Announced at CES 2016, the PS-HX500 will be Sony’s go to turntable for spring 2016 onwards. This is no ordinary turntable, as well as offering amazing vinyl sound, it also boasts the ability to convert your records into Hi-Res audio files.
For vinyl-lovers this is a big deal, it means you can back up your existing vinyl using the PS-HX500’s DSD 5.6 MHZ native conversion, so if anything happens (heaven forbid!) to your vinyl you still have a perfect copy. More importantly, it also means that if you want to listen to your music on the go, it’s theoretically possible by converting them and then loading them onto your Hi-Res audio player.
As well as being able to convert to DSD in either single rate (2.8MHz) or double rate (5.6MHz), this Sony can also convert to WAV up to 24bit 192KHz. So if it’s doing exactly what it says then Sony has created a unit that’s able to capture the pure sound of analogue vinyl on a digital file, in which case this could realistically be one of the coolest things to come from the hi-fi experts in recent years.
Build wise it has a 30mm thick MDF cabinet, insulated rubber feet, 5mm rubber matt, aluminium die-cast aluminium platter and an integrated shell type straight tone arm. It’s belt driven and comes with an MM cartridge but there’s no word yet as to which one it will be – hold tight!
Sony’s main intended purpose for this unit is probably to fit effortlessly into a Sony Hi-Res system, the PS-HX500 has been designed to specifically work with the Hi-Res branded Sony audio products ranging from its Walkman Hi-Res players to hi-fi components like the MAP-S1 or HAP-S1. Of course that doesn’t specifically need to be the case, with a multitude of different options and setups you can go for instead of just sticking with the Sony brand – we always encourage customers to try out a wide range of hi-fi in our stores to find the product that best suits their needs.
As of right now I’m pretty excited for the PS-HX500, which looks to open up a whole new avenue of Hi-Res audio but we’ll have to wait for spring time to see if it lives up to very high expectations!
Author – Hal, Plymouth store
