Trettitre's $529 Wall Hi-Fi Sells Vinyl, CD and Tape in One Rack

Trettitre is now selling its Retro Ambient Audio System for $529 on its own website, months after a Kickstarter campaign pulled in more than $2.2 million and a summer of shipping delays tested backers' patience. The complete package — a record player, a CD player, a cassette deck and a magnetic wall rack — is listed as in stock with a 12-month warranty. Speakers are not included.

By Grace Kim

The price positions the system as a budget echo of the Wandanlage, the wall-mounted hi-fi Dieter Rams designed for Braun in 1965, which today runs about $9,930 adjusted for inflation. Trettitre's version follows that lineage with brushed metal plates, flat surfaces and simple buttons, though its irregular layout and the turntable's glowing ambient light push it well outside Rams's purist aesthetic.

Design director Yong Cao admits the debt. "Bauhaus and Dieter Rams have had a deep influence on me, and you can see it in this system: simple and useful," Cao says. "Behind minimal design there is usually maximal thinking."

Why put three formats on one wall?

Trettitre, known for its cone-shaped Bluetooth speakers, built the system around a simple observation: its team spans three decades of birth years, from the '70s to the '90s, and each member still has a soft spot for the format they first listened to as kids. In October 2025, cofounder Jeff Lyu suggested putting all of those formats back into the living room, "so that our kids could feel that tangible connection to music too," Cao says.

That's why the players stay separate modules rather than one consolidated box. "Vinyl, CD and cassette each stand for a different era. Each format sounds different, and the way people interact with each one carries different emotions. So I placed them at different points along the rack, which works as a timeline," Cao explains.

The star module is the LP3 turntable. A frosted panel behind the platter lights up while a record spins, and the unit charges wirelessly on the system's T-shaped rack like a phone on a pad. Each unit runs on its own rechargeable battery — Trettitre claims up to 10 hours per charge — and a silicone-leather strap lets you carry the turntable to the patio. The tonearm sets its own tracking force at power-on, sparing users the usual counterweight fiddling. The cartridge is an Audio-Technica AT-3600LA, a budget workhorse, with replacement styluses sold for $35.

The DP3 CD player is a 6.7-inch flying saucer with a clear magnetic lid that leaves the disc visible as it spins — a shape that recalls Naoto Fukasawa's 1999 wall-mounted CD player for Muji. Next to it sits the CP3 cassette deck, all metal top, sharp angles and big mechanical keys. Both carry 10-hour battery claims and sell separately for $119 and $129 respectively.

The fourth spot on the rack plays nothing. It's a magnetic phone holder that streams over Bluetooth to the same speakers as the other three modules — Trettitre's admission that streaming apps aren't going anywhere, even on a wall built to celebrate physical media.

What about gravity?

Hang a turntable sideways and physics fights back. On a flat deck, gravity pulls the needle down into the groove; stand the record on its edge and that same force pulls sideways, so the arm needs another way to hold tracking force and antiskate steady, and the record needs a $10 optional clamp to stop it sliding off the spindle.

Early owners report mixed results. One Kickstarter backer, who still gave the system four stars on Trettitre's store, found heavily arranged records sounded distorted in vertical play. "Flat, no problem at all, vertical the instruments sound flat (not empty, like their pitch is out of tune)," the owner wrote after testing the Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 and My Fair Lady soundtracks. Cofounder and chief marketing officer Noah Wong says the company knows about the off-pitch problem and has fixed it. Another backer disagreed entirely: "It's amazing how the needle stays on the record flawlessly."

Trettitre says older vertical turntables fought gravity with nothing more than a counterweight or a spring. The LP3 instead uses a proprietary mechanism that pushes back both vertically and horizontally. After hearing pitch wobble on dense recordings, engineers narrowed the allowed variation in needle pressure — a change the company says "resolved the issue."

The second compromise is Bluetooth. Every module sends its audio over Bluetooth to wireless speakers or headphones you already own, or through a 3.5 mm jack. There are no RCA cables, no amplifier. Purists will wince at turning a vinyl groove into a compressed digital stream, but this isn't a device for audiophiles — it's for people who like music and fancy objects on their walls.

One caveat for buyers sitting on the fence: the company told one customer the $529 is "a temporary test price" that "will most likely increase." Anyone waiting for a discount is probably waiting in the wrong direction.