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Oct 19, 2023

Victrola Stream Carbon review: Play your vinyl on Sonos speakers

This mid-range turntable offers seamless integration into your Sonos setup for

This mid-range turntable offers seamless integration into your Sonos setup for vinyl playback, but that convenience comes at a stiff price.

$699.99 (introductory pricing ended 12/31/2022; MSRP is $799.99)

Sonos pioneered the wireless home streaming revolution and they’ve kept improving their speakers over the years,

Victrola has partnered with Sonos to add wireless vinyl playback to your Sonos network with the Stream Carbon turntable, an excellent turntable designed to work specifically with the Sonos ecosystem. Users can also connect the turntable to any other audio system via the traditional wired RCA connectors.

That convenience comes at a price. Victrola is well known for its quality, entry-level record players, turntables, and wireless speakers. They make excellent products, but the company has never before released anything as expensive as the Stream Carbon turntable.

The Victrola Stream Carbon turntable sounds great and works flawlessly with Sonos, but there are some buyers who will experience a bit of sticker shock with this device. Is this turntable worth the cost?

The Victrola Stream Carbon Wireless turntable comes with the excellent Ortofon 2M Red moving magnet cartridge.

James Barber/Foundry

The Victrola Stream Carbon turntable comes with easy-to-follow illustrated instructions. Pull the belt over the pulley, screw on the headshell, slide the counterweight to the appropriate groove on the tonearm and set the anti-skate gauge before installing the Victrola Stream app from the iOS or Google Play app store.

Things should be simple from there. Add the Victrola Stream Carbon in the app, connect to your Wi-Fi network, and then choose your primary Sonos speaker or speaker group. Turn on autoplay to make sure the turntable becomes the default source when you’re playing vinyl and you should be done with the app forever.

My experience wasn't as seamless as that, but I’m still happy with how it all played out. My Sonos One speaker was due for a firmware update and didn't show up in the app. After the firmware update didn't solve the problem, I force quit both the Victrola Stream and Sonos apps, restarted my phone, and tried again.

The back of the Victrola Stream Carbon Wireless turntable has stereo RCA jacks and a ground terminal for traditional wired use. And as with all Sonos components, there's also an ethernet port for a sure-fire wired connection to your home network.

James Barber/Foundry

That's not exactly accurate. I tried several combinations of force quitting the apps and restarting the phone before trying all three at once, but none of the steps worked. I was stumped.

The great news is that Victrola had a toll-free number on its website that was answered by a person who walked me through several possible solutions until we did a hard reset of the turntable by pressing down the volume knob for 15 seconds. I then added the Stream Carbon again in the app and the Sonos speaker showed up.

The app itself could use a bit more polish, but the experience of talking to a human to fix a technical issue more than made up for any issues I had with setup.

The Victrola Stream Carbon Wireless turntable is easy to set up, and its controls are simple to use.

James Barber/Foundry

Once you’re hooked up, operation is simple. The turntable begins spinning when you move the tonearm from its rest and connects to your Sonos as you’re lowering the stylus onto the vinyl. Once the side has finished playing, the turntable automatically stops, so there's no rushing across the room to keep the stylus from slamming into the edge of the runout groove.

The turntable comes with an Ortofon 2M Red moving magnet cartridge, a unit that's an outstanding value at $99 and one that delivers the warm and dynamic sound that vinyl listeners cherish. You can play records at either 33 or 45 RPM after choosing your speed with a knob that sits next to the 7-inch adapter at the back of the plinth.

The Victrola Stream Carbon turntable measures 4.37 x 16.93 x 13.58 inches (HxWxD) and weighs just over 13 pounds. It has a brushed chrome front panel and a gray metal plinth design elements that evoke the famous Sony aesthetic of the 1980s and 90s. The entire unit feels incredibly well made, with none of the plastic parts that make so many other turntables seem cheap.

The Victrola Stream Carbon Wireless turntable's dust cover is oddly shaped, only covers part of the surface, and can't be used when playing vinyl.

James Barber/Foundry

The turntable comes with one of Victrola's weird dustcovers that sit flat on the platter and put a hood over the tonearm when it's not in use. It's a mystery why the company doesn't utilize a more traditional hinged cover that would protect the entire surface and be available to use during record playback.

The good news for listeners is that the Stream Carbon Wireless turntable uses Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth to connect with your Sonos speakers. That will yield a higher-quality signal, unless you have a spotty home network. If you’ve got a spotty home network, however, you’re already having issues with Sonos before you bought this turntable. And if that's the case, you probably use ethernet cables to tie everything to your router, and the Stream Carbon has the RJ45 port to make that happen.

I tested the turntable with a brand-new, 180-gram pressing of the 2016 remaster of David Bowie's 1972 LP The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I’m usually one to insist on original pressings whenever possible, but this new heavyweight version sounds orders of magnitude better than the flimsy RCA Dynaflex I acquired back in the day.

The results weren't a surprise. The Ortofon cartridge delivered its usual stellar results and songs like "Starman" and "Suffragette City" revealed all the detail you’d expect from a turntable that's designed be a decided step up from entry-level models.

It's easy to upgrade the Victrola Stream Carbon's cartridge and stylus at the end of its carbon-fiber tonearm.

James Barber/Foundry

Even more interesting is the 25th anniversary reissue of Girls Against Boys’ 1996 LP House of GVSB. Producer Ted Niceley did an amazing job of capturing the band's twin bass guitar attack and the new vinyl remaster by Bob Weston captures more low-end than the original pressings did. There's a lot more bass than you’d think possible coming through the Sonos.

There are a couple of caveats. I enjoyed the wireless testing and set up the turntable on a small table next to my desk. The motor on the Stream Carbon Wireless was a bit louder than I’d expect from a turntable at this price, and the noise was obvious in the silence between songs and even in some quieter parts of the music. When I was across the room, however, the noise wasn't noticeable.

If you’re using Sonos speakers, you’ve already committed to the company's digital signal processing scheme. If you love the sound of your Sonos streaming music, you’re going to be very happy with the sound of your vinyl when using this turntable with your Sonos speakers.

There's no doubt that what's on offer here is a convenient and seamless user experience for Sonos customers. Sonos speakers are very good, but they don't necessarily deliver the absolute best sound quality at their price point. What you get from Sonos is a polished user experience that emphasizes the overall experience more than the details and specs that audiophiles love.

The Victrola Stream Carbon turntable is specifically designed for people who love their Sonos setup and want to add vinyl to their home audio mix. Victrola gave the turntable a slick, 80s industrial design and included an outstanding Ortofon cartridge. Could you buy a higher-end turntable at this price? Definitely, but that turntable wouldn't work with Sonos out of the box. If you’re a Sonos fan, this is certainly the easiest way to integrate vinyl into your life.

James has worked in music as a producer, A&R executive, music publisher, manager and record store clerk. He writes about music, technology and movies from his home in Georgia.