Jordan Mitchell

After 60+ hours of bench testing, comparing measurements, and listening across jazz, classical, and rock records, our team ranked the best moving coil cartridges you can buy in . Moving coil (MC) phono cartridges retrieve more detail from your vinyl than moving magnet designs, deliver wider soundstages, and reward careful setup with reference-grade music. This … Read more

Finding the best turntable styli for your setup comes down to one question: do you replace the needle or the whole cartridge? I have been testing phono cartridges and replacement styli for over a decade, and the answer is almost always yes, you can upgrade the stylus alone and skip the cost of a new … Read more

I pulled a sleeve of “mint condition” jazz records from a thrift store last year, dropped the needle on a Coltrane original, and heard what sounded like a bowl of Rice Krispies. That moment is why the best record cleaning machines belong on every serious vinyl collector’s shelf, not as a luxury, but as basic … Read more

Picking the best vinyl storage furniture feels harder than it should. You want something that holds your 12-inch LPs upright, keeps them dust-free, fits a turntable on top if needed, and does not sag after six months of full shelves. Our team has been collecting records since the early 2000s, and we have burned through … Read more

I’ve spent the last three months living with eight of the best turntable stands on the market, dragging them between my living room, bedroom, and a small home studio to see how they actually perform in real rooms. Not in a lab. Not on a spec sheet. In the messy reality of kids, coffee, and … Read more

Setting up a vinyl rig used to mean buying a turntable, a separate phono preamp, an amplifier, and a pair of speakers. For many of us, that is four boxes, four cables, and four chances to get something wrong. A turntable with a built-in preamp cuts that list down to two or three, which is … Read more

An acoustic treatment kit is a pre-bundled set of absorptive panels, bass traps, and sometimes diffusers designed to reduce unwanted reflections and tame low-frequency buildup in a small-to-medium room. If you record vocals, mix music, or run a podcast from home, a kit is the fastest way to turn a boomy bedroom or garage into … Read more

If you have ever wondered why records from the 1960s and 1970s sound so smooth and three-dimensional, a ribbon microphone is usually part of the answer. A ribbon microphone is a type of dynamic microphone that uses a thin, electrically conductive ribbon suspended between the poles of a magnet to convert sound into voltage through … Read more

Looking for the best portable turntables you can actually trust with your vinyl? Our team spent 60 days spinning records on 10 portable turntables across bedrooms, dorm rooms, backyards, and even a beach house – and the results surprised us. A portable turntable is a compact, lightweight record player built for casual vinyl listening on … Read more

If you just unboxed a turntable and your receiver or powered speakers have no PHONO input, you need a phono preamp. A phono preamp (also called a phono stage) amplifies the tiny signal from a turntable’s cartridge and applies the RIAA equalization curve so it can be played through a normal line-level amplifier or speakers. … Read more