Pro-Ject T2 W turntable lets you stream vinyl around your house
With onboard Wi-Fi you can connect the Pro-Ject T2 W to your network for wireless analogue audio in every room of your house
To most serious audiophiles the idea of adding Wi-Fi to a record player is about as welcome as worms in a spaghetti bolognese, but if anyone can convince them that going wireless isn’t total sacrilege it’s legendary turntable tinkerer Pro-Ject and the new T2 W (£899).
The belt-driven T2 W works with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, and has a built-in phono preamp, so you can connect it cable-free to any Wi-Fi-equipped speakers, streamers or amps and beam your tunes through the air at up to 24-bit/48kHz lossless quality.
The 9in aluminium tonearm is pre-fitted, and you get a Sumiko Rainier MM cartridge in the box, so you can have a record spinning on its zero-resonance glass platter in a matter of minutes – and if you really miss cables it also has an analogue RCA output, so you can still connect it to your kit the old-fashioned way. There’s also an ethernet port if you’d rather hard-wire it to your router.
We’ve seen plenty of turntables with Bluetooth before, and Victrola’s Stream Carbon is wirelessly compatible with Sonos systems, but the T2 W is the first we’ve seen that’ll play nicely with such a broad range of kit. It prefers devices that support UPnP, but with a little bit of fiddling you can get it to stream to stuff that doesn’t. It’s even multiroom compatible, so you can enjoy your records all over the house, with Pro-Ject’s Control app used to, er, control it.
The Pro-Ject T2 W comes in three finishes, satin, wood and high-gloss black, and will go on sale this month from Pro-Ject dealers around the world. You can find your nearest one using the map on the Pro-Ject website.
Tom Wiggins
Contributor