Help - household audio - I am clueless (ish)

Gents

We're no audiophiles (although #1 son is a budding guitarist), we have cd's mp3 in the family cars etc.
Mrs JB has just hit me with "all three kids want a record player for the house for Xmas".
I've had a look, bit bamboozled. Seems like there are two solutions - a retro one-box thing that will have dreadful sound output but may have aux/bluetooth/usb capability, or option 2 is some form of half decent turntable which we then will need an amp or the likes and then a way to get sound to some speakers.
House recently decorated so there won't be any wall chasing going on, wooden flors with UFH so no speaker cable next to the gripperrod like back in my younger days.

What I am trying to establish is this:

Can I somehow get the sound from a standalone turntable via some form of device to either some decent wireless speakers that can be moved room to room (potentially 4 rooms could be involved), or, can I utilise the home cinema/sound bar in three of those rooms somehow? Soundbar has bluetooth and 3.5mm aux in, the two home cinema setup rooms have 3.5mm aux in, then I am just left with one room to sort from there. Perhaps via wifi network? If that is all achievable without spending £1000's, can we then somehow expand the system for digital music ie via pc/laptop/phone/streaming (dont understand streaming)/spotify (again I dont understand that, the kids do).

So as you can tell from the above appalling terminology, I need help!!!!!!! Just for an example, one of the turntables I saw was Audio Technica AT-LP60BT or the USB variant (they seem to review quite well and are circa £100/£150. The turntable ould go on a sideboard as a piece of furniture, with secondary devices on a lower shelf (at the other side of the room from the soundbar and subwoofer ......which is only relevant to that room of course).
Wifi signal is pretty strong.

Thanks in advance. Knowing where to start is the key....

Does Mrs JB really mean "record player" as in turntable to play vinyl 45's and 33's? Or does she mean "music player"? All the CDs can be "ripped" to MP3 at whatever bitrate/quality will work for you, vinyl can be converted with aforementioned record player, or old fashioned non-USB turntable like I have via amplifier, headphone outlet to audio jack into laptop. Having said that, I've not "ripped" any vinyl yet, it's a lot less hassle (but more expensive) just to buy the tracks again. How much vinyl do you have?

You then need to decide whether you want to share your source library (MP3s) into more than one room at the same time needing several wireless speakers, or whether just one box (or a stereo pair perhaps) will do? Is it likely that say wife + 3 kids all want to listen to different stuff at the same time? (you will be outside working on a Coupe of course)

I'm not sure about having a wireless receiver feeding into sound bars etc. via an audio jack - seems feasible.

I have a Logitech thingummy that plugs into the amplifier in the lounge via an audio jack IIRC and can play internet radio and my own library MP3s. In the kitchen there is a Brother box that can do the same thing but is also FM/MW and DAB radio also.

Yes Dave. Vinyl vinyl. Old school. Its in a renaissance I believe

If you buy a Sonos Play 5 you can (providing the Turntable has a built in phono amp) plug that into the Sonos Play 5 Line in. You can then add any further Sonos Speakers around the house and still play from the Vinyl source to any or all rooms. Plus you can access any music streaming services, Tune in Radio and and MP3s you have stored on your PC or a network drive. Trouble is the speaker is £500

Thanks all so far. Sonos looks decent but very costly especially when expanding....


Had a good chat with Mrs JB - who is responsible for all this grief!!
We'd site the turntable in our 'big' room. Where there is a bluetooth sound bar and wireless subwoofer. This may do for now ie forgetting the multiroom for now until we're happy its not a flash-in-the-pan thing.
The turntable we've pretty much decided on - audio technica AT-LP60 in either bluetooth or usb subformat.
Pro's and cons to each - the bluetooth would be so simple - literally pair and play. However the usb variant gives options to digitize your vinyl collection so you have it on phone/pc as well as at home, comes with the software.
So wondering about using a plug-in bluetooth dongle thing that would give us all the USB capability I just mentioned but with the speaker connectivity.
Could add a sonos-type device retrospectively presumably once we are happy we want to multiroom the sound.....

https://eu.audio-technica.com/turntables/AT-LP60BT

https://eu.audio-technica.com/turntables/AT-LP60-USB

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bluetooth-Trans...sic+transmitter

Then it depends what you want to do with your vinyl. Do you see yourself digitising it? It is a lengthy process if you have a lot of vinyl. It needs to be transferred to a laptop, and then transferred to a phone.

