You’ve never heard vinyl like this—because you’ve never seen vinyl like this. At Milan Design Week 2025, Audio-Technica unveiled a limited-edition turntable that levitates records in mid-air and floods your space with reactive color. It’s called the Hotaru, named after the Japanese word for “firefly.” Fitting, considering how it glows, flickers, and defies expectations in almost every direction.

Designer: Audio-Technica

With only 1,000 units produced and a price tag of $9,999, the Hotaru is less about practicality and more about the emotional theater of sound—a sci-fi sculpture with real audiophile guts.

The floating acrylic platter hovers magnetically above the speaker base, eliminating physical contact. That separation isn’t for show—it isolates the stylus from unwanted vibrations, giving playback clarity that traditional systems struggle to achieve. The platter spins cleanly and confidently, suspended by a magnetic force carefully calibrated to avoid disrupting the stylus. The balance is razor-thin: too much force throws off tracking, too little and it sags. Hotaru walks that tightrope beautifully.

Reactive Design in Motion

Hotaru’s light display pushes the turntable into new territory. Twenty color palettes cycle through three visual modes. Basic Mode maintains a subtle glow. Gradation Mode introduces smooth transitions between hues. Link Mode shifts dynamically in sync with the music—bass pulses trigger deep blues, while sharp highs light up the platter with white and amber bursts.

Put on Miles Davis, and trumpet notes scatter like fireflies across your wall. Play Aphex Twin and chaos reigns—erratic, pixel-sharp flashes match every beat. Even familiar albums become unpredictable. No two spins ever look the same.

This isn’t ambient décor. It’s algorithmic choreography—an analog soundstage married to light.

Solving for Suspension

Creating Hotaru meant rethinking the fundamentals. How do you levitate a platter with stability tight enough for a stylus to track vinyl grooves? How do you isolate motor vibrations without compromising design purity? How do you ensure lighting doesn’t interfere with the magnetic field? These weren’t theoretical questions—Audio-Technica had to answer each one without fallback.

The drive system is belt-based but entirely hidden. The carbon fiber tonearm uses a static-balanced straight configuration, and it ships with the brand’s own VM-series stereo cartridge, drawing from more than 60 years of analog lineage. Every element was selected to balance sound reproduction with physical spectacle.

Despite the drama, the performance holds up. The levitation system shields the platter from outside rumble—footsteps, subwoofers, anything you’d normally blame for distorting vinyl clarity. Cue a record at night and let the glow paint your room. What you hear feels clean. What you see feels unreal.

Full-System Playback, or Hi-Fi Hub

Hotaru goes beyond the playback gear. It’s a complete system. Two 63.5mm full-range drivers and a pair of 19mm tweeters are built into the base, creating a frequency range from 60Hz to 20kHz. The sound is expansive enough for its footprint and warm enough to handle everything from ambient to jazz to electronic.

Still want more? RCA line-outs and a subwoofer port let you scale the setup into your hi-fi system. Think of it as the brain—or maybe the glowing heart—of your living room setup.

It’s compact enough to sit on a shelf at 430mm square and under 24cm tall, but it weighs 12kg—part of what makes the magnetic suspension function with consistency. Visually, it sits quietly until powered on. Then the transformation is immediate. You’re no longer listening to vinyl. You’re watching sound unfold.

Limited Run, Maximum Drama

Pre-orders are open from April 8 to May 30, 2025, with shipping scheduled for October. Once the 1,000 units are gone, that’s it. Secondary market or bust.

Hotaru isn’t trying to disappear into your furniture. It’s a showpiece, an audio event every time you use it. The $9,999 tag doesn’t reflect commodity—it reflects obsession. Design, engineering, and experience were all tuned for impact.

Vinyl has always been tactile. Hotaru lets it float, lets it move, and lets it glow. It’s music you can feel—and finally, music you can see.