How to connect the Pro-Ject Debut Carbon EVO to the Marantz PM6007 and DALI Oberon 1

What you need

Already have

Phono interconnect with earth wirethe Connect IT E RCA lead, in the Pro-Ject box

Need to buy

Speaker cablesone pair, equal lengths

Pro-Ject supply the deck with a Connect IT E RCA lead, and the thin earth wire runs out of the tonearm alongside it. Use it to get started. The sockets it plugs into on the back of the deck are ordinary gold-plated RCAs rather than a captive tail, so the lead can be swapped for a better one later without anything else about the system changing.

Work out where the speakers are going before you measure for cable. DALI ask for a setup that is symmetrical about your listening seat, and they ask specifically that the Oberon 1 is left parallel with the wall behind it rather than angled towards you, which is the opposite of what most people do by instinct. Aim to get the tweeter roughly at ear height when you are sitting down. On a stand or a shelf the rubber bumpers in the box steady the cabinet, and the Oberon 1 has a bracket built into its back if the wall is where it has to go.

For the speaker cable, work out the route it will actually take, which is normally around the edge of the room rather than straight across the floor. Measure the longer of the two sides, allow a bit of slack so you can move the speakers once you have heard them, and buy an equal-length pair at that measurement. DALI ask for the same type and the same length on both channels, so trimming the short side to save a metre is not a saving worth making. The terminals take banana plugs, bare wire or spades.

Connecting it

1. Set the deck up before anything is plugged in. It arrives part-assembled, so take the transport lock off the tonearm, fit the belt around the sub-platter and the smaller step of the motor pulley, then drop the platter and felt mat over the spindle. Pro-Ject ask for a level surface, checked with a spirit level, and a low-resonance one such as wood or ply.
2. Balance the arm, zero the downforce scale and set the figure for the cartridge fitted to yours. Pro-Ject give 17.5mN for the Ortofon 2M RED and 20mN for the Sumiko Rainier, and the anti-skating thread goes over the second groove of the stub for the factory-fitted cartridge.
3. Move to the speakers with the amplifier unplugged from the wall. Marantz are blunt about it: never touch the speaker terminals while the power cord is connected.
4. For bare wire, strip about 10mm and twist the strands tightly, or fit a plug. Turn the terminal anticlockwise to loosen it, push the wire fully home, then tighten it clockwise.
5. Run the cable from the amplifier's SPEAKERS A terminals to the speakers, the right speaker as you see it from the listening seat going to the terminals marked R, red to red and black to black at both ends. The PM6007 carries the same signal on its A and B terminals, so a single pair of speakers goes on A and B stays empty.
6. Plug the deck's Connect IT E lead into PHONO on the back of the Marantz, keeping right to right and left to left. Pro-Ject mark the right channel red and the left black or white.
7. Take the thin earth wire from the same tail to the SIGNAL GND post beside the phono sockets, and tighten it down.
8. Plug the amplifier in, switch on with the volume right down, select PHONO on the input dial, then bring the volume up gradually with a record playing.

If your amplifier has no phono input

Plenty of amplifiers do not have one, and the Debut Carbon EVO has no stage of its own, so on an amplifier without a PHONO socket there is nothing on the back of the deck that will work. Pro-Ject's answer in the manual is a separate phono stage for MM or MC cartridges, sitting between the record player and a free line-level input. One hop becomes two: the deck's own Connect IT E lead goes into the phono stage, a second stereo RCA interconnect carries the line-level output of the stage into CD, Tuner or any spare line input, and the earth wire goes to the stage rather than to the amplifier. Nothing else about the system changes, and the speaker cable is the same cable it would always have been.

What the phono input is actually doing

A record is not cut flat. Bass is reduced and treble raised on the way to the lacquer, so the groove stays narrow enough to fit a side of music on a side of vinyl, and the phono stage puts the curve back on the way out. Marantz quote the accuracy of theirs as within 1dB from 20Hz to 20kHz. On top of the curve there is gain, and a great deal of it, since the same amplifier's line inputs are built for a signal roughly a hundred times larger than the one the phono input expects. Two jobs, one socket, and no other input on the amplifier does either of them.