I have quite a lot of vinyl collected in my student years, and even though I now have the option to digitise it I just haven't bothered. It feels like it's missing the whole point of wanting to own vinyl vs buying mp3's.

I don't have a lot.
Suspicion is that it'll be our son who will use the turntable the most so am trying to ensure we have options to digitize if needed

Fair enough

I thought that the approved modern method was to purchase the vinyl, leave it in the filmwrap, and get the music on spotify?

Ha!

That bluetooth dongle has a range of 10m but isn't it line-of-sight only? And Sonos stuff is wireless (wifi) isn't it? Not sure if that will make a difference?

I have maybe 100 albums and several singles plus a fair few pre-recorded cassettes too and it's nice to listen to them now and again but it is a different sound from modern "perfect" sounding stuff, and some effort to record a side, split into tracks, filter out the scratches, pops and crackles, add the info and album art - but having said that, I've not given it a proper go yet...

To me, it appears that the choice of having a vinyl source is more fashion than sound quality in this case, which is a perfectly valid requirement but brings with it some drawbacks.

Vinyl is very much a mechanical engineering driven technology, which is by nature more expensive than electronics. Lightweight plastic turntables, floppy arms and low tech cartridges are almost always out performed by a similarly priced CD player.

A record is a rather poor choice for a centralized source. It is the sound equivalent of an AV projector. You darken the room, sit peacefully watching a good film. The quality of vinyl only becomes apparent when sitting in front of a decent system that can portray the differences between analog and digital music. It is a source for special listening not general or background music.

I have a soft sport for vinyl but once my beloved Acoustic Research Legend and Ortofon MC30 was more or less matched by a good CD player, it does not really get used. However, a turntable is a nice object and a great talking point.

Digitalising LPs which are available for a couple of Pounds on Amazon Marketplace is also a poor use of my limited free time. Those not available will just have to stay vinyl-only.

I would suggest that you are very clear what you want to achieve with this project. There are better ways of getting music to play around your house, and will everyone want to listen to the same thing at the same time in different rooms?

There are also better ways of getting good sound from an LP. I get the feeling this is a bit like buying a 2 seater sports car when you need a 5 seater with a decent boot.

Vinyl is fine if you are going to sit down and "Listen" to the music. Listening to music on Vinyl generally requires you to be somewhat dedicated to the task though. So this means that any Vinyl solution really needs to be a one room thing.

If you are looking to streaming music / sounds around the house, to multiple users then you really should look to DIGITAL only solutions. Digital music is much easier to store, use and share, especially if stored centrally on a home network.

Many household routers already have USB ports and if yours does you could run an attached USB hard drive to store digital music. This would mean that it's always available to any device connected to your home network. Connected devices could be things like TV's, tablets, Phones, PC's, Games consoles, laptops and wireless speakers.

Bob that sounds quite interesting and dead easy to set up without spending million on Sonos or similar!!! Our router is the sky one as they are our provider - although the wireless is switched off and we have two access point things for signal - Unifi if I recall correctly. Fairly sure there is no USB port though

Gents - by way of update - I've just ordered a turntable (yay).
Audio Technica AT-LP120-USBHC for £199 at John Lewis with a 2yr warranty.
No - it's not bluetooth. However Mrs JB and I had a little chat about a turntable location change for now, and I can always invest in a bluetooth line of sight transmitter if we don't like where it is planned to live. Decided to abandon trying to send the turntable sound around the house for now.
Been a difficult one this - spent a bit more than intended but I figured that this model was far more resaleable should this turn out to be a bit of a white elephant which we hope it won't. Time will tell. In the meantime Barmybob's suggestiion about a direct plug-in to the router is very interesting and warrants more investigation, as does the Chromecast Audio apparently.

Thank you all very much.

J

So do you have ANY wi-fi in the home?

You would really need Wi-Fi for any useful DNLA sharing system. If there are no USB ports for a USB hard drive then you would be looking at going down the NAS route, but that starts getting pricey

Yes Bob.
The Unifi access points give us good wifi coverage - theres an issue with the construction of the house that caused dead spots with the normal bt then sky router so I took advice and had two installed. Works really well.

https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/products/...AiABEgIp5vD_BwE

OK, so with no USB ports, and previous wi-Fi issues, it would probably be best to go for something like a NAS connected to the Sky router with an ethernet cable.

Have you seen these:
Edifier ?
...very positive opinions everywhere and not massive discharge of the wallet.

they actually look quite good avtokrator