Jony Ive's First Post-Apple Design Project is a $60,000.00 Turntable

https://www.fastcompany.com/90919569/jony-ive-first-hardware-project-post-apple

60 grand for a turntable?

why

it’s a turntable for CEOS

The guy is walking on Teenage Engineering territory with these prices

  On 7/7/2023 at 11:07 PM, species8472 said:

why

Finally! Now I can finally experience the true warmth of my dusty PVC! Was looking to find a mate for my pair of old clunkers

beautiful design, will have to get 2 of these to mix w - o wait they're belt driven dang

The irony is the DIY turntable community have been handbuilding stuff that's probably much better for a lot less for DECADES.

When my old, $70 Technics SP-15 eventually dies this is the route I'm going.  Even if you're like me and don't have any experience or tools to machine the metal parts, getting them custom milled would be a whole hell of a lot cheaper than even a good DJ turntable, and the rest is pretty common stuff (you can make an absolutely world class bearing out of a <$10 Jeep pushrod with basic hand tools, for example) The arm could just come off of the Technics.

I could see spending a couple thousand dollars on a good turntable if you had the income for it and werent' interested in DIY, but much more than that you're better off using the money to buy some tools and GIT GUD.

  On 7/8/2023 at 12:25 AM, TubularCorporation said:

When my old, $70 Technics SP-15 eventually dies this is the route I'm going.  Even if you're like me and don't have any experience or tools to machine the metal parts, getting them custom milled would be a whole hell of a lot cheaper than even a good DJ turntable, and the rest is pretty common stuff (you can make an absolutely world class bearing out of a <$10 Jeep pushrod with basic hand tools, for example) The arm could just come off of the Technics.

You can realistically buy a secondhand sl1200 in good condition starting from around 650-700 eu. Maybe it's different in the US where you can drive up to a high spec metal milling factory and get the guys to mill the parts for you in exchange for a couple of sixpacks but there's no way in hell you can do that over here. You might get an approximation for a one-off arm milled for 3-400,- and then you have to get all the other stuff and be able to put it together so you can safely and reliably operate your turntable on a daily basis and get all your orders right from the start without any prototyping and you'd be lucky to get your homebrew factory milled turntable at 2000,-. I'm all for DIY and I love spending time on things etc but boldly stating that you can have a usable turntable made from manufactured to spec one-off parts and have it be a hell of a lot cheaper than say buying either a new oem technics clone or a second-hand real deal is totally bonkers.

edit; I realize at no point did you mention technics or sl1200's but I went and made the mental leap from good DJ turntable to that standard. To slightly reduce the ramble factor of my post.

Yeah, the arm's a different thing, I was talking about the turntable.  A lot fewer people are making arms high end arms themselves.  Turntables are pretty straightforward, though, I looked into it a lot at one point and it's definitely something that can be done with VERY good results for a few hundred dollars if you keep the design minimalist.

Talking about belt drive here, of course.  DIY direct drive would be REALLY hard, REALLY expensive and take a lot of specialized skill and experience.  No real purpose, especially since the consensus seems to be that for listening (as opposed to DJing), an above average belt drive drive will always outperform a top of the line direct drive because the motor is mechanically isolated from the platter (and the plinth, if you design it that way).  Obviously I don't have first hand experience since I've never built one, but from what I understand the important thing is having a lot of mass in the platter so that the momentum dampens any flutter from the belt slipping, and having a really good bearing (which, like I said, costs $10-$20 to make at home with basic tools). The biggest expense would be getting the platter turned since you'd need a pretty serious lathe to do something that big, but it's still pretty basic  and since my hypothetical is somebody who was going to pay $2000+ for something new off-the-shelf it would be well within the budget to hire it out.

That's good to know about SL1200s, last time I checked a used MKII was in the $1500-$2500 range but that was probably back in the period where they were out of production. Anyway, the type of people who buy expensive turntables seem to mostly consider Technics stuff not very good, built for durability rather than sound quality (they're wrong IMO). I've never spent more than $70 on a turntable myself, but some day I'll need to and a 1200 wouldn't be that big a step down from what I have now so I could see putting $600-ish into one if it was absolutely necessary.  

