New to vinyl? This clever speaker makes getting started easier than ever

The Victrola Soundstage is a speaker base that can work with nearly any turntable. Instead of rearranging a room in your house around a record player, bookshelf speakers, and all the wiring, this product makes it easy to place your vinyl setup wherever you want it.

I’ve been testing mid-range turntables for a few years with Business Insider, and the Soundstage is exactly the kind of product I’ve been wanting. It should make the vinyl experience better and simpler for most people.

The Victrola Soundstage has a surprisingly big and full sound for being so thin and compact. Plus, its wired and wireless connections make it much more versatile than it first appears.

Anyone new to vinyl listening or those who just want a casual experience should consider the Soundstage before buying an all-in-one record player with built-in speakers. That's one way to save space, but the Soundstage is a much better option.

The features of the Victrola Soundstage

On the surface, the Soundstage is straightforward. It’s a speaker base that a record player can sit on. But putting a turntable directly on top of a speaker introduces challenges to playback with its vibrations.

To account for this, Victrola incorporated a Symmetric Drive Woofer (SDW), which is the company's dual-diaphragm tech to get bigger bass in a smaller space, while also canceling vibrations from trickling up to the tonearm. Even when I turned the volume way up, I didn’t notice any effects on the needle or audio. The volume of the speaker system can fill a living room, too.

The other highlight of the Soundstage is the Balanced Mode Radiators (BMRs), which offer better stereo dispersion. Even though the unit is thin and compact, it doesn’t sound like audio is coming from a small point of origin.

It probably won’t trick you into thinking it has wide stereo separation, but it also doesn’t sound narrow either.

The Soundstage is versatile beyond RCA

The most important part of the Soundstage is its audio capabilities. I’ve constantly been surprised by the fullness, clarity, and overall sound from the unit.

Second to its fidelity is its connectivity. The Soundstage shines in this department. It supports 3.5 mm input, optical, RCA, USB-C, Bluetooth, and Auracast. At its heart, this is just a capable speaker with lots of ways to connect to it—including to a TV.

Although its shape facilitates sitting under a record player, it could be a base for anything you want to put on top of it. It’s a great option for people short on space.

I’ve been primarily using it with the RCA cables. There's a short one included in the box to keep things tidy behind the speaker. It's a nice detail.

One small detail I like is that the Soundstage comes with a remote. You can do everything with the knob on the front, but the remote just makes it easier. There's even a basic display under the grate that will show the volume level or input selected.

Sound you buy the Victrola Soundstage?

Admittedly, the Victrola Soundstage won’t be for everyone listening to vinyl records. This isn’t meant for people investing in a high-end turntable with expensive speakers flanking the spinning vinyl.

But after spending some time with this compact speaker system, I think it’s ideal for casual vinyl listeners. The shape and size allow it to save space and be used in lots of places. It has enabled me to place a second record player in a room I normally wouldn’t have been able to.

There are some decent all-in-one record players, but before you go down that road, you should consider the Victrola Soundstage. This speaker is by far better than several all-in-ones I've tried. If you do want to get a better turntable in the future, this speaker can still be used or given a new task in life as a speaker for other devices.