Rather special

Pro-Ject’s new flagship phono stage is very sophisticated, but Ed Selley thinks that its charms are rather easier to understand

- Ed Selley

DETAILS

PRODUCT Pro-Ject Phono Box RS2/Power Box RS Phono

ORIGIN Austria/Slovakia

TYPE MM/MC phono stage/power supply upgrade

WEIGHT 1.6kg/2.3kg

DIMENSIONS (WxHxD) 206 x 72 x 200mm 201 x 72 x 195mm

FEATURES

Moving-magnet and coil input

Balanced and unbalanced connections

Discrete output

DISTRIBUTOR Henley Audio Ltd.

TELEPHONE [phone]

WEBSITE project-audio.com

We tested the original RS Phono stage back in HFC 368 and it’s an indication of how good it was that it still remains part of the Pro-Ject range. The RS2 arrives not to replace it, but to supplement it. This is a single-input design, but has been constructed as fully dual-mono from front to back. Input and output are via RCA and XLR and the RS2 builds on the original by moving to a discrete output stage with no op-amps in the circuit. This is combined with passive equalisation – something more commonly seen in valve-based designs – which Pro-Ject says increases the accuracy of the EQ curve. As the RS2 also has a Decca EQ setting built in, there are two separate circuits to allow this.