What is the Pro-Ject Colourful Audio System? It is a music system put together by Vinyl specialist Pro-Ject Audio, a company from Austria, renowned for high quality Hi-fi equipment. The idea is a complete music system that doesn’t take up much room, is easy to set-up and most importantly, a system that sounds great. We have sold Pro-Ject equipment for a long time and we can’t wait to hear what it can do.

The Pro-Ject Colourful Audio System comes in five hand painted satin finishes, black, fir green, golden yellow, steel blue, and white plus a real wood veneer. The Speaker Box 5 S2 and Debut Carbon Evo are bundled in the same finish, the Maia S3 amplifier comes in a black finish.

The Pro-ject Colourful Audio System in Steel Blue

What’s in the box?

The Turntable - Pro-Ject Debut Carbon Evo

The turntable is the award winning Pro-Ject Debut Carbon Evo. It comes fitted with a Carbon Fibre tonearm, rarely found on turntables below £500, a factory fitted and aligned Ortofon 2M Red cartridge, a new motor suspension, a heavy steel platter and all of it mounted to a very solid plinth with high adjustable dampening feet - This is a high spec turntable.

A switch underneath the plinth allows speed change from 33 rpm to 45 rpm and with an extra belt supplied, it will play 78rpm records, as well.

The Amplifier - Pro-Ject Maia S3

The Maia S3 is the heart of the system and it offers up to 40 Watts per channel. There are three analogue and three digital inputs, the latter very handy to connect a tv or set-top box or any device that has an optical or coaxial output. If you want to stream your music from your mobile phone, tablet or pc you can simply connect to the high definition AptX HD capable Bluetooth 5.0 input with a sound quality up to 24-bit & 48kHz which is better than standard CD quality. A pair of headphones connect to the front headphone socket.

The Loudspeakers - Pro-Ject Speaker Box 5 S2

The Speaker Box5 S2 are a perfect partner for the Maia S3 amplifier and we would say, they are the surprise in this system. They are easy to drive and with a 25 mm silk dome tweeter that delivers crystal clear highs and a 130 mm fibreglass bass/mid driver, this speaker gives full-bodied and lush mids as well as punchy and tight bass. A set of grills are supplied in the box.

Included Accessories

The Colourful Audio System comes with all accessories you need. Included is a three metre pair of speaker cables with fitted gold plated plugs, a 7” single adapter, an extra belt for playing 78 rpm records, power supply, a dust cover, turntable interconnect, 6 absorber feet to reduce vibrations if the speakers are on the same surface as the turntable and a set-up guide for the turntable.

Accessrories included with the Colourful Audio System

Sound Quality

The system is set up and the first record we play is Morning Phase from Beck. We have listened to this album many times and because it is so nicely recorded we couldn’t resist playing it again. This a very relaxing sounding album and this system made us feel exactly that - We feel chilled and happy. It is fantastic how good music makes you feel when it’s well recorded and played on a great sounding system.

Then we choose to play a track called Human from Sevdaliza. We stream it from Tidal Hi-fi, a high quality music streaming service and play it via Bluetooth to the Maia S3 amplifier. I picked up this track during an install from a customer’s play list, and this is a great system tester for bass to check what the system is capable of. It sounds crisp, punchy and powerful, incredible for such a small speaker. We can’t get enough of this.

Our verdict is - You like it ? Go for it. The Pro-Ject Colourful Audio System looks and sounds fantastic and it is fun to use. Please come in for a listen in one of our demonstration rooms and feel free to bring some of your own records.