SONY PS-LX310BT turntable
Sony’s entry-level turntable offers four ways to play, including Bluetooth streaming to a wireless speaker or to headphones for a private vinyl experience, no other equipment required...
In addition to the usual wired outputs, this $299 turntable can stream direct to wireless headphones, a clever way to play your LPs while requiring no other equipment whatsoever.
Like many other companies, Sony all but stopped selling turntables during vinyl’s years of decline. But also like many other companies, it has been encouraged back to the medium by its revival, both by the numbers and by vinyl’s sheer cool-ness. In 2016 it announced the quite serious PS-HX500 turntable, which received excellent reviews including a Sound+Image award. It proved itself not only on the sonics but for including both its own phono stage, so those without a traditional phono input on their amplifier could plug it into any line-level input, and a USB connection to a computer which, using supplied Sony software, could then easily digitise the vinyl played on the turntable, and at high-res, no less, with the Sony-derived DSD format if you wished.
There was also a lower-level turntable, the PS-LX300USB, which gained less attention but still good reviews for its price, and still managing the inclusion of a phono stage and a USB output option, despite a price on the streets of under $200.
So this new PS-LX310BT is a closer relative to that lower model, yet the new turntable also takes some cues from that higher-level HX500. It also brings a new level of functionality to the party — Bluetooth output.
Equipment
The PS-LX310BT, then, has four ways to play. Like the turntables of old, it can output direct from the cartridge at phono level, requiring a phono stage in your amplifier or as an external box. Don’t have one of those? Flick the rear switch and the Sony’s internal phono stage raises the signal to line level.
Again there is a USB-B socket which can connect to a computer for recording your vinyl; no software is supplied but Audacity (a free program) is able to record the Sony’s output at up to 16-bit/44.1kHz.
And new here is the ability to send music from the turntable via Bluetooth, making possible a wireless connection with any Bluetooth speaker, Bluetooth-equipped amplifier or, rather deliciously, direct to a pair of wireless headphones — vinyl for one, no other equipment required. The specs say this Bluetooth output supports SBC and aptX, so headphones with aptX can achieve near-CD quality reception (if one dare use the term ‘CD-quality’ to describe vinyl via Bluetooth),
while others will fall back to the more destructive base-level SBC codec.
Set up of the turntable itself was a breeze, as the arm and cartridge are preinstalled, so all that’s required is to get the turntable nice and level, plug in your cables (instruction books always say to do this last, but you don’t want to be turning things round once set up, so plug cables in first, even if you don’t yet connect the other ends!), and lower the stainless-steel platter into place. The belt is already wrapped around the underside of the platter, and this turntable uses the common entry-level method of having a red ‘V’ of ribbon (see pictures, right) taped around the belt, allowing you to hitch the belt over the pulley without your greasy fingers touching anything important, usually, if you’re careful.
That done you simply add the felt mat, get the twisty and foam off the arm, attach the lid, and you’re ready to play. No counterweight to add, no antiskate to hang or adjust, no tracking force to apply. From unboxing to playing music took us less than 10 minutes.
Performance
Let’s start where we actually ended our listening — via Bluetooth, on headphones. While this is not the first wirelessly-listenable turntable we’ve reviewed (that was Yamaha’s Vinyl 500), nor the first we’re aware of with aptX Bluetooth available (Cambridge’s Alto), it is certainly the first time we’ve played vinyl wirelessly through headphones. And we loved it. We had a number of wireless headphones to hand but paired them initially with Sony’s XM1000mk3, which allowed the benefit of aptX at both ends. With plenty of level and an enjoyable quality of sound, we wandered within the Bluetooth range limits enjoying this unusual solo vinyl freedom, returning every 20 minutes or so to switch or flip over LPs. We noted also that there was useful extra level available by flicking one of two small switches on the rear, the one selecting between three positions of gain. This had no effect on the phono output, but can give you an increased level for line-level or Bluetooth output. (The other switch chooses between line-level or phono-level output down the cable.)
