Vinyl has an interesting problem of image management. Depending on your exposure and background, people who listen to it are often stereotyped into one of three different categories. Whether it’s old timers who could never keep up to date with newfangled tech, audiophile snobs who can’t bear to live without the warmth of its sound, or nostalgic hipsters who want to stand out, the medium’s had some terrible spokes people.
It’s really a shame though since modern music technology has yet to fully mimic the musical gravitas of this 90 year old analog storage method, or create a surrogate to fill the sense of ownership that putting your hands on a LP once provided to fans.
Vinyl’s overall labor intensive qualities from setup to playback and general inconvenience compared to modern digital solutions of course doesn’t help its case either. However, recent conversion products like those from ION Audio do solve one major hurdle. Thanks to their built in USB ports, whatever tunes owners had on vinyl could easily be converted to digital copies, meaning money spent on the format could at least be shared across all manner of other systems.
Their downside however lies in poor playback, with most being focused simply on conversion rather than stand alone listening. Thus Gear Patrol took aim at finding a table which offered a balance between sound quality and modern day integration, with the hope of providing a good suggestion for curious buyers thinking about delving into the past.
Based on our in home testing of the Pro-Ject Debut III, we’ve been pleased at how well it does just that. Oozing with glorious minimalist styling, the table has the presence of a high end piece of audio equipment. It also ships with a fitted Ortofon OM 5E MM-cartridge, which holds a great reputation as a decent mid level cartridge perfect for those just getting into the swing of vinyl listening. The fact that it’s pre-fitted means buyers will avoid one of the biggest headaches associated with owner record players as well– cartridge calibration and alignment.
Overall, playback from the Pro-Ject was everything we’ve come to expect from the medium, and anything from Simon and Garfunkel to DJ Shadow’s Entroducing just held that extra something our high quality and loss less digital tracks couldn’t replicate. We’ll be the first to admit though that reaching this point was no easy feat and in general what we experienced is something anyone interested in buying any turntable should be prepared face.
