Transcript
ON TEST
Project RPM 1.3 Genie Turntable
P
roject’s proud boast is that for more than fifty years ‘record players have been designed and built at Project’s manufacturing facility in Litovel, situated to the east of Prague, in the Czech Republic.’ Which is entirely true… but these turntables did not always bear the ‘Project’ name (which is sometimes spelled ‘Pro-Ject’, but it’s the same company). Project itself came into being ‘only’ 24 years ago, in 1990, founded by Heinz Lichtenegger, who runs the company from his home in Austria and also has a factory in Slovakia. Like the company,
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Australian
this turntable model also appears to be known by several different names. In Europe, it’s known as the ‘Genie’ whereas in the USA it’s generally called the RPM 1.3. Here in Australia, it’s being sold under its full title: Project RPM 1.3 Genie.
The Equipment I noticed two things straight away about the Project RPM 1.3 Genie. Firstly, if you look at it from above, it’s almost the spitting image of Disney’s ‘Mickey Mouse’ cartoon character, thanks to those two ‘ears’, one being for
the turntable motor and the other for the tonearm. Secondly, the turntable’s motor is actually completely separate from the turntable. It’s supposed to be positioned in the left ‘ear’ and, when correctly positioned, does not touch the turntable at all. The Project RPM 1.3 Genie is one of Project’s lowest-priced turntables, and it’s particularly low-priced when you consider that the $449 (RRP) asking price also includes your choice of having either an Ortofon OM 3E or 2M Red MM cartridge fitted. As you can see, our sample was finished in high gloss
Project RPM 1.3 Genie Turntable
The Project RPM 1.3 Genie is one of Project’s lowest-priced turntables, and it’s particularly lowpriced when you consider that it also includes... ‘Ferrari’ red, but the turntable is also available in gloss black, gloss white and matte black finishes. The turntable’s motor is an a.c. synchronous type that drives the platter via a silicon rubber belt. There is no electronic speed adjustment. Instead, a two-step pulley is provided to allow you to switch between 33.33 and 45 rpm rotational speeds (by manually moving the belt from one pulley to the other). Although Project’s advertising material says: ‘the drive motor is isolated on its own platform and completely decoupled from the plinth to eliminate vibration’, this is not strictly true, since in most set-ups the motor’s housing will sit on the same surface as the turntable itself, therefore will be coupled to the plinth via this surface. I guess, however, that the drive motor itself is isolated within its separate platform. The plinth itself is made from MDF and quite light in weight. Rather unusually, the platter is also made from MDF. I initially presumed that this was simply to reduce manufacturing costs, but afterwards I realised that MDF is far more sonically inert than the usual flimsy metal platters used on budgetpriced turntables, so Lichtnegger could be onto something here. It’s certainly a fairly substantial platter, being almost 30mm thick and weighing almost 1.6kg. It revolves on an inverted, chrome-plated stainless-steel axle that runs on a polished metal ball in a sintered bronze bearing housing. It’s fitted with a very thin felt platter mat. The tonearm’s headshell and S-shaped arm-tube are fashioned from a single piece of aluminium and there’s an eccentricallymounted counterweight to reduce cantilever forces and ‘dynamic wow’ when playing warped records, plus a string-and-weight anti-skating system. The arm’s design permits accurate adjustment of VTA (vertical tracking angle) and azimuth. The arm model is a Project 8.6S, with the ‘S’ indicating the shape of the arm and the 8.6 its effective length in inches (218.44mm). Because of the turntable’s design, it doesn’t come with a turntable cover, so you should consider this when purchasing.
In Use and Listening Sessions When placing the motor in the ‘hole’ provided, you need to be very careful that the motor does not actually touch the plinth. The diameter of the hole is quite a bit larger than the diameter of the motor, so it shouldn’t be hard to accomplish this. As I pointed out earlier, the motor will sit on the same surface as the turntable, so it would be a good idea to make sure that that surface is both heavy and sonically inert. Placing both on a chunk of marble or granite would be one way of doing this… and it’d look pretty good too! Slightly more cost-effective would be a pre-cast concrete paving block. (If it turns out that you need to in turn decouple the granite or marble from the surface it’s sitting on to achieve isolation from external vibration sources—nearby roads, train lines and such—this can be achieved quite easily by using a sheet of soft foam under the block.) However, before doing any of this, you should start out by trialling the set-up wherever you had first initially intended on placing the turntable, because it may not be necessary to do anything at all! My loaner review unit came with an Ortofon 2M phono cartridge pre-installed, so the first thing I checked was that the cartridge had been correctly aligned. To my very pleasant surprise, it had been perfectly aligned, at least according to my Denneson SoundTraktor (regrettably no longer available, so if you ever change cartridges, you’ll need to invest in Project’s version of the same thing, known as an ‘Align-It’). I also checked VTA and azimuth at the same time, and these were correct as well, so Project (or the Australian distributor) is doing a good job. So with nothing to do in these departments, it only took me a few moments to set tracking weight and anti-skating and I was almost ready to spin some vinyl. (Project supplies a stylus gauge you can use to set tracking weight, but it’s not particularly well-calibrated, with settings for just 5, 10 and 20mN (grams and mN are interchangeable) whereas most cartridges track at between 15 to 17.5mN, for which values it has
ON TEST
no calibrations. Because of this, I’d suggest thinking about buying a slightly more upmarket gauge.) I said ‘almost ready’ in the previous paragraph because after I’d finished my final set-up, I first used a stethoscope to listen carefully for any hum or vibration being transmitted from the motor to the turntable because I had been told that some of the motors in the first RPM 1.3 Genie models to be released in Europe were prone to one or the other of these.
