On a recent trip to Sydney (to see Wilco at the Opera House — great show) I made the somewhat foolhardy decision to meet up with friends at Record Store in Surry Hills. While waiting for my friends, I flipped through records — I found too many that I wanted and pretty quickly had an inch of expensive vinyl under my arm that I was going to have to try keep flat on the flight home.

Near the counter was a glass display case, and in that case were three Audio Technica Sound Burgers. And they were on sale — I think about $100 off! I asked the salesperson about them, and if they would destroy my records. I was kinda surprised when they told me that the Sound Burger — a rerelease cum upgrade on the original headphones-only 1983 turntable from Audio Technica — was actually pretty good. It had bluetooth (a bit of a gimmick, but also fun) as well as line-level out, allowing you to connect it to any amp or powered speakers, and according to the vibe, was about equivalent to the AT-LP60.

I immediately bought a yellow one, because I like yellow almost as much as I like orange.

When I got back to the AirBnB, I quickly sorted out how to connect it to the Sonos Roam I carry with me when I travel, and was pleasantly surprised. The Sound Burger runs on a rechargeable internal battery, so you can have the bizarre experience of a completely wire-free vinyl listening experience, if that’s a thing you need (you probably don’t). If you want a full review of the Sound Burger, you can read one at What Hifi. They like it.

It sounds just fine (it’s not as good as my Rega RP1, but I don’t really care), but its small footprint and built-in preamp are the real drawcards. You can set it up pretty much anywhere you like, and run a cable from its 3.5mm line out to your speakers. I didn’t have any decent powered speakers, so when I got home I got some Edifier S880DBs from Facebook Marketplace for a couple hundred bucks. The only gripe I have at the moment is that it occasionally skates — mostly when playing coloured vinyl. Apart from that, I can’t recommend it enough for what it is — a fun secondary turntable

Next up, I IKEA-Jenga’d my entire home office to have somewhere to put the setup. That took a whole day, but now here we are.

First record I played on it in my office was ‘Inside’, by Matthew Sweet. It’s an early record that everyone pretends never existed, but I reckon it’s not terrible for the 80s.

So now each day before I trundle downstairs to my office, I grab a handful of records I haven’t heard in a while and work through them. Flipping a record takes no time at all, and every half hour to forty minutes, I take a break to choose the next record then get back to work.

It’s a damned delight.