Turntables, even those with five-figure prices, operate on the same basic premise: a stationary needle follows the grooves of a spinning record, translating vibrations into electrical signals, which are then translated into sound. Love flips that. The oblong player, designed by Yves Behar, spins around your vinyl like the hand of a clock. It's weird. Really weird. Audiophiles might even call it blasphemous. So just wait until they hear Love can skip tracks, connect to Bluetooth, and be operated with your phone.

Founder CH Pinhas created Love because he was tired of the fussiness associated with playing records. There was too much flipping. Nevermind trying to skip to his favorite song. “Love was born out of frustration,” he says. “I thought the experience should be simpler.” He wanted to make listening to vinyl as easy as listening to Spotify—only with better sound. “Sound-wise, it’s what you expect from a traditional turntable,” he says. “But as far as user experience goes, it’s completely new.”

The player, now raising money on Kickstarter, features a flat base that holds the record, and the tonearm that spins around it. The tonearm revolves around a spindle that supports its weight, and only the needle touches the vinyl. "There's no weight on the grooves," Pinhas says. The "intelligent" turntable responds to commands from a Bluetooth-connected phone app.

Love

The underside of the Love player sports an infrared sensor that scans the record and assigns each song a track number. Tap the app (or the Love) once and it starts the first song. Tap it twice, and it skips to the second. And so on. A glowing number reminds you which track you’re enjoying.

Love uses song recognition technology similar to Shazam and assigns each track a title. It’s a small detail that shifts an analog gadget like Love closer to the digital listening experience most people are accustomed to. Behar expects to see more gadgets striking this balance between old and new, analog and digital. “There’s this new convergence of quality and new technology that doesn’t betray the original craft of a product,” he says. That idea might not sit well with those who vinyl for its charmingly archaic qualities, but then again, Pinhas didn't design Love for traditionalists.