Saturday, February 19, 2005
Pro-ject Debut III Turntable
As anyone that has visited my webpage can tell, I am a die-hard music fanatic. I have well over one thousand CDs and just about every device you can think of to play digital music. A while back, I was reading a post by my friend, Russell, and he was describing the warm, great sound of vinyl recordings. That post stuck with me for a long time. The vinyl I remembered sounded horrible playing on my 1970ish record/8 track/audio combo-player.
This year, I decided to spend more time relaxing and listening to music at home. It seemed like a great time for investing in a turntable for my home theater. I decided to look around and see if I could get a decent player for under $500. That is how I found the Pro-ject Debut III ($300). The Pro-ject seemed to be the perfect player for a novice looking for a plug and play turntable complete with cartridge.
After a lot of research and weighing the pros and cons, I decided to buy the Pro-ject from the NeedleDoctor. They have the turntables in a host of colors ranging from solid black to bright yellow. I decided to order the red turntable.
After a week or so, I received the player and it was packed so that is could not be damaged. One thing that had to be considered was that the turntable would have to be put on the top shelf of my equipment rack, so everything had to me moved. This was somewhat of a blessing because I had a chance to reorganize all of my components. After the re-stacking of all of my equipment, I placed the turntable on the top shelf and it took all of ten minutes to hook everything up. Considering the fact that I did not know what a cartridge was a few weeks ago, I would say that this unit made it as simplistic as possible for the beginner.
After getting everything hooked up, I decided to pull out a few albums that were left over from younger years. What I found is that I did not keep very good care of my LPs. The first one had so many scratches that it was unbearable to listen to for more than a few seconds. I decided to look through my collection and see if there were any LPs that were still in sleeves inside the cardboard cover. I found “Some Girls”, by the Rolling Stones. The sound was fantastic, but I was still not a complete convert. Therefore, I decided to buy a few new albums for more testing and to enjoy later.
The albums I chose were Miles Davis “Kind of Blue” (200 gram pressing), Dave Brubeck “Time Out” (180 gram), “Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim” (180 gram), and Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon (180 gram). I bought all of them from Acoustic Sounds on the Internet.The experience was revelatory! The sound of the albums was like nothing I had ever heard from CDs. For fun, I set up a blind test for my girlfriend to judge. She has a good ear for music and also has very little understanding of how my system is set up. To conduct the test, I used a pair of Grado SR60 headphones and Kind of Blue (20 bit re-mastered CD) and the new vinyl copy of the album. She picked the vinyl copy after listening for a few minutes. I was not really surprised because the CD lifted a lot of surface noise off of the original tape. The vinyl version had no noticeable surface noise. I later decided to take a listen to “Time Out”. I cannot begin to describe how easily the vinyl version of this pressing blew away the CD. It was as good as anything I have heard on my system including DVD-Audio. After listening to all of my new LPs, I have to say that all of them are better than their CD counterparts. To be fair, I still love my CDs and I will not be investing in a huge vinyl collection. CDs have the benefit of easy conversion to digital formats and that is still very important to me.
Finally, the Pro-ject Debut has turned out to be a better product than I ever anticipated. The sound quality and easy setup make this a no-brainer for a novice looking to add vinyl to their home theater. If you are in the market for a reasonably priced turntable, look no further!
UP SIDE
Easy setup
Great sound
Excellent price
DOWN SIDE
Surface noise on old records
Any questions can be left here in my guestbook.
This year, I decided to spend more time relaxing and listening to music at home. It seemed like a great time for investing in a turntable for my home theater. I decided to look around and see if I could get a decent player for under $500. That is how I found the Pro-ject Debut III ($300). The Pro-ject seemed to be the perfect player for a novice looking for a plug and play turntable complete with cartridge.
After a lot of research and weighing the pros and cons, I decided to buy the Pro-ject from the NeedleDoctor. They have the turntables in a host of colors ranging from solid black to bright yellow. I decided to order the red turntable.
After a week or so, I received the player and it was packed so that is could not be damaged. One thing that had to be considered was that the turntable would have to be put on the top shelf of my equipment rack, so everything had to me moved. This was somewhat of a blessing because I had a chance to reorganize all of my components. After the re-stacking of all of my equipment, I placed the turntable on the top shelf and it took all of ten minutes to hook everything up. Considering the fact that I did not know what a cartridge was a few weeks ago, I would say that this unit made it as simplistic as possible for the beginner.
After getting everything hooked up, I decided to pull out a few albums that were left over from younger years. What I found is that I did not keep very good care of my LPs. The first one had so many scratches that it was unbearable to listen to for more than a few seconds. I decided to look through my collection and see if there were any LPs that were still in sleeves inside the cardboard cover. I found “Some Girls”, by the Rolling Stones. The sound was fantastic, but I was still not a complete convert. Therefore, I decided to buy a few new albums for more testing and to enjoy later.
The albums I chose were Miles Davis “Kind of Blue” (200 gram pressing), Dave Brubeck “Time Out” (180 gram), “Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim” (180 gram), and Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon (180 gram). I bought all of them from Acoustic Sounds on the Internet.The experience was revelatory! The sound of the albums was like nothing I had ever heard from CDs. For fun, I set up a blind test for my girlfriend to judge. She has a good ear for music and also has very little understanding of how my system is set up. To conduct the test, I used a pair of Grado SR60 headphones and Kind of Blue (20 bit re-mastered CD) and the new vinyl copy of the album. She picked the vinyl copy after listening for a few minutes. I was not really surprised because the CD lifted a lot of surface noise off of the original tape. The vinyl version had no noticeable surface noise. I later decided to take a listen to “Time Out”. I cannot begin to describe how easily the vinyl version of this pressing blew away the CD. It was as good as anything I have heard on my system including DVD-Audio. After listening to all of my new LPs, I have to say that all of them are better than their CD counterparts. To be fair, I still love my CDs and I will not be investing in a huge vinyl collection. CDs have the benefit of easy conversion to digital formats and that is still very important to me.
Finally, the Pro-ject Debut has turned out to be a better product than I ever anticipated. The sound quality and easy setup make this a no-brainer for a novice looking to add vinyl to their home theater. If you are in the market for a reasonably priced turntable, look no further!
UP SIDE
Easy setup
Great sound
Excellent price
DOWN SIDE
Surface noise on old records
Any questions can be left here in my guestbook.
