Victrola Stream

Don’t bother. Buy an Ars-Technica turntable, a pre-amp, and a good set of speakers instead, and make sure none of it requires the Internet or Bluetooth or an app to work. Make sure none of it has any connection to the Internet, and only uses direct wires and cables. The Victrola app is a nightmare. Expect to have to find your turntable over and over again, every time you want to play a record. Next, expect to spend hours trying to get the app to recognize your wi-fi password. You will spend far more time setting up your Victrola, over and over again, each time you use it, than you will actually listening to music and enjoying it.

After a month of not using my Onyx, I discovered tonight that it stopped communicating with my Sonos, giving me a flashing green light. So I launched this app to reconnect, and the app kept stalling at different parts of the pairing process. Sometimes the app wouldn't see the Onyx, sometimes it wouldn't see the WiFi, sometimes it wouldn't accept a WiFi password, etc. On about my 7th or 8th try I was finally able to connect, and re-pair the Onyx to my Sonos. The only thing that has changed since I last launched this app was that I updated to iOS26. I'm suspecting this app needs an update now that iOS 26 is shipping on new phones.

Installation was very seamless, and the turntable sounds great. However, I am constantly having to unplug it, and unplug all of my speakers pretty much every time I want to play the turntable. Otherwise, I get the orange flashing light in front, even though I have a designated speaker identified in the app. I have looked at what little troubleshooting guideline there is online and have followed each instruction to the letter. Regardless, the only thing that seems to work is to unplug everything and then replug it in each time I want to use it. Hopefully this will improve with updates to the app.