The Vision

I’d like to replace as much of the original equipment with new gear as possible, save for the record player.

I’m not a huge  fan of the how most modern turntables look, even the really expensive ones are pretty ugly.    

Ideally, I’ll maintain the mid-century modern look of the piece on the outside.  If I can do this, my wife won’t care where I put it in the house.   If it looks like it would fit on the set of Mad Men, I'm in like Flynn.

Once the lid opens, I wouldn’t mind if there were a few blinking lights and a nice looking digital interface of some  sort.

Must-haves:

Multi-room audio streaming.   It’s a simple vision - sitting on my deck, sipping lemonade in my hammock, while I listen to a Talking Heads LP.

Internet radio.  So many choices.  I want.

AM/FM radio.  Coast to Coast (the best in weird radio), local traffic & weather, emergency news – sure its old, but I still listen.

Turntable.  Over the past 15 years, I have lugged a box of records to 3 countries, 7 cities and countless apartments.  I  haven’t had a working turntable since 1997.  And everyone knows records sound better

Able to interface with both Macs and PCs.  My house is bi-lingual.

Plays nice with iTunes.  For better or worse, I have a huge iTunes library.

iPod doc.  Most of my music, and my friends music is on an iPod or iPhone.  If this can’t play directly from one of those devices I may as well not do this.

Self contained to the original cabinet.  Ideally, I’ll be able to move this to any room in my house without making special considerations beyond an electrical outlet.


Nice-to-haves:

Multi-room video streaming.  It would be really cool if this became not just an audio hub, but a streaming video hub for the whole house.  Really cool, but probably really expensive.

A touch-screen interface.  Right?  It could drop down from the panel that opens up.

Blu Ray Player.  I don't own any blu ray disks, but that shouldn't stop me.

Snazzy 2.0 remote of some sort.  Maybe this should be in the must-haves.