Audio Technica at-lp60 Fully Automatic Stereo Turntable System Review

Our Verdict

A reliably articulate and well-featured deck, well worth the request price

For

• A clear, balanced and articulate listen
• Rips records to digital files
• Like shooting fish in a barrel operation

Against

• Sound could do with more than solidity

What How-do-you-do-Fi? Verdict

A reliably clear and well-featured deck, well worth the asking cost

Pros

• +

  A articulate, counterbalanced and clear listen

• +

  Rips records to digital files

• +

  Easy operation

Cons

• -

  Sound could practice with more than solidity

Two budget turntables scooped What How-do-you-do-Fi? Awards last year: the traditional Rega Planar i (£250) and record-ripping Audio Technica AT-LP5 (£330), both more than than worthy of 'My First Turntable' condition – for those that tin can afford the outlay, of course.

However, those with tighter bag strings didn't have much option beyond the four-star Lenco LP-85 (£120). Or rather, they didn't until now.

The Audio Technica AT-LP60-USB changes that, combining simple performance with a clean, balanced and organised sound and, like the same Audio Technica and Lenco, the ability to rip your vinyl to digital files.

And all for the toll of a handful of albums.

MORE: Audio Technica AT-LP5 review

Build and feature

The Audio Technica offers a more understated aesthetic to the brightly hued Lenco or suitcase-style Crosley.

Its plastic chassis, available in silver or black, wears a shiny, tasteful stop, and the streamline tonearm mechanics and hood fixings mean that, at a quick glance, it could pass as a model worth twice the price.

Set up-up isn't quite as straightforward every bit rival decks around this price, namely the Lenco and Crosley Keepsake.

A little DIY is involved – the die-bandage aluminium platter needs positioning and the belt attaching (no tonearm adjustment is required) – merely it'south not backbreaking plenty to put off fifty-fifty the most clueless novice.

Those won over by the tactility of vinyl may even consider it a bonus!

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Once up and running, operation is as effortless as using a CD player.

The starting time button on the front of the AT-LP60-USB positions and lowers the tonearm and gets the record spinning, all within about 5 seconds, while the end button next to it naturally reverses the process. The button on the other side merely changes speed betwixt 33 1/3 and 45rpm.

With a phono phase built in, the Audio Technica tin can exist plugged direct into your system or a pair of powered speakers via a RCA cable, although a switch at the back gives you the pick to use an external phono phase instead, for example on your integrated amplifier.

MORE: How to prepare a turntable

Sound

We lay down Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' The Boatman's Telephone call for the main upshot and while the Audio Technica is far from thin, its lack of solidity compared to the Lenco LP-85 is immediately noticeable.

In Into My Artillery, the gruffness of Cavern'south baritone croon is well communicated, the staggered delivery of the eponymous lyric is clear, and the pianoforte accessory carries warmth, merely the presentation equally a whole isn't equally fleshed out.

That's not the end of the globe, though, especially as the Audio Technica trades its peer's instantly gratifying boldness for better precision and arrangement. As such, it'south a more clear heed.

Piano accents are well highlighted, and the menses of the unproblematic percussion and vocal limerick sounds more than natural.

More: 6 of the best budget turntables

The reward of the AT-LP60-USB'due south discipline becomes all the more than apparent when Lime Tree Arbour comes into play, too; it doesn't lose sight of faint cymbal brushes or gentle bass plucks beneath the piano harmony any more than it does the organ notes behind his intimate song.

In that location is enough space between the instruments for the presentation to sound coherent, just not so much that they feel asunder – and that equilibrium is by far a given at this toll.

More: Best turntables 2017

Elsewhere, the presentation is that much cleaner than its rivals too, a fair amount of item is dug out from albums' grooves, and without lacking drive or free energy information technology commits itself to a pleasingly easy listening residuum.

Recording from vinyl is a simple process also. Files tin be ripped as 16-bit/44.1kHz or 48kHz WAVs past connecting your PC or laptop to the turntable'southward USB type B output, then using the supplied Audacity software to process them.

These files have a similarly even-handed character, although in terms of quality, expectations should be closer to Spotify streams than CD-ripped files.

More: How to get the best audio from your turntable

Verdict

Then what'due south the catch? We pondered that likewise, albeit ultimately in vain.

While we'd exist grateful for a fiddling more than solidity and would still back the pricier Rega Planar i equally the most applied starting bespeak for anyone with a curiosity about vinyl, the Sound Technica AT-LP60-USB is an attractive entry-level deck.

Encounter all our Sound Technica reviews

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Source: https://www.whathifi.com/audio-technica/lp60-usb/review

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