This $10,000 Record Player Is Like if James Turrell Made Turntables
The Audio-Technica Hotaru record player is for listening but also for watching. This audiovisual experiment is both a tool for playing records and a vivid light show that can “capture the character of the music,” according to the audio company.
As soon as a record starts spinning, the Hotaru record player starts beaming out lights.
Thanks to a magnetic repulsion-based platter suspended slightly above the rest of the turntable to stop its vibrations from interfering with the engineering, the record appears to be floating above the glowing lights that shift in time with the tunes. Its palette of 20 shades aims to replicate the vivid glow of Japanese fireflies.
You can find equally impressive record players for far less than the Hotaru’s hefty $10,000 price tag, but will they light up a room in a gorgeous glow akin to James Turrell's gorgeous earth-shaping artworks? Of course not! And that’s what you’re really paying for.
While this record player, limited to only 1,000 units, has some impressive specs, like a carbon fiber tonearm fitted with a custom version of Audio-Technica’s top-of-the-line AT-VM740xML cartridge — the pointy bit that pulls sound from wax — its artful design is arguably even more important than its music-playing ability.
Appropriate that the Audio-Technica Hotaru was unveiled at Milan Design Week, the world’s biggest furniture and design fair.
The Hotaru reflects a new chapter for Audio-Technica, the 63-year-old Japanese family-owned hi-fi company best-known for its high-quality headphones and speakers widely used in the audio industry, kicking off a program called "analog ~ naturally" that aims to amplify the appeal of quality audio for additional sense.
Think of the Hotaru record player as Audio-Technica translating music into sight. This naturally opens up questions like, can you turn music into a smell? Or even a taste?
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