I’m connecting some turntables to my system and I’m wondering whether I use a second hand Connect or whether I actually get a Playbase and use the input on that. With the Playbase at least I get another speaker close to my turntables but I’m unsure about what the quality of input is like compared to the Connect.
Answered
Connect vs Playbase input
Best answer by Airgetlam
CONNECT has an RCA input, the PLAYBASE has an optical input, which may sway your thinking.
The Turntable would either need to have a built in pre-amp or you’d need to get an external one (they’re cheap) to connect it to either input, although the optical input would need additional effort.
The optical input could take up to Dolby Digital on the PLAYBASE, but the CONNECT would be restricted to stereo. Shouldn’t make a difference on the turntable connection.
However, If you are thinking that you want a speaker in addition to the line in, I’d think strongly about a Sonos Five (or PLAY:5 of either generation), which has a 3.5 mm stereo line in, and would work probably better than the PLAYBASE.
This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.
CONNECT has an RCA input, the PLAYBASE has an optical input, which may sway your thinking.
The Turntable would either need to have a built in pre-amp or you’d need to get an external one (they’re cheap) to connect it to either input, although the optical input would need additional effort.
The optical input could take up to Dolby Digital on the PLAYBASE, but the CONNECT would be restricted to stereo. Shouldn’t make a difference on the turntable connection.
However, If you are thinking that you want a speaker in addition to the line in, I’d think strongly about a Sonos Five (or PLAY:5 of either generation), which has a 3.5 mm stereo line in, and would work probably better than the PLAYBASE.
Oh, the “quality” of the line in is the same across all of them. The only difference is HDMI/Optical/Analog is essentially the type of signal it can process. (in order I listed them, the “best” signal is Atmos/Dolby Digital/Stereo)
It’s not a great idea to sit a turntable directly on top of a speaker or even on the same shelf or countertop with a speaker because this encourages acoustic feedback.
Thanks all! Very helpful.
The turntable is going into a mixer/amp so preamp not an issue and I have the cable converting from rca to optical. The turntable will be on a different shelf so acoustics should be ok and was thinking Playbase because the speaker would need to sit in a slim shelf.
The PLAYBASE isn’t a slim device, except in height, it’s rather big, as it is designed for a TV to sit on. It’s also no longer manufactured.
You may want to consider a Beam or one of the new Rays, using the Sonos adapter that takes optical signals and converts them to ARC.
Gossy,
Is this a DJ setup? If so, I don’t recommend attempting to incorporate a SONOS Room in your setup, along with traditional amplifiers. There is a 75ms latency between SONOS Line-In and output from the SONOS speakers. PLAYBASE would reduce this to about 30ms, but only for PLAYBASE. Other SONOS speakers will have the 75ms latency. If you are used to working in large halls, you may be able to deal with (multiple) latencies, but regular home users are very frustrated by the latencies.
buzz wrote:
Gossy,
Is this a DJ setup? If so, I don’t recommend attempting to incorporate a SONOS Room in your setup, along with traditional amplifiers. There is a 75ms latency between SONOS Line-In and output from the SONOS speakers. PLAYBASE would reduce this to about 30ms, but only for PLAYBASE. Other SONOS speakers will have the 75ms latency. If you are used to working in large halls, you may be able to deal with (multiple) latencies, but regular home users are very frustrated by the latencies.
Thanks for the heads up. I’m aware of the latency and will be plugging in direct speakers for DJing which isn’t as frequent as everyday use.
Airgetlam wrote:
The PLAYBASE isn’t a slim device, except in height, it’s rather big, as it is designed for a TV to sit on. It’s also no longer manufactured.
You may want to consider a Beam or one of the new Rays, using the Sonos adapter that takes optical signals and converts them to ARC.
Thanks will check them out. It’s a narrow shelf height wise but quite deep and wide, hard to explain! That’s why I thought the Playbase might be the perfect shape.
Assuming I go down the Playbase path does the quality of the converter make a difference. This is the one I have:
https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07DQGKZFQ
any advice?
Moderator note: removed a few layers of tracking information from that link
Given the cost of this unit, it’s not a premium product. I would think that CONNECT offers better quality, but maybe this is just wishful thinking. I have no experience to prove this.
Using CONNECT would allow you more flexibility to move the turntables because they would be on the network.
Enter your E-mail address. We'll send you an e-mail with instructions to reset your password.