The Essential point
Getting into vinyl isn’t any more about the hardware, which has become amazingly affordable these days.
AFTER having reviewed a string of digital front-end components recently, it was rather nice to once again be handed a turntable to muck about with.
However, this particular turntable came with a notable difference – it had a built-in phono stage which provided not only the expected equalised line-level analogue signal outputs to connect to one’s amplifier, but also a USB digital output to be connected to a computer to allow the user to record (transfer?) the digitised results.
Given that the price of a slab of quality new vinyl nowadays is at or around RM100, I can’t think of anyone who’d be comfortable to readily oblige a request to borrow one’s LPS.
It wasn’t an attractive proposition back in the days when vinyl was the ruling format either (we’ve all heard anecdotes from people on how many of their precious records went unaccounted for after being lent to relatives or friends), but nowadays, one can’t readily say to the requesting party, “I’ll pass you a tape of it instead” as a polite declining gesture!
With something like the Pro-ject Essential turntable/phono USB about the house, one can perhaps now say “I’ll burn you a CD-R of it instead”.
Rounds and squares
The Pro-ject Essential is the latest entrylevel turntable from this renowned Austrian brand, which doesn’t seem affected by the economic uncertainties in Europe.
It is a relatively compact unit constructed mostly from fibreboard, but rather smartly finished. Surprisingly, it includes a unipivot tonearm as standard.
Everything was well packed – the review sample actually came in a horrifically dented carton which suggested it may have been mortally wounded before even entering battle, but there was nary a scratch on the contents, so the packaging did a good job indeed of protecting its innards.
The Essential Phono USB package comes ready to play, complete with a factory-mounted Ortofon OMB3E cartridge which, from listening, proved to be a decent enough starter model, so I stuck with it throughout the review period (I’ll just call the whole shebang “the Essential package” for convenience).
The phono stage in the Essential package is, not unexpectedly, for moving magnet cartridges only, and Pro-ject quotes it as having a gain of 32db. As it cannot be readily bypassed, users will have to work within the specification of the unit when considering a potential cartridge upgrade.
A white round-profiled drive belt fits around the peripheral edge of the turntable platter and speed change (33.3 and 45 rpm) is effected by manually positioning the belt on the relevant part of the twin-diameter pulley. One may seek out the separately sold Pro-ject Speed Box for the convenience of electronic speed switching (and potentially better sound quality), if so inclined.
Get down on it
Properly levelled and sited on a good supporting platform, the Essential package delivered a coherent and well proportioned sound. In overall terms, the sound was a little coarse, and lacked the drive, weight and slam more capable (and expensive, obviously) turntable combinations achieve, but what was there was essentially very listenable.
Levels of detail were quite good, in fact better than some of the budget CD players and DACS I’ve heard in recent time, even when taking cognisance of the limitations of the cheapie Ortofon cartridge.
Surface noise, while not exactly absent, was not really a problem or a deal-breaking impediment to enjoyment, even when playing really loud. The Essential package showed a fair hand at reproducing the fine nuances present in the Rega-issued Christine Collister album, capturing the lady’s voice well with quite respectable image tangibility in the somewhat restricted acoustic the turntable package was able to manage.
There was a fine sense of stability in the lower registers and the Essential package did quite well on some of the more demanding piano tracks I threw at it. Here, it clearly ceded ground to good CD replay, which had a better sense of calm and lack of wavering which is a comparative strength of the format.
I felt the supplied felt (ugh!) mat was not really up to the task of supporting the vinyl record properly. Better results were obtained by simply substituting the stock mat with one from a Linn Sondek LP12 in its place. Another candidate to investigate is Pro-ject’s own after-market cork replacement mat.
The Essential package did a very respectable job in almost all sonic parameters – it is not the most engaging of listens and its failings are more in the realm of omission. Considering the overall unit price point, I did not feel the inclination to criticise the Essential package too harshly.
Others may feel differently as to whether, even when taking the overall features into account, this is the proper level to jump in for quality vinyl listening. The Essential package did not, in my view, equal the sound quality levels set by the older Rega P1, and certainly there are more capable models higher up in Pro-ject’s own range that better the Essential package’s performance. The punter will have to decide this in the performance context of his own audio system and just how demanding he is.
I really started to better appreciate the convenience the Essential package offered when doing recordings from its USB output to a Compaq laptop (running Windows XP OS, with Audacity as the recording-capture software). Recorded at the default CD standard 16bit/44.1khz specification, and playing back the results through a WAV file reader and a diyparadise Monica 2 DAC, a large portion of the flavour of the vinyl replay system was captured. I actually preferred the results of the vinyl transfer to the commercial CD equivalent for the some of the music I had available in both formats!
The sharp end
All in all, while not aiming to be the last word in sound quality, the Pro-ject Essential Phono USB package proved itself to be very competent sonically. It is nicely built and easy to use and thus can be readily recommended to anyone who wants a simple, good sounding turntable that won’t break the bank, with the ready option of converting some of vinyl records into digital files.