Audio-Technica AT-SB727 Sound Burger turntable review

Audio-Technica: outside of DJ-mainstay brands like Technics, probably the most dependable turntable brand in the world. If you’re getting an Audio-Technica record player, whether it’s a bare-bones budget spinner or a full-featured direct-drive workhorse, you’re guaranteed to be getting something somewhat good. It speaks to the brand’s storied history with turntables – one of tradition, innovation, and… burgers?

The Audio-Technica ‘Sound Burger’ (sold in the US as the ‘Mister Disc’) was a 1983 invention, a short-lived but surprisingly good portable record player, doomed by coming along just as other, infinitely more portable audio formats started to take the centre stage. Despite this relative impracticality, the Sound Burger gained a cultish fandom of its own in the intervening years – a combination of its strikingly ‘80s design and trademark Audio-Technica smarts. And now it’s back.

Initially revived as a limited-edition anniversary celebration in 2022, the new and improved Sound Burger was an instant hit. Enough so that it found a permanent place in the Audio-Technica roster in 2023, as the AT-SB727. It’s old-school and new tech in a very compelling portable package – but how good is it?

Features

The Audio-Technica AT-SB727 Sound Burger is a techy rework of the original AT-770, keeping everything that made it great while adding some extremely welcome quality-of-life improvements. It looks and acts practically the exact same way it did in the 80s – but now there’s: a better Audio-Technica cartridge; a USB-C rechargeable battery with 12 hours of life in it; a built-in phono stage; Bluetooth connectivity; and a multi-purpose line output for wired connectivity to most things audio-receiver-y.

The main event here is its portability, of course, something achieved by the very clever system by which it earns its fast-foody name. The device is one large, long clamshell, that makes a given vinyl record the meat in its proverbial sandwich. Place your record in, clamp it shut and you have a remarkably sturdy portable record-playing device.

Such portability necessitates some smart compromises. There’s no platter to speak of, meaning much of the record is suspended in mid-air by its own integrity. Despite this lack of surface area, the record receives torque aplenty from a nifty spindle assembly, assisted by a 7” adapter that doubles as a clamp-helper and a tonearm rest when the Sound Burger isn’t in use. Due to the light weight and platterless design, you can expect a bit more needle-jumping than usual if you’re banging around on the same surface; don’t do that, and you’ll be fine.

Portable record players writ large have a poor reputation, owing in large part to the heavy-handed, record-damaging nature of the OEM tonearm assemblies used by the vast majority. Looking at the Sound Burger, with its light tonearm and spring-assisted counterweight, you’d be forgiven for thinking it could pose the same risk to your precious Black Sabbath discography.

Since the Sound Burger has no conventional platter, I tested this, albeit imperfectly, by measuring the tracking force with a scale perched on a sacrificial record. For the nerds: the AT-3600L stylus with which the Sound Burger is furnished asks for 2.5-3.5g of tracking force to perform optimally; I measured 3.64g.

This figure is undoubtedly higher than the true measurement, owing to the extra height of the scale atop the record. With this, then, I think I’ve loosely illustrated that the Sound Burger is most definitely not going to carve up your records. In fact, it’s pretty well calibrated to perform at its best.

Design

Really, the design of the Audio-Technica AT-SB727 is a feature in and of itself. It’s a stunning piece of portable equipment, with a pleasingly retro aesthetic and some clever user-friendly flourishes to its name. As far as portable players go, it couldn’t be much easier to use.

There’s an ‘off’ position for the tonearm, at the furthest extent of its sweep; you put it here while putting your record in place. The 45 adapter is also a spacer for the lid, and goes over your record (or, for 45s, simply does its job as an adapter). With the Sound Burger on, moving the tonearm into place activates the motor – so click the lid shut, place the stylus and you’re away. There’s no auto-stop at the end, but I’ve never been huge on them as a feature anyway.

