Frugal Flipside: Listen to Your Vinyl via Your Smart TV!

Hey Bohemians!

Here, on my blog, my purpose is not only to offer ideas that you can do to be unconventional – just for the fun of being different – but to show you the way to do unconventional – frugally!

This post is “taking a rabbit trail” from our customary path – but, then, we don’t want to be too established and conventional, now, do we?!! 😀 Lol.

Bringing Childhood Loves into the Present

As with most of you, I imagine, music was always significant in my growing-up years. I never understood music on the page, but listening to it was a great pleasure to me.

Although, as a baby boomer, I no longer get excited about birthdays, lol, I’ve always been glad to have grown up in the time, musically, that I did:

With many of you, I witnessed a music revolution!

The art of rhythmic, melodic sound shifted incredibly with the coming of the Beatles. The musical abilities of Paul McCartney and John Lennon changed the world’s concept of music. Their ingenuity, imagination, innovation and originality, along with those of their band mates, would forever change the world of music.

My parents said they would never last.

We kids knew they would.

Fate gave us a great gift in grouping those four lads from Liverpool. It would later be said of the Fab Four, that they are considered the most influential band of all time.

So … I, along with bazillions of kids around the world, became “infected” with Beatlemania! Lol! 😀

Fast forward to now.

We, who grew up in the vinyl age, waited forever to be able to listen to our favorite music again on its original format.

We thought we would never again be able to dance to our records!

I’m just SO grateful I still have mine!!!

Then came the ION turntables that connected to our computers in order to download the music, of which we could then create CDs from those downloads. I bought one and did some of that, but it was time consuming and a bother.

I made CDs of all of my 45s. Now, I listen to those in my car, which is nice. But, I didn’t try to record and transfer any albums. It was just a lot of trouble.

And, yep, of course, we have YouTube, and I definitely take advantage of that. But, I have music on records that cannot be found online.

Now that vinyl is cool again,

we can find lots of choices for playing our vintage LPs and 45s. But, the price tag for enjoying our beloved music is steep!

For a low-end stereo component system, I found I would need to spend $600 – $700, even at Best Buy. That was just too big a bite for me right now.

In talking with someone who is well acquainted with electronics, I was given the idea of finding a boombox with RCA connections and plugging my turntable into the boombox to use its speakers. Great idea.

But, I discovered what I consider to be a greater idea!

As I looked for an appliance into which I could plug my turntable – in thrift stores, of course, I reached for anything with RCA ports. Then, voila! I saw the back of something that had those red and white ports. When I turned it around, I saw it was a DVD player.

Ha! Lightbulb!!!

I have a DVD player!

So, I went home and plugged my turntable into my TV!

Play Records through your Smart TV!

1. Connect one end of your RCA cables to your Smart TV. I have a Westinghouse Roku TV.
2. Simply plug the other end of the cable – instead of into your DVD player – using only the red and white audio plugs, into your red and white ports on your ION turntable! Voila! Behold your new stereo system!

However…

Yes, I could now play my records and hear them through the TV speakers, but they sounded terrible!! …very tinny.

Solution:

Get a soundbar with a subwoofer! I looked at the reviews of soundbars, wanting to get the best for the least.

I was impressed with the reviews for, then got, a Vizio M-Series 2.1.5 soundbar that comes with a subwoofer for under $200! …specifically $177.54 including tax from Amazon. I also got a 2-year protection plan, which added another $17.03 to the total.

So, now, my records sound great with really good bass – and – my TV sounds great, too!

After I connected everything, I found “Suzie Q” by CCR on YouTube. Wow! Good sound!

Then, I grabbed my Abbey Road LP and played the B side.

As a teenager, I loved playing it – especially B side, with the drums solo – on our family’s big cabinet console Magnavox stereo. I would turn it up and really get into the sound with the good bass.

I would dare to compare! I think my soundbar with the subwoofer sounds just as good as our old Magnavox!

Just think: Great sound for under $200 – the frugal unconventional way. Lol. 😀

– as opposed to doing it the conventional way for 4x the price!!!

Psstt!!

I still turn it up!

Lol!!!

I’m very happy with my system, though now, I need to replace the turntable belt. Lol. But, it all sounds so good. And, YouTube music sounds fantastic through my Vizio, too.

I’m not a Vizio influencer, I just wanted to share a less expensive way to enjoy records again!

Click an image below to go to there.