New Sony Turntable Converts Vinyl into Hi-Res Audio

With the home theatre market saturated, a number of home electronics manufacturers have made it their mission to reintroduce the world to proper high fidelity sound. They believe–as I do–that people have been bamboozled into thinking that music from MP3s is good enough. As a result, people are listening to music that sounds sonically worse than what was common in the 1970s. This has to stop.

Meanwhile, vinyl continues to be hot and sales of turntables are rising in lockstep with records. This is why Sony now has the PS-HX500 Hi-Res turntable.

Yes, it plays records (as you’d expect, of course), but it can also convert analogue vinyl into Hi-Res digital audio (i.e. it has a built-in A/D converter that can turn vinyl into 192 KHz/24-bit .wav files). This is the first turntable in the world with this capability, which means far better audio than one of those cheap USB turntables that turn vinyl into MP3s. Users can store their vinyl digitally for use on any Hi-Res Audio unit.

This isn’t for everyone, of course, but if you’ve been pining for a way to digitize your vinyl without compromising quality, then this is worth a look. Sony says the new turntable will be available in Canada at the end of May and retail for $789.99.