Bluetooth is one-touch and automatic; I connected the Sound Burger to my Kanto Ren active speakers with one press of each Bluetooth button for each device; a healthy white-flashing LED tells you when it’s pairing, and when it’s paired. Pretty much everything is one-touch operation; there’s no rocket-science here, just good design.

Sound

Here, the fundamental reason for which the Sound Burger is, above all, a surprise: it actually sounds good. Not fine, not decent, but good. Actually good.

There’s no reason it shouldn’t spec-wise, of course; its AT-3600L cartridge is a gold-standard budget cart that outshines pretty much all competition for sound-per-pound. That platterless design, as expected, does rob the Sound Burger of some stability, but the 7” adapter does a great job of putting some back.

Idles’ Brutalism sounded every bit as throaty as you’d expect, imbued with all its expressive, febrile, brittle angst. Queens Of The Stone Age’s Songs For The Deaf was a dense delight, every honked-out guitar riff a fulsome thrust of low-middy heft. It’s good. It’s good.

So surprised was I at the fullness of Sound Burger’s sound representation, that I AB-ed it with my workhorse Vestax turntable, through a DJ mixer. The difference was minor. Unsurprisingly, better cartridges sound better; surprisingly, the Sound Burger’s playback more or less kept up with a quartz-controlled direct drive, and the phono stage sounded just about as good as my mixer’s.

I momentarily left the heft behind, in favour of my current favourite DJ-secret-weapon 7” – a repressing of Master Plan, Inc’s energetic shot-glass of optimist funk, Bright Light, Big City – to test the 7” adapter properly. It was a reassuringly snug fit, and played back sturdily, revealing a crystal-clear remaster with no single detail missing. It sounded better than it sounds played out, on knackered Technics 1210s through a club sound system.

Here, I’ll venture that it’s a small shame Audio-Technica haven’t plumped for slightly better Bluetooth transmission than the perfectly cromulent SBC codec. Practically speaking, though, using this with a fair-to-middling Bluetooth speaker or daring to take it to the park with you, you aren’t going to notice at all.

Besides, if you’re going to use this at home, you might as well just plug it straight into to something. Which you can do easily, with the 3.5mm line out, and with the handy 3.5mm-to-RCA breakout cable Audio-Technica so kindly provide. And which I did, when listening to QOTSA. It was mega. Realistically speaking, the bigger potential issue – and again, not much of one – is the volume of the Sound Burger’s needle talk.

Needle talk is the sound that comes directly from the needle vibrating in the groove, a tinny acoustic phenomenon that offers an exciting glimpse at the science of analogue sound reproduction, but that also impacts your enjoyment of records played at low volumes or in small rooms. This minor nuisance is amplified (figuratively speaking) when using Bluetooth, which comes with no small degree of latency; hearing hissy, trebly moments of high energy from your record before they’re genuinely reproduced in your hi-fi makes for a slightly distracting experience.

Of course, this is a function of a few things endemic to the Sound Burger, from the platterless design to the spring-assisted tonearm. And it’s a problem easily solved by a) turning it up, and/or b) moving the Sound Burger away from your listening position. Small beers, really, in something that’s clearly not designed to be the next audiophile turntable du jour. And even then: it’s good. So good. It’s Actually Good.

It’s a portable turntable that weighs as much as a loaf of bread. And it’s good.

I love it.

The alternatives

The Audio-Technica Sound Burger AT-SB727 is easily the best-performing portable record player on the market, and is likely to be for some time to come. As such, I can’t really recommend anything in the way of a direct alternative to the Sound Burger. Cheaper suitcase-style players are just that – cheaper – but also bring some risk to the safety of your record collection.

The Sound Burger is roughly equivalent in spec to the Audio-Technica AT-LP90XBT – a full-fat record player that also benefits from a full platter. So, if you want a cheaper beginner turntable with a bit more stability, and don’t mind losing the design and aesthetics of the Sound Burger in the process, the LP60XBT is the way to go.

If you’ve a little more in your budget, you might consider the Audio-Technica LP70XBT; a leg-up automatic turntable that marries plug-and-play-ability with upgrade-friendly longevity.