Not sure where to put this, it's neither stereo and vinyl, so The Lounge sounded best to me. RokBlok So after having read about the Sony Flamingo I was browsing the net and stumbled across other... let's call them "unusual" audio devices. This seems to be based off the so-called "RokBlok", which seems to have more speaker space than the VW bus you can see there. RokBlok does have bluetooth by the way, so you can connect headphones or speakers to it. At first this may seem pretty weird and useless, considering that the drag force from the curve it's constantly driving might damage one of the sides of the groove it's driving along more than the other, likely a higher chance of skipping, getting off track and scratching your entire record if you're out of luck. Not to mention that when using the integrated speaker the constant circular movement changes the source of audio all the time and it's a little speaker, so it's not really quality audio that it emits. But if you're digging through some second hand records in some basement and there's no player at hand this could even be the most useful portable solution to check if what you're holding is even what you're looking for (for example if the label is damaged and there's no hull). Anyone else know some interesting or out of the box "portable" or otherwise outstanding audio devices? Think along the lines of the (cancelled) portable tape player "Elbow". Can be about anything, headphones, players, or maybe even a conceptual media.
Not portable and from the opposite side of the universe the vinyl record player that the only thing that touches the record is a laser beam.
Interesting, I've had a conversation about something like that with someone just today. We wanted to check if it exists, and what a surprise, there's even a video of it in this thread. Thanks for posting!
I think the conclusion was that the RokBlok was a poor copy of the Vinyl Killer VW van design. Although it shouldn't damge your records I have read that a problem with the laser turntable is that the records have to be completely clean as there is no stylus to clear the groove. In conclusion trying to play existing media in a new method is usually fraught with problems. That is why most manufacturers from Fisher Price to Technics adopted the original principle of a rotating platter and a pivoting arm. There have been some unusual audio devices that didn't catch on despite working well. Here is another Techmoan video It is a shame that Flash Memory and more recently the Internet seems to have killed any innovation in Audio formats.
