needle. The stylus is the little part that actually contacts the record and translates what's in the groove into vibrations that that amplifier amplifies. You can buy a replacement stylus or needle for a lot of cartridges.

However, in so many cases, the replacement stylus is about 80% of the price of a new cartridge. Most people just prefer to buy a new cartridge. Especially, the more into audio you are, the more you're going to be like, "Oh, I'd like to try this cartridge next." They do sound different. I have never-- oh, I think once I replaced a stylus in my entire life.

I just get a new cartridge. You can get them, you can look on Amazon or there's specialty sites like Audio Advisor that might carry the replacement styli. My attitude is just get a new cartridge. Getting a new cartridge is a little bit like getting a new turntable almost.

Alison Stewart: Jess has sent us a DM on Instagram, "For turntable and speaker set, beginners Audio-Technica, AT LP60 Turntable, Edifier, a long list. The great thing about these speakers is that they're also Bluetooth-enabled in case you want to switch to Spotify or something else. Where do you stand on Bluetooth speakers?

Brent Butterworth: I love them. I test them for Wirecutter, so I better like them. I love them. If I counted the number that I have in my house right now, it's probably 20 or 30. A lot of the turntables nowadays will have Bluetooth built in, so you can beam a Bluetooth signal into your Bluetooth speaker. Audiophiles will, of course, frown on this because Bluetooth will diminish the sound quality a little bit. I just find that the convenience of it is really wonderful and everybody's got a Bluetooth speaker kicking around.

Then you don't have to necessarily even hook up your turntable with a cable to the stereo system. You can have your Bluetooth speaker across the room and have your turntable on the other end of the room or wherever it looks good.

I think that's perfectly fine. I should add, though, that the speakers-- there has to be what they call a phono preamp somewhere in here. It could be built into the turntable. It could be a separate little thing that you buy for, I think they started about $30 and go up from there up to about $30,000. Then it could also be built into the speakers as well, into powered speakers. You've got to have that somewhere in the chain to get the sound right.

Alison Stewart: I think we have time for one quick call. John, from Westchester. Really quick, what's your question?

John: My question was regarding the vinyl itself and storage of it, ideally. I'm not going to talk about the advantage of digital music, how it gets preserved. In the case of vinyl, because it is sort of a semi fluid.

Alison Stewart: I'm going to jump in here because we only have a minute. Storage of vinyl, Brent.

Brent Butterworth: It's real simple. Store it straight up, don't store it flat. Don't stack them flat. Store them straight up and go get rice paper sleeves, which are much better, smoother sleeves that won't damage your records. Keep all your records in the rice paper sleeve and then put it into the main sleeve that has the pretty pictures and stuff like that on it. Make sure the rice paper sleeve, the opening's pointing up and the records opening the outer sleeve should be pointing to the side so that you don't grab it and the record falls out.

Alison Stewart: Love all of the recommendations from Brent Butterworth. Butterworth, excuse me, senior staff writer for Wirecutter and audio specialist. Thank you so much for sharing your lists and for an answering our listeners' calls.

Brent Butterworth: Thanks for having me on.

Alison Stewart: That is All Of It for today. All Of It is produced by Andrea Duncan-Mao, Kate Hinds, Jordan Lauf, Simon Close, Zach Gottehrer-Cohen, L. Malik Anderson, and Luke Green. Katherine St. Martin is our intern. Our engineers are Jason Isaac and Juliana Fonda. I'm Alison Stewart. Have a great weekend.

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