Project 2 Xperience

By Brent Burmester

August 2006

Project 2 Xperience turntable. $1499.

Project 2 Xperience (click image for larger picture)

Vinyl just isn't going away. Maybe it's because there's still so much of the stuff around, and CD has yet to catch up with a back-catalogue spanning most of a century. Maybe it's because music made before the age of digital discs just sounds more like it should on the black stuff. Maybe it's because turntables are just very cool.

Clear as day

Project's 2 Xperience is very cool. It looks the proverbial million, essentially a slab of acrylic mounted on three weighty alloy feet, with everything else fastened to top and bottom surfaces – simplicity itself in terms of concept, but the execution is awesome. Unpacking and setting-up takes about 45 minutes. Screw the feet to the base, drop the platter onto the bearing, remove the safety screws securing the motor, slip the drive belt around the motor-pulley and platter, bung the counter-weight and anti-skate weight on the fitted tonearm, mount your cartridge, align, plug into your amp with the well-constructed interconnects packed with the turntable, and set the controls for the heart of the sun.

My old Garrard 401 seems positively Jurassic by comparison to the 2 Xperience. The Project has no mat (the platter is vinyl-coated and records are fixed with a threaded spindle-clamp), the tonearm tube is made of carbon-fibre, and you can see right through the plinth. But take a second look. Both my 401 and the Xperience are non-suspended designs, ie no springs, rubber-bands, or hydraulics to fret over. Project's 9c tonearm uses the same anti-skate technology as my aged SME 3009 (a weight on a string), and under that handsome vinyl outer-layer, the platter is humble MDF. Mind you, the Garrard wasn't pretty in 1967, whereas the Project will still be stunner in thirty years.

Clear as a bell

The 2 Xperience is not only easy on the eye, but provides a most gratifying listen. The character of the Project is plain speaking. I'm not saying the turntable is boring or fails to engage, rather it adds no adornment to music, presenting the material in a simple and straightforward fashion. I enjoyed playing a wide range of LPs on the 2 Xperience, many of them a long way from pristine. I wasn't overwhelmed by detail or by startling new perspectives on what I heard, but then, I was using my trusty old Goldring 1022, not a shiny new cartridge. In fact, what I heard was less – less surface noise, less motor-induced haze, less hesitancy in the face of steep transients.

Some would hope to hear a more sumptuous rendering of their favorite vinyl, but the 2 Xperience won't play that game. There are good turntables that sound positively delicious, but not necessarily in an honest to goodness fashion. The Xperience comes across like a high-end CD player, focused on the facts. It is rock-solid rhythm-wise, and throws a wide, if not enormously deep soundstage. Bass was clean and well-extended, if maybe a shade less imposing than on my own record player, while resolution at the treble end was more than should be expected at this price-point.

Turntables are sensitive souls, and, naturally, experimentation with isolation and support can deliver tangible rewards. Less predictably, the Xperience showed a preference for its cover in the raised position. Also of note, the carbon fibre tonearm is an excellent thing, but it has a very low mass and shows a tendency to balk at little irregularities on pre-loved discs – I ran just a touch more weight on the needle than usual to keep things in the groove.

Are you Xperienced?

This is a very good turntable. It doesn't make a fuss, it's robust, and it sounds first-rate. If you own records, but don't want to spend the earth on a player, this is as far as you need to go. The 2 Xperience sounded almost as good to me as the significantly more expensive RPM 9, and unless you're planning to use exotic moving coil cartridges and other pricey auxiliaries, I'd guess you'd not discern a difference either. Long live vinyl, and long live the Project Xperience. Just mind the dust on that lovely plinth.

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