SNACK: 3-line summary
SNACK in 3 lines
- Victrola CEO Scott Hagen discussed simpler first-time vinyl setups in an October 6 interview with What Hi-Fi?.
- Automatic can continuously repeat one record side; you still turn the record over for the other.
- Soundstage’s compact layout and vibration-reduction approach are presented through the manufacturer’s explanation, not a listening test.
In an October 6, 2026 interview with What Hi-Fi?’s Ioan Hazell, Victrola CEO Scott Hagen said the company wants to make a first record player less daunting to set up. Victrola Automatic shows what choosing automatic rather than manual playback can mean: it can keep replaying one side, but you still turn the record over yourself.
Snackgirls react
Red I’m curious about moving the tonearm myself. Starting an album with that little action sounds like part of the fun.
Nea I’d like to keep one side of a game soundtrack on repeat while reading a book about its world. When I wanted to hear the other side, I’d still need to turn the record over.
How much of playback do you want to handle?
Automatic combines Bluetooth connectivity with fully automatic operation. Its continuous-repeat function takes care of restarting that same side without manual resets.
Before choosing a first turntable, consider whether moving the tonearm and starting an album yourself is part of the appeal, or whether you would prefer the player to handle playback. That preference gives you a practical way to approach the manual-versus-automatic choice.
A speaker underneath, with vibration in mind
Soundstage is a compact speaker unit designed to sit beneath a turntable and save space. Bringing a sound-producing speaker close to the stylus creates the potential for unwanted vibrations to feed back into playback and cause distortion.
Hagen describes a downward-firing woofer with two diaphragms that share a voice coil and move in opposition, intended to cancel unwanted low-frequency vibrations. That is the manufacturer’s design explanation; What Hi-Fi? says it has not yet fully reviewed Victrola’s products.
The under-turntable arrangement is specific to Soundstage’s design. It is not a suggestion to put any speaker beneath a record player.
Sources and checked date: October 08, 2026 (KST)
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