We had begun our listening, however, using that raw phono-level output into our usual Musical Fidelity phono stage. And it was immediately obvious that this is no cheapie ‘post office’ turntable. Our random opening choice of Michael Nyman’s soundtrack LP to ‘The Draughtsman Contract’ played with extraordinarily little surface noise, just the lightest of clicks between tracks, while the music lifted far above this, notable for its tightness, the central pulse of bass guitar and bass on Queen of the Night hard-edged and punchy. The strings were perhaps edgy rather than smooth, but there was depth, particularly on the last track of the side, The Garden is Becoming a Robe Room, where a significant wave of bass was added to the surging strings and pummelling harpsichords.
At the end of the side the arm was auto-lifted and returned to its cradle. We do enjoy automatic turntables. There are sonic arguments against the mechanisms, but on this level of turntable, the benefits for ease of use far outweigh them, especially when we turned to playing singles, where non-automatic turntables prevent you ever leaving the room for fear you’ll miss the end of the 45.
We had one moment of confusion when searching for the finger arm-lift with which you raise and lower the arm to the LP. Sure this is an automatic turntable, where you press play and the arm moves into position and drops all by itself, but say you just want to play a track in the middle — where’s the arm lift? It is, in fact, controlled mechanically from the right-hand button on the front: push it in to raise the arm, again to drop it, nice and gently, onto the turntable.
“With plenty of level and an enjoyable quality of sound, we wandered within the Bluetooth range limits, returning every 20 minutes or so to switch or flip over LPs.”
The one great peril of automatic operation is that if you (or a passing idiot) should press Start when there’s no record on the platter, the Sony will happily dump its stylus onto the spinning felt mat, likely doing significant damage to the stylus as well as making terrible noises. Two methods of prevention — either always keep that arm-raising up/down button engaged when the turntable is off, or leave some LP of minimal respect (as it will also get dusty) on the turntable between sessions.
The smoked-plastic hinged cover, incidentally, isn’t one that fully opens vertically, but it holds its position at around 60 degrees while you change discs and it closes quietly, leaving a millimetre gap all around, which is lower than many, if not a total dust and sound guard. In this regard it’s a bonus having the arm lift on an external button, as you can then close the lid before you start, and still manipulate the arm down or up, initialising playback without the famed cover clunk as it comes down.
While impressed with the overall sound for the lowly price, we were also surprised how hard a time we had picking the phono output from the line-level output, and even the Bluetooth output when aptX was not engaged (since our Musical Fidelity DAC has a Bluetooth input, we were able to switch pretty cleanly between all three options). Surprisingly it was the panned acoustic guitars of Pigs On The Wing pt2 from Pink Floyd’s ‘Animals’ (2016 remaster on 180g) which best illuminated the differences, the Bluetooth output adding slight sibilance to the vocal and edge to the guitars, while the phono output was more cleanly delivered. And while of course there are upgrades to be had by going to an entirely different level of turntable, our comparisons with decks up to $1000 showed the Sony LX310BT holding its own remarkably well, including against that higher Sony HX500. But you could hear the qualitatively lower level of cartridge in a slight dirtiness to Jeff Lynne’s vocal on The Sun Don’t Shine Any More, and in less precise definition of the piano notes opening Keith Jarrett’s Flying Pt 1, though we were surprised how well it delivered Jack DeJohnette’s ride cymbal work later in this piece — even through Bluetooth, which usually betrays weaknesses at higher frequencies on strings and metallic sounds like these.
Turning the wick up extremely high, there was also a low level of hum audible on the phono-level output, but at normal listening levels, and certainly under music, this was never a distraction.
We asked about stylus/cartridge replacement; currently $42 for a new stylus, we were told, not including fitting.
One final note, we noticed when packing up that Sony has a little tag attached to the power transformer noting the turntable model number (picture above right). We love this! We have a bag of old transformers in our cable cupboard and we’ve no idea what any of them came from, other than the few we’d thought to label with Dymo tape. Kudos to Sony for this!
Conclusion
Far more musically listenable than most decks at this price, and with four output choices including Bluetooth, the PS-LX310BT turntable mightily impressed us as a deck to delight those returning to vinyl with a minimum budget. Jez Ford