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Up until recently, the way to play vinyl records on your Sonos speakers was to buy the very expensive Five ($499) (or its older brother, the now-antiquated Play:5), which are the only Sonos speakers with a line-in connection you could plug a turntable into. That, or you could connect the turntable to the Port ($449), Sonos’s wireless streaming amp, as well.
Now that Sonos has released the Roam ($169), its newest (and tiniest) portable speaker, there’s a more affordable way to play vinyl on your Sonos speakers. You can pair it with a Bluetooth turntable — aka a turntable that has an integrated Bluetooth transmitter or “built-in Bluetooth” — which is actually a pretty common for a lot of entry-level turntables. From there, the Roam can share the sound with the rest of your Sonos system.
How to connect the Roam to a Bluetooth turntable
Connecting the Roam (or any Bluetooth speaker) to a Bluetooth turntable is slightly tricky because you can’t use your smartphone or an app as a bridge. You need to put both the Roam and the Bluetooth turntable into a pairing mode, place then next to each other, and then should automatically pair.
Tucker Bowe
Putting the Sonos Roam into a Bluetooth pairing mode is simple. Press and hold the button on the back until you hear a second tone (the first tone should sound right when you first press the button) and then release the button. The status LED on the front of the speaker will start flashing blue. To initiate a pairing mode on your Bluetooth turntable, you will likely just have to press (and hold) a Bluetooth button; the exact pairing process will depend on the specific model of Bluetooth turntable that you’re using — so check you user manual if you don’t know how!
So, in short:
- Place the Bluetooth turntable and Roam next to each other.
- Initiate Bluetooth pairing on the Roam (instructions above).
- Initiate Bluetooth pairing on your turntable (depends on model).
- Roam is paired when you hear a chime and its LED light turns solid blue.
After the Roam and Bluetooth turntable are connected, play a record and make sure that the sound is coming out of the speaker. Even though Bluetooth technology has gotten pretty good these days, we still recommend keeping the Roam and turntable within about 30-feet of each other to prevent severing the connection.
Once the vinyl audio is playing out of the Roam, you simply need to group the Roam with your other Sonos speakers in your home: open the Sonos app, select the System tab (bottom center), and group the Roam with you other Sonos speakers. Audio will then play on all your Sonos speakers at once!
3 Great Bluetooth Turntables to Try
Can you connect a Bluetooth turntable to the Sonos Move?
Unfortunately no. Sonos makes two different portable speakers that have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities — the 2019-released Move and the 2021-released Roam — but they don’t work exactly the same. While you’ll be able to connect the Move to a Bluetooth turntable and play audio, you won’t be then able to group the Move with your other Sonos speakers (Wi-Fi-only) so that the vinyl audio is playing in a multi-room system. This is a feature that is exclusive to the Roam.
The reason for this is that Sonos integrated the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi antennas differently in the Move and Roam. Specifically, the two antennas are separate in the Move and combined in the Roam. This helps the Roam switch between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modes much more seamlessly than the Move, and thus gives it the ability to play Bluetooth audio on other Wi-Fi-only speakers. You simply have to group the Roam with other Sonos speakers while its playing your turntable’s audio.
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