If you thought vinyl records and record players had been relegated to relevance only in episodes of Pawn Stars, you were wrong (as was I). The Entertainment Retail Association (ERA) just announced that vinyl records had upstaged their digital counterparts in weekly sales for the first time ever in the UK. Meanwhile over in San Francisco, concept company Pink Donut is putting a new spin on the so-called aging audio technology, with a device that turns the tables on the concept of a turntable record.
The RokBlok is a portable 4.33 x 2×2-inch device that can play records placed on any flat surface–yes, any flat surface. The fairly unassuming block made of bamboo combined with fiberboard has the ability to crank out tunes from 33 ⅓ RPM (LP) and 45 RPM records. It weighs a mere 3.2 ounces, making it far and away the most compact and portable means to play a vinyl record. Inside, it holds a Bluetooth receiver, speakers, and a rechargeable battery.
To play a record using RokBlok, you simply place it on top of a disc and adjust a lever. That triggers rubber wheels built into its underside to start spinning. In turn, a needle begins to travel over the grooves in the record, in the same way that a stylus would in a standard record player. The audio is channeled first through a preamplifier, and then a speaker that’s built into RokBlok.
The built-in speaker is not the only way to play music using the RokBlok, though. Since it has Bluetooth connectivity, you can pair it with Bluetooth speakers or earphones over a distance of 30 feet. Wave your hand over the block, and it stops spinning. If you forget to it magically stop with a flourish of the hand, the RokBlok will do it’s thing for about four hours on a full charge. You can then recharge the battery, which returns to full capacity in about two hours.
If you’re among those who still enjoy listening to vinyl records, you might fear damaging discs by having the RokBlok spinning directly over them. Pink Donut reassures its backers that the device is engineered in such a way that the weight is distributed evenly across the scratch-proof wheels and not the needle. So according to the makers, scratches will occur only if it’s operating on an uneven surface.
RokBlok is currently killing it on the Kickstarter charts having raised over $120,000, which is twice its original funding goal. There’s still about a month and a half before the campaign reaches completion, so the final amount it amasses will likely be over the $200K mark.
Crowdfunders who were really quick on the draw were able to book their RokBlok for the early bird prices of $59 or $69. Since those have sold out, the minimum pledge that gets you a unit is $79; that’s still 20 percent off the $99 retail price. The estimated delivery date for backers is in September of 2017.
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Feature image courtesy of uncrate
Prateek Jose
Prateek Jose is a writer and engineering undergrad from India with an unhealthy obsession for obscure historical trivia. Conversations about absurdist fiction and the technological singularity make his day. He’s already uploading parts of his brain to servers by writing for websites such as this one.
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Great gimmick! I wouldn’t however trust it with any brand new records unless they were on the K-Tel or Ronco labels as anything else would be too much of a risk. Records sound amazing, but only if played on quality hi-fidelity equipment. That is why a budget replacement stylus for a low end record player (Turntable) is about £25, this is the starting price and it goes up into the thousands of £’s and that’s just for the needle, which in turn sits on a cartridge that is mounted on a tonearm, all of which have to be set up carefully with the arm balanced at the correct weight so that the needle can track properly in the grooves. The stylus (needle) has one hell of a task as it travels along the groove at high speed being battered off the side walls of the groove, at every point of contact, the more the better as it reads the information off of the disc. If not set up correctly and the stylus is poorly aligned then it won’t read both sides evenly as it will be against one wall of the groove more than the other the result to the listener being a deterioration in sound quality with more sound coming out of one channel than the other, which on stereo records will mean quite a lot of the recorded media will not be present. So with all these variables, and trust me there are many more to be taken into consideration with a record player, it lets you understand what sort of quality can be produced on a small gadget like this, how much information can it really retrieve from the walls of the groove and what state will it leave your records in, which is probably the most important part as records are the most expensive of all pre-recorded forms of media.
When a campaign goes over funding that it expects, is that because the campaign was set up to do that well and the founders kept the goal low thinking it over surpass it? Or could it be that they have an awesome product here?
Just assuming that the average consumer can tell a flat space from one that is not, what is the company going to do if this product does ruin a record?
Cheap and affordable, which is good. Now, if you could only get the customers to make sure a level surface is level 🙂
This is coming out at the exact right time! Getting back into the vinyl game is “new” again for people all over the world. I have a couple of friends that have been looking everywhere for vintage players. They might be 100% into this!