Merry Christmas all! First post (and first thread), so please be gentle 
Background: I'm 46 and so have primarily been buying music in the CD era. I made the questionable decision with my dad 15+ years ago to rip all my albums onto a NAS drive, preempting the streaming revolution which shortly after rendered *days* of ripping CDs rather pointless. Fast forward to now, where I'm a father of two and a household of me, my wife and two kids that consume music through Sonos products and Spotify - I'm sorry. The NAS drive is disconnected and sitting in a drawer somewhere.
A few months back, my father-in-law "gifted" us a terrible old Aldi / Lidl turntable with a few excellent old records; The Doors, Hendrix, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles. The turntable is at best a decade-old £50 lump, currently being amplified and output through some equally old Roberts DAB / CD Player. I'm very much aware I'm not painting an audiophile picture here, but my hearing is far from exemplary and should shape your future advice.
More background: I am a gadget obsessive. My ears might not be the sharpest, but I'm a sucker for buying tech and developing new hobbies, and here's the core of the thread. Our tastes are fairly diverse - a lot of mid-90s Indie / grunge stuff, coupled with blues, jazz, neoclassical, classical, folk, rock, trip-hop. What we want to do is give ourselves an entry-level platform from which to grow our vinyl collection and listen to it in reasonable quality, but our early focus is about growing that number of records rather than the quality of the output. We've thoroughly enjoyed the experience of going back to record shops and the process of listening to vinyl. We want to build a collection of our favourite albums to give us something of a hobby to develop together.
Then, when the kids move out and we gain space and/or move house, we'll have room for a better system to appreciate our collection. So: what should we get at this early stage? We have an established Sonos network which we enjoy but are not wedded to. We have a pair of old Monitor Audio Silver RX1 bookshelf speakers in the loft. My gut says a turntable with an integrated phono stage is probably "good enough" for our initial steps on this journey, and that we can then connect that either to the old speakers (though we haven't the space to set them far enough apart for them to shine), or to a new Sonos speaker(s).
Then, as space permits, we can happily sell off these components and look to build a longer-term solution. My research is limited and my knowledge is zero. I've seen a bunch of names you'll all know well - Rega and Pro-Ject at the forefront - what do you propose? Budget of £1,000 max, space is a real issue, and ease of use and ideally integration with the existing Sonos setup are priorities. I've seen options like the Rega Planar 1 Plus or Pro-Ject T1 Phono SB bundled with a Sonos Era 300.
Alternatively, the money "saved" by not buying the Sonos Era 300 (£300+) can be reinvested into a better TT and separate phono stage, to be hooked up to the RX1s which we can potentially just move around the room to get them 4+ foot apart when we're listening to music. Equally, we could just buy a phono stage to bypass the Roberts setup and use proper speakers, which might make the iffy Aldi / Lidl deck sound a whole lot better in the short-term and save a bundle of cash.
EDIT: I'm leaning towards a Rega Planar 1 and Rega Fono MM MK5 currently, based on nothing other than Dr. Google.
Happy for all my surface level research to be blown out of the water and entirely new possibilities presented.
Background: I'm 46 and so have primarily been buying music in the CD era. I made the questionable decision with my dad 15+ years ago to rip all my albums onto a NAS drive, preempting the streaming revolution which shortly after rendered *days* of ripping CDs rather pointless. Fast forward to now, where I'm a father of two and a household of me, my wife and two kids that consume music through Sonos products and Spotify - I'm sorry. The NAS drive is disconnected and sitting in a drawer somewhere.
A few months back, my father-in-law "gifted" us a terrible old Aldi / Lidl turntable with a few excellent old records; The Doors, Hendrix, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles. The turntable is at best a decade-old £50 lump, currently being amplified and output through some equally old Roberts DAB / CD Player. I'm very much aware I'm not painting an audiophile picture here, but my hearing is far from exemplary and should shape your future advice.
More background: I am a gadget obsessive. My ears might not be the sharpest, but I'm a sucker for buying tech and developing new hobbies, and here's the core of the thread. Our tastes are fairly diverse - a lot of mid-90s Indie / grunge stuff, coupled with blues, jazz, neoclassical, classical, folk, rock, trip-hop. What we want to do is give ourselves an entry-level platform from which to grow our vinyl collection and listen to it in reasonable quality, but our early focus is about growing that number of records rather than the quality of the output. We've thoroughly enjoyed the experience of going back to record shops and the process of listening to vinyl. We want to build a collection of our favourite albums to give us something of a hobby to develop together.
Then, when the kids move out and we gain space and/or move house, we'll have room for a better system to appreciate our collection. So: what should we get at this early stage? We have an established Sonos network which we enjoy but are not wedded to. We have a pair of old Monitor Audio Silver RX1 bookshelf speakers in the loft. My gut says a turntable with an integrated phono stage is probably "good enough" for our initial steps on this journey, and that we can then connect that either to the old speakers (though we haven't the space to set them far enough apart for them to shine), or to a new Sonos speaker(s).
Then, as space permits, we can happily sell off these components and look to build a longer-term solution. My research is limited and my knowledge is zero. I've seen a bunch of names you'll all know well - Rega and Pro-Ject at the forefront - what do you propose? Budget of £1,000 max, space is a real issue, and ease of use and ideally integration with the existing Sonos setup are priorities. I've seen options like the Rega Planar 1 Plus or Pro-Ject T1 Phono SB bundled with a Sonos Era 300.
Alternatively, the money "saved" by not buying the Sonos Era 300 (£300+) can be reinvested into a better TT and separate phono stage, to be hooked up to the RX1s which we can potentially just move around the room to get them 4+ foot apart when we're listening to music. Equally, we could just buy a phono stage to bypass the Roberts setup and use proper speakers, which might make the iffy Aldi / Lidl deck sound a whole lot better in the short-term and save a bundle of cash.
EDIT: I'm leaning towards a Rega Planar 1 and Rega Fono MM MK5 currently, based on nothing other than Dr. Google.
Happy for all my surface level research to be blown out of the water and entirely new possibilities presented.
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