Crosley Record Player How To Play Record

Vinyl record sales have grown at double-digit annual rates since 2006, and as a result you can find inexpensive record players at music stores, department stores, and even fashion outlets. With some models priced below the cost of an audiophile-grade record, the budding vinylphile has to wonder: Do these things sound okay? Or more to the point, do they even work?

When a Wirecutter reader recently asked this question, I couldn't answer. As a devoted audiophile, I had been as disinterested in cheap record players as a fishing enthusiast would be in an R2-D2 spinning reel. But then I remembered the experience that originally awakened my passion for music: listening to a scratchy copy of Led Zeppelin II handed down by an older cousin, played on a Sears Silvertone record player that I had used mostly for records featuring the likes of Batman and the Peter Pan Pop Band & Singers.

I used to review turntables for Sound & Vision magazine, so I knew that today's ubiquitous cheap record players couldn't match the sound quality of my high-end turntable. But could they at least provide some fun for a vinyl newbie? To find out, I tried models representative of the two basic types of cheap turntables: portable models costing about $50 to $60 and home models costing $100 or less. To put the cost of these players in perspective, consider that the least expensive vinyl playback system you could assemble from Wirecutter picks—a U-Turn Orbit Basic turntable combined either with a Sony STR-DH190 stereo receiver and a pair of Q Acoustics 3020i bookshelf speakers or with Klipsch R-51PM powered speakers (which have a phono input)—would cost more than $500.

The portable I chose is the Crosley Cruiser, which includes a built-in Bluetooth receiver and is available in 24 colors and finishes (including, not surprisingly, a Star Wars theme). For the home model, I selected the Victrola Plaza, which has Bluetooth and an FM radio built in. Both models have built-in stereo speakers, a headphone jack, an auxiliary line input to connect other audio sources, and analog audio outputs for connecting to an external stereo system.

The two players I tested use several of the same components, including the record platter and some of the tonearm parts (see our guide to the best turntable to learn more about the parts of a record player), and similar models are available from other brands. Many of these players look alike, and many probably emerged from the same factory, so allegiance to any particular brand is probably unwarranted.

The experience

The process of setting up these record players was a welcome relief from the complicated setup that most turntables require. Just remove a twist tie and a couple of pieces of foam, turn on the power, put a record on the platter, place the tonearm on the record, and enjoy the sound.

Unfortunately, the last step in that process wasn't possible with the Crosley Cruiser portable player. With all the records I played on it, the sound was thin and blaring. I heard little else but vocals and guitars when I played albums from Bob Dylan, R.E.M., and Yes. Hoping the Cruiser might sound better with softer music, I put on Affinity by jazz pianist Bill Evans and harmonicist Toots Thielemans—but I soon found myself rereading the credits, as I was sure the album included a bassist but I couldn't easily hear him. Noise from the turntable's motor leaked into the stylus and was audible through the speakers.

I hadn't expected much from the Cruiser's two 2½-by-1¼-inch oval speakers; even so, I couldn't lower those expectations enough to enjoy listening to it. I don't want to single out Crosley, though, because nearly identical portable models are available from several brands, including Victrola.

The Plaza was a different story. Although it was mechanically similar to the Cruiser, it produced a much fuller, more satisfying sound that got me pulling out classic-rock and hard-bop records I hadn't listened to in years. Like my old Sears Silvertone, the Plaza had just enough bass to give me a sense of the music's groove and to get me excited about what I was hearing. Its round, 2½-inch speakers weren't that much bigger than the Cruiser's, but the improvement was as noticeable as what you'd get by switching from the tiny speakers in a 32-inch TV to a good soundbar. From the standpoint of audio performance, a good, comparably priced portable Bluetooth speaker is likely to have clearer, punchier sound, but I still enjoyed listening to the Plaza, and I kept using it long after I finished my testing.

Unfortunately, as with the Cruiser, the Plaza produced motor noise that leaked into the stylus, the sound was neither lively nor detailed, and there was no real stereo effect. But at least I could sense some of that "vinyl warmth" that audiophiles praise. Jeff Beck's classic Blow by Blow seemed to sound fatter and groove harder when I played the record than when I streamed it from my phone into the Plaza over Bluetooth. The audio expert in me knows that my impression probably resulted from bias instilled after decades of hearing audiophiles praise vinyl—but the romantic in me doesn't care.

