The Only Sonos-Approved Turntable Just Got a Killer Hi-Fi Upgrade

The Victrola Stream Sapphire is a “Works with Sonos” certified turntable primed for Sonos lovers and audiophiles alike.

Published August 2, 2024

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Admittedly, there are more ways to listen to vinyl on Sonos speakers than ever. Whereas in years past, you needed a Five or older Play:5, most of Sonos’s new speakers also have a line-in connection — you can hardwire any turntable with a built-in preamp directly to an Era 100, Era 300, Move 2 or Five.

If you want to stream vinyl to your Sonos speakers without any wires, you can do so with a Bluetooth turntable and a Sonos speaker that supports Bluetooth (again, most new Sonos speakers also have built-in Bluetooth). That’s a little messy, though, and because it’s over Bluetooth, there’s a definite drop-off in audio quality.

For the best pure streaming experience, you really need one of Victrola’s “Stream” turntables — they’re the only officially licensed “Works with Sonos” turntables out there. This means you can connect them to your Sonos speakers over Wi-Fi and stream higher-resolution audio.

To date, Victrola has only offered three Stream “Work with Sonos” turntables: the Stream Carbon ($800), the limited-edition Stream Pearl ($800), and the more affordable Stream Onyx ($600). As of today, however, it’s introducing its most high-end Stream turntable to date.

Victrola Stream Sapphire

Familiar Look, Upgraded Hardware

The Victrola Stream Sapphire looks and works very much like the company’s other Stream turntables. It’s a semi-automatic belt-driven turntable — you still have to pick up the tonearm and place the stylus, but it’ll automatically turn off when it gets to the end of the record — with an MDF body, a silver aluminum platter, a carbon fiber tonearm and mainly metal components headlined by a large illuminated volume knob.

There are a couple of notable differences. It comes decked out with a significantly nicer Ortofon Blue 2M (which sells for $159 on its own) compared to the Stream Carbon’s Ortofon 2M Red (which sells for $99). It also has high-quality components, such as a wooden plinth and a new brushless motor, and weighs a little more, so it’s naturally better at dampening vibrations.

A More Hi-Fi Streamer

That said, the biggest difference with the Victrola Stream Sapphire is that is it’s able of playing higher-resolution audio and just works with more wireless speakers.

It’s Victrola’s only stream Stream turntable that supports lossless FLAC audio — up to 24-bit/48kHz — and thus promises to sound better than its predecessors. It’s also the only model that supports Roon and is integrated with UPnP. This means it can stream vinyl records to more premium wireless speakers by the likes of KEF, Naim, Sonus Faber and Devialet (among others).

Sonos Owners Beware

For Sonos speaker owners, a slight word of caution. The Stream Sapphire works just like Victrola’s other Stream turntables, meaning setting it up isn’t quite as simple as setting up a Sonos speaker. You can’t just plug it in, find it in the Sonos app and group it with your Sonos speakers.

Instead, you have to set it up within the Victrola app and then group it with one Sonos speaker. From there, any time you play a record on the Stream Sapphire it’ll stream music to that Sonos speaker by default. If you want to play vinyl on multiple Sonos speakers, you just have to group them all together in the Sonos app.

It’s easy and fairly straightforward, but just a little more complicated compared to setting up a standard Sonos speaker.

Price and Availability

The Victrola Stream Sapphire was technically announced at CES 2024 earlier this year, but it’s only now becoming available. It’s up for preorder now and will start shipping in mid-August. It’s only available in one finish.

As far as price, the Victrola Stream Sapphire isn’t cheap. It costs $1,300, which is almost twice as expensive as the Stream Carbon — which is now on sale for $700.

Basically, you have to really want the best vinyl streaming on Sonos speakers.