As Henry Ford famously didn’t say “any colour you like as long as it’s black, white, blue, green, yellow or walnut”.
Pro-ject’s new Colourful Audio System, is certainly aptly named. Our favourite so far is yellow, which looked fabulous in UK distributor Henley Audio’s moodily lit room at the Cornwall Audio Show. Blue was maybe more sophisticated when seen the following day at the UK Audio Show in Daventry.
A packaged system, the Colourful Audio System comprises turntable, amplifier and speakers. You also get 2 x 3m of Connect-it LS S2 speaker cable, together with Damp-it isolation feet for the speakers (needed, says Pro-ject, should turntable and speakers sit on the same surface).
The turntable is the Debut Carbon EVO complete with 8.6” carbon fibre tonearm and Ortofon 2M Red cartridge. Amplifier is the recently launched MaiA S3 with its 8 inputs – MM/MC phono, 3 analogue line inputs on RCA connectors, 1 coax and 2 optical digital inputs, plus aptX-capable Bluetooth. And finally there’s the new Speaker Box 5 Mk2 that Andrew Robinson raved about recently on YouTube.
Available this month (October), the price is £1,599 / US$2,000 / €1,799. Which in the UK is a third more than Rega’s equivalent System One but the principle is the same – let the manufacturer curate a suitable entry-level analogue system. Pro-ject just added colour to the mix. Oh and a guarantee that spare parts will be available for 25 years, which is impressive.
A quick listen at the Cornwall Show was inconclusive – noisy environment, strange room etc – but did whet the appetite. So we’re arranging to spend some time with the Colourful Audio System to get to grips with it properly. Watch this space…………..