Project RPM 1.3 Genie Turntable
Brand: Project Model: RPM 1.3 Genie Category: Turntable RRP: $449 (inc. cartridge) Warranty: Two Years Distributor: International Dynamics Address: 129 Palmer Street, Richmond, VIC 3121 (03) 9426 3600
[email protected] www.interdyn.com.au
• Great value! • Cartridge preinstalled • Stunning visuals
• Turntable cover • Platter mat • Stylus gauge
LAB REPORT Readers interested in a full technical appraisal of the performance of the Project RPM1.3 Genie should continue on and read the LABORATORY REPORT published on page 44. Readers should note that the results mentioned in the report, tabulated in performance charts and/or displayed using graphs and/ or photographs should be construed as applying only to the specific sample tested.
Lab Report on page 44 avhub.com.au
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ON TEST
Project RPM 1.3 Genie Turntable
The motor in my sample was very quiet and I also couldn’t detect any vibration. It seems that if there was a problem with the motor it was fixed long ago, but I also can’t understand why it was ever an issue at all, because since the motor is completely separate from the turntable itself, swapping it out for a new one would be a piece of cake: it isn’t as if you’d have to send the turntable back to the factory, as you would if the motor were built into the turntable plinth. However, as a final check (and because the motor speed is not adjustable), I also cross-checked platter speed with a strobe plate and was reassured when the strobe lines remained stationary at both 33.33rpm and 45 rpm: You can’t ask for better speed stability than that! One thing I was not completely happy about was the felt mat supplied with the Project RPM 1.3 Genie: it’s almost impossibly thin and had also been crumpled in transit, so that when I put it on the platter it looked terrible. My vocalisations about this reached the ears of my better half, who took one look, removed it, ironed it, and then put it back beautifully flat. I was a bit mortified that I hadn’t thought to do this. (Seriously… I hadn’t!) The thin felt mat has the advantage that it slips beautifully over the highly polished platter surface, but I still can’t help but think a slightly thicker mat would have been more appropriate. Wanting to make sure that I couldn’t hear any wow and flutter before I got too far into the reviewing process, my first several discs were of slow piano music: my old standbys of Erik Satie (Gymnopédies), Chopin’s Nocturne Op.27 No.1, John Field’s Nocturne No.10 in E minor, and of course, Liszt’s Légende No 1 St François d’Assise. Using these time-tested pieces, I
LAB REPORT
Newport Test Labs checked the speed accuracy of the Project RPM 1.3 Genie with a 3kHz test tone from a Columbia Labs test record and a frequency counter. At 33.33rpm, the Genie played back this tone perfectly, at a frequency of exactly 3000Hz. When playing back a 3kHz test tone at 45rpm, the Genie played just 3Hz too high, with a frequency of 3003Hz. This is a pitch difference of just 0.1%, too low to be perceptible to the human ear as a pitch difference without
Australian
could not hear any wow or flutter from the Project RPM 1.3 Genie, and since this is precisely the type of music that would make it clearly audible, you need not worry that you may hear it with any other music genre. Whilst listening to these pieces I also strained to detect if I could hear any intrusive turntable rumble from the bearing itself, or from the motor, and there was certainly none that I could hear… and these are very quiet pressings. In the event you do hear any mo-
tor noise for any reason, it may be because the motor is coupling to the plinth through the common surface they’re resting on, in which case refer my earlier advice. A further option would be to try putting aftermarket decoupling feet under the motor itself, and perhaps also under the turntable’s feet. You’ll be assisted here by the fact that the platter is so thick that there’s a lot of leeway in terms of belt height. I was very familiar with the Ortofon 2M Red MM phono cartridge that had been factory-fitted to my review sample, and have always found it to be an excellent cartridge, and it performed as well as I’ve heard it perform in the Genie, with good high-frequency extension, solid bass and adequate channel separation. I do always find this cartridge’s stylus protector is a little difficult to get back onto the cartridge body, but perhaps this is just a trick I haven’t yet mastered.
Conclusion In Australia, an Ortofon 2M Red cartridge is going to set you back the best part of a hundred bucks, so because one comes standard with this turntable, it really means you’re getting the turntable/arm package for just $339. So while I’ve had a few niggles about the Project RPM 1.3 Genie in this review, you need to regard them in the context of its asking price. So at less than $500 for the complete package of turntable, tonearm and cartridge, my opinion is that you’re getting real value Chris Croft for money here.
Project RPM 1.3 Genie Turntable
Laboratory Test Results
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At less than $500 for the complete package of turntable, tonearm and cartridge, my opinion is that you’re getting real value for money here!
the presence of an external reference (i.e. a tone playing at 3kHz). Wow and flutter were measured only at 33.33rpm, both separately and combined. Separately, the unweighted CCIR flutter was measured at 0.06% and the unweighted CCIR wow at 0.15%. When wow and flutter were measured together, the results were 0.125% CCIR unweighted and 0.09% CCIR weighted. The overall unweighted RMS result was 0.08%. These are all excellent results. The lab also experimented with the effect of belt tightness on
speed accuracy and on wow and flutter levels and reported that there were no measurable differences in the results, so precision is not necessary when positioning the motor in the area alongside the turntable allocated for it. [That is, the left-most ‘ear’…Editor.] Mains power consumption was very low, with the motor’s switch-mode wall-mount power supply drawing 2.41-watts from the 240V GPO when the motor was switched off, and 4.58-watts when the platter was revolving Steve Holding at 33.33rpm.
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