There are plenty of turntables on the market for ripping of vinyl but in most cases it's a question of quantity over quality when ripping and none use their own proprietary software so there is a learning curve when recording. The PS-HX500 addresses all those issues - it is badged as Hi-Res Audio and quite rightly so. Playing vinyl is a joy. The ripping software is exclusive for this deck and although at first it looks basic it does a fantastic job of recording vinyl and retaining the warmth and sound of vinyl, particularly if done in DSD. I'm sure it does a fine job with the lesser sound formats but to me this deck is to preserve my vinyl collection. Highly recommended and well done Sony for coming up with an evolutionary product.

First, the deck was quite easy to set up, but with one proviso. My amp has a photo input, and I spent nearly half an hour wondering why I was getting terrible sound. Then I noticed in the manual the output switch. Now I knew the deck had a switchable output, but I didn't expect it to be set to Line by default, I expected it to work out of the box with a phono input. Maybe this could be made clearer in the manual. Anyway, once I had the deck working, there was some hum that the earthing lead couldn't entirely cure. Eventually I gave in and (setting the switch first) plugged the deck into a Line input on my amp - hum gone, so quite possibly it was my amp had too sensitive a Phono input. Still, now I could audition the deck properly. I have a reasonable CD player, feeding through a highly respected external Digital to Audio Convertor (DAC), and I feel a little let down. I couldn't tell the difference in sound quality between the (supposedly) inferior CD and (supposedly) superior vinyl. The vinyl gave me clicks, some vinyl roar, short playing time and (only when I looked at the spec of the deck) a surprisingly poor Wow And Flutter of around 0.25% - I expected a figure of around 0.15%, so was a bit disappointed for the money. I don't know if this is clearly audible, but on long synth notes there is definately some variation in pitch, although watching the arm when playing there is some in-and-out movement, so it could be the record is not perfectly centred/pressed poorly. Anyway, on normal music this is not noticable. I've recorded a couple of LPs into my computer and am pretty satisfied with the results (I used 96KHz/24-bit as a compromise between quality and file size). This enabled me to edit out clicks and trim tracks, and although the recording level appears a bit low, on one of my singles the wick has been turned up and the track is recorded loud (Can/Silent Night 7"), so I can see why Sony made this recording level fixed - I've not gone into the red yet...! On the whole, despite my niggles, I am pleased with my new record deck, and am glad I bought it, even though I won't be using it for most day-to-day music listening (I have over 2000 CDs, and about 30-40 LPs/singles). It'll mainly be used for archiving LPs that aren't on CD, as well as listening to them. The way the hi-fi mags go on about superior sound from vinyl, well I just didn't hear it. I may even go so far as to say there not a lot in it, and certainly for day-to-day use the silence of CD (no clicks, no vinyl roar), the less of a hassle actually playing a disc, and the longer playing time without turning over/changing discs (80 mins on CD compared to a max of about 25-30 mins on LP), keep me firmly welded to the silver disc. Still, at least I have a record deck again, and it's available should the need arise one day...

Love it, but it needs the volume cranked up to really make it come alive but it's a joy to use. I was a little worried about the assembly, but I shouldn't have been, it was so straight forward. Personally I feel that the word, Sony, should have been placed on the front, opposite end to the Hi res logo. A little bit of Brand snobbery me thinks. I have played both new and old vVnyl with superb results from both. The old had taken some punishment back in the day, and I was really, and I mean really surprised how clean the sound quality was. I'm going to rip some High Res files, but not yet, I'm going to carry on using it for what it was made for, playing Vinyl.