A close up of the audio input controls on a Victrola Plaza record player — With stereo speakers, an FM radio, a Bluetooth receiver, and an auxiliary audio input built in, the Victrola Plaza functions as a one-box audio entertainment system. Photo: Brent Butterworth

Because about 45 years have passed since the last time I used a cheap record player, I didn't want to rely entirely on my own impressions, so I asked Gordon Sauck, owner of vintage-audio dealer Innovative Audio, what he thought of these affordable all-in-one systems.

"It depends on the individual," he said. "If they're just playing some old Christmas albums, it doesn't make a difference. At that point it's not about the record player, it's about the experience. We've found that an unusually large percentage of these are defective right out of the box, but if they can find one for under $100 that works, it's okay."

The flip side

I had originally intended to judge these record players purely by the emotional experience of using them. But after realizing how much I liked the Victrola Plaza, and how much I disliked the portable Crosley Cruiser, I decided to define the differences by doing some technical tests with my Audiomatica Clio audio analyzer.

The measurement that clearly shows the difference between these players is their internal speakers' frequency response—the evenness with which an audio device reproduces all frequencies of sound, from bass to midrange to treble. I measured this using the record players' aux inputs, and you can see the results in this chart. Neither came close to the quality of the speakers featured in our best bookshelf speakers guide, but the Victrola had a much flatter response than the Crosley. The Victrola showed a reasonably flat response over an audio range from about 80 Hz to 15 kHz, versus about 180 Hz to 5.8 kHz for the Crosley. Perhaps more important, the Victrola's bass response reaches much lower—it can do a reasonable job of reproducing the lowest note (E₂) of a six-string guitar, while the Crosley can reach down only to about the lowest note (G₃) of a mandolin or violin.

Theoretically, you should be able to get better sound by connecting the player's line output to an external stereo system. The owner manuals don't specify whether to use the line outputs with a phono input or a regular audio input, but it doesn't matter—with both players, whether I used the phono or line input on my Parasound Halo P5 preamp, the sound from the line outputs was extremely distorted and completely unlistenable.

Neither player's rotational speed was accurate, but the difference wasn't noticeable to me on any of the records I played. At the 33⅓ rpm setting, the Crosley portable clocked in at 33.8 rpm (1.4% fast), and the Victrola home model measured at 33.9 rpm (1.7% fast). Wow and flutter (or variations in pitch due to speed fluctuations) measured at 0.09% for the Crosley and 0.12% for the Victrola (both measurements NAB standard, weighted). To put those numbers in perspective: In music, a pitch change of one semitone (for example, F to F-sharp) is 6%, so the players' wow and flutter would likely be inaudible, and the pitch change would be noticeable only to those listeners with perfect pitch.

I've often heard audiophiles warn against using cheap record players: "Those things will wear out your records!" It appears they're right. What wears out records prematurely is excessive vertical tracking force (VTF), or the amount of pressure the tonearm puts on the stylus. The higher the VTF, the less likely the stylus is to skip or skate across the record, but the more quickly the stylus and the record will wear out. A typical audiophile phono cartridge might be set to a VTF of 2 grams. I can't say what the exact tracking force of these record players is because it exceeds the 5-gram capacity of my AcousTech digital VTF gauge; I would guess it's fixed at about 7 or 8 grams.

When I told Sauck about my findings, he recommended, "If you're concerned about wear and tear on your records, you'll have to get a record player that has interchangeable cartridges and adjustable tracking force. These cheap players mostly use ceramic cartridges, which are primitive. You need at least a moving-magnet cartridge if you don't want to wear your records out."

To buy or not to buy?

For those of us who are deeply active in the world of audio, it's easy to forget that there are different kinds of vinyl-record fans. The most experienced, passionate, and vocal fans pamper their records, expect to play them for decades to come, and spend thousands of dollars to get the best fidelity from them. Such enthusiasts wouldn't even consider one of these record players.
Another type of vinyl-record fan loves vinyl for its nostalgic value, its coolness, and the simple gratification of lowering a needle onto a record and hearing the speakers spring to life.

They're not so fussy about sound, but they do want audio performance that's good enough to produce all the instruments and voices and maybe get their feet tapping. For them, we still wouldn't recommend a player like the Crosley Cruiser, as it simply loses too much of the music. But a player like the Victrola Plaza should provide many hours of fun—and perhaps even a new emotional connection to a simpler and more satisfying musical past.