Um, that's not really analogue, is it?

Elipson Turtable

We have to say that this does seem an unusual way to get audio off a turntable

When we published this article a week or two ago, we did a double take when we read this paragraph about French turntable brand Elipson:

"Like the Sony, some models are available with a phono preamp built-in, but unusually, the flagship model also offers the ability to transmit over Apt-X Bluetooth."

It does seem a little strange that a perfectly valid means to re-enter the analogue domain, ie a turntable, should sport that most digital of interfaces: Bluetooth.

The company can be forgiven though, because this is not the sole means to extract audio from their flagship deck; it’s just an additional way to connect speakers.

But you do have to wonder who would use this: I mean, Bluetooth speakers are not exactly state of the art in terms of their audio performance. For a start, they’re normally pretty small, and then there’s the small matter that you have to convert the deck’s analogue audio output to the digital domain, compress it, send it over Bluetooth, decompress it, and then, ultimately, convert it back to analogue.

Not really the best way to appreciate that pure analogue sound.

But at least they’ve taken the high ground by choosing Apt-X for the compression codec. This is a much higher quality than standard Bluetooth compression, which should mitigate the round trip through the digital domain that users of Bluetooth will subject their analogue audio to.