If we're talkign aesthetics, though, expensive turntables can be really nice.  One of my biggest regrets is that I could have bought a complete, well maintained Transcriptors Skeleton with all the original glass back in 2004 (that one from Clockwork Orange that looks like it belongs on the set of a giallo from 1975) for $75 (it was marked $100 at work, and I got a 25% discount) and I didn't do it because it needed some routine servicing and I didn't want to end up spending another $100-$150 to get it back to factory spec.

They may not be the best turntable in the world but theyre one of the best LOOKING as far as I'm concerned, and most of them are in the UK so I'll never have another chance like that.  I've never seen another one in person.

(this one's missing the lid but there aren't many decent photos of them complete)

The point is, a $60,000 turntable is stupid. A $600 is going to be pretty nice, and a $1600 turntable is getting up to where you'd better have an acoustically perfect room, world class speakers, a very good stylus and everything perfectly calibrated to even stand a chance of hearing much difference from the $600 one.

  On 7/7/2023 at 10:32 PM, Joyrex said:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90919569/jony-ive-first-hardware-project-post-apple

60 grand for a turntable?

It turns every record into Mumford and Sons. 

Does it play digital vinyls?

Good time to rep some of the original Dieter Rams designs (usually for Braun) that influenced pretty much everything Ives has done. I absolutely love this stuff, it's mostly from the 50s and 60s but still looks futuristic today IMO:

you can definitely play your ultra-rare SKAM whitelabels and Brian Eno 180gram reissues on this. don't worry about changing needles, phono cables, putting the records back in the sleeves or any boring shit, just sit back in your $90,000 white couch, grab a bottle of Voss and enjoy the tunes

does it play over wifi?

i'm surprised it plays vinyl and not some new type of vinyl that requires repurchasing all your records in this new format. 

edit: when the mackie 2102 first came out the guitar center rep would turn it upside down and stand on it to show how tough it was. i'd like to see jony stand on the platter while it's on and it spins around. 

edit edit: he should make a submarine next

  On 7/7/2023 at 10:32 PM, Joyrex said:

60 grand for a turntable?

fitting for guys named Jony and Marc

Audiophiles think they are clever but are clearly just a bunch of mugs

I want one of these, though.

  On 7/9/2023 at 12:44 AM, ignatius said:

edit: when the mackie 2102 first came out the guitar center rep would turn it upside down and stand on it to show how tough it was. i'd like to see jony stand on the platter while it's on and it spins around. 

I've heard they did the "spinning a guy on the platter" demo for the original Technics SP-10, too.

  On 7/8/2023 at 4:37 AM, jules said:

Does it play digital vinyls?

I was going to make a dumb joke about playing laserdiscs on a turntable, but when I was looking for a photo to go with it I learned that the ELP Laser Turntable is still being manufactured!

https://www.elpj.com/

These thing are realyl cool even if they're notorious for not actually working. AFAIK you basically need a pristine, perfectly pressed record that's been stored in a perfectly dust free environment, otherwise it skips a lot (I've never seen one i person so I can't comment). Maybe that was just the old models. Plus their history (it was an archival preservation tool for digitizing damaged records) makes me think that might have all been record shop myth.  OTOH the one person I've known who actually had a 10 year grant to digitize rare, pre WWII Armenian-American 78s didn't go anywhere near one - he got access to an media preservation lab that had a turntable with a vacuum platter so it could play records even if they were broken into pieces, and then used a microscope to find the part of the groove with the least wear and made the recording using a stylus chosen to ride at that depth.  He didn't think very highly of the laser stuff at all.

EDIT: this cork-sniffy audiophile review seems to agree with what I've heard from everyone I ever met who tried a laser turntable: they're cool but kind of shit. https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/elp-lt-1lrc-laser-turntable/

  On 7/7/2023 at 10:32 PM, Joyrex said:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90919569/jony-ive-first-hardware-project-post-apple

60 grand for a turntable?

"LoveFrom designed Linn’s new $60,000 record player pro bono."

Sacrilege to listen to U2 on such an audiophile turntable imho

  On 7/7/2023 at 11:26 PM, koolkeyZ865 said:

Finally! Now I can finally experience the true warmth of my dusty PVC! Was looking to find a mate for my pair of old clunkers

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Have you ever heard the HE 1? I had the pleasure twice so far, and it's nothing to sneeze at. Darude's "Sandstorm" sounded so punchy!

Really though, it is impressive, and I was almost tempted, but the thought of still eating ramen on my deathbed was kind of sobering.