A trip to Austria was part of my destiny. I’ve been spinning records since my early teen years, keeping the vinyl faith right through the seven years of plenty and the seven years of famine. I’ve emerged into a world where I have the opportunity to spend a big chunk of my time spinning records and writing about analog playback.
Two decades ago I received my first Pro‑Ject turntable for review, the Xperience, and since then I’ve evaluated many Pro‑Ject products. As you may be aware, Pro‑Ject is one of the largest, if not the largest, manufacturer of turntables in the world. Moving north in the corporate structure, Audio Tuning Vertriebs is Pro‑Ject’s parent company. Also falling under that umbrella are Musical Fidelity, Rekkord Audio, Tone Factory, and Mo Sound. Audio Tuning is a huge company, one that’s well worth exploring.
While it’s not an Audio Tuning brand, European Audio Team (EAT) is located in the same Austrian headquarters as Pro‑Ject, and I’ve gone on quite a journey with that company’s products also. So yeah, Austria is something of a pilgrimage destination for me. Which is why this summer I traveled to Mistelbach, just outside of Vienna.
Heinz Lichtenegger
As I stood in the lobby of Pro‑Ject’s beautiful, modern, light-filled headquarters, I found myself trapped within Heinz Lichtenegger’s intense gaze. The longer I talked to Heinz—the CEO and founder of Audio Tuning and thus of Pro‑Ject too—and the more I observed him, the clearer it became to me that, while he’s obviously a clever and cagey businessman, it’s his enthusiasm and passion for vinyl playback that’s made Pro‑Ject the success it is today. Enthusiasm—he burns with it.
Take a snoop around Pro‑Ject’s website and you’ll see turntables retailing for prices so low they would fit in with Amazon drop-shipping or qualify for Best Buy–style race-to-the-bottom consumerism. Now sort by price descending, and you’ll see smoking high-end audiophile confections—huge, hundred-pound, world-class monsters that would sit proudly on top of the most distinguished audio rack.
Why so many turntables? The cynic might think it’s to corner the demand, to gain marketshare. To build an empire. But after spending several days touring Pro‑Ject’s head office and the two factories dedicated to manufacturing and building their turntables, I don’t think that’s it.
Of course, I could be the victim of sorcery; this could be the result of a clever businessman selling his wares. But I’m convinced that’s not what’s going on here. The longer I talked to Heinz, the more I realized that he’s an evangelist.
He was animated at the best of times, but when we discussed the principles on which he built Pro‑Ject, Heinz would lean forward with his eyes practically spitting static electricity. We talked around a wide range of topics, but it was easy to see what really got him going. “Bluetooth speakers are the downfall of hi-fi,” he said with barely concealed rage. “They don’t do stereo. They sound terrible. Yet people seem to buy them by default. I’m fighting against that. It’s why I make my entry-level turntables and my Box systems, and matching affordable speakers. For not much more money than people already spend, they can have a real stereo. That’s what I’m trying to do here—make affordable hi-fi equipment, bring it into people’s homes.
“I don’t believe in integrated products,” he continued. “Why would I build a DAC or a streamer into an amplifier? The DAC or streamer will become obsolete at some point, which would render the amp less useful. Better to have the two products in separate boxes, which is what we do!” For years I’ve been a firm believer in exactly this approach, and I relayed my agreement to Heinz, hoping that I sounded sincere and not merely sycophantic.
“Here at Pro‑Ject, we look to the long term,” Heinz said. “Beyond our warranty period, we guarantee the availability of parts for 25 years. That includes amplifiers but not streamers. We do our best to reduce dependency on chips, preferring discrete solutions. We want to make products that will last for life, and we build them here, in Europe, from European-sourced parts and materials. I am still making what was essentially my first product, the Pro‑Ject 1 turntable—these are lifetime products.
“We work toward efficiency. Our turntables use switch-mode power supplies, but since the electronics regenerate the new voltage inside the turntables, they are isolated. We save money on certification because only a low voltage goes into the turntable. Nobody else does this.” Heinz then gave me a wry little smile. “We do make a linear power supply for those who want one—the Power Box 2. But you don’t need it.”
As we were talking, Heinz looked over and gestured to Shareef Fahim, Pro‑Ject’s head of marketing and public relations, who was making a coffee nearby. Fahim approached us, and Heinz whispered, “bring the Graham.”
After we’d chatted for a few more minutes, Heinz left—probably to design, build, and market another turntable—handing me over to Fahim, who had returned along with another gentleman whose name I neglected to jot down. What happened then was a complete non-sequitur, totally throwing me off.
“This is a Graham Phantom III SE tonearm,” Fahim began. “It is a wonderful piece of engineering. If you’re not familiar with it, I can give you a quick tour.” I admitted that I had not investigated this tonearm and would appreciate the rundown. We spent a good 20 minutes going over the principles of this fascinating design—a unipivot with a magnetic stabilizer that helps overcome the inherent instability of this type of bearing. Again, I wasn’t exactly sure why Heinz had arranged this little seminar, but it was interesting nonetheless.
That done, Fahim gave me a guided tour of Pro‑Ject’s headquarters. The building, designed to be as energy-efficient and self-sufficient as possible, was completed in 2018. It’s a bright, airy, welcoming space, with tons of natural light and Pro‑Ject components scattered liberally about the joint. It’s obviously a well-thought-out design, with the corrugated siding that lines the exterior sidewalls and entryway recalling a record’s grooves. Just off the main atrium are three listening rooms, appropriately named 1, 2, and 3. Each room displayed gear of increasing cost and sophistication, starting with budget equipment and moving up to Pro‑Ject’s top offerings.
The big surprise was in the lower maintenance level, accessed by a steep and exciting ladder that wouldn’t have been out of place in a submarine. Here, through thick, reinforced windows, I could see how the building is heated and cooled. Huge pools of water—close to a million liters—encapsulated metal coils filled with refrigerant. In the winter, the coils remove heat from the water, using that to warm the building. As the water cools, it begins to freeze, and by spring is mostly ice. In summer, the heat from the building is removed from the coils by the ice, and the ice melts.
It was July, and I could still see some ice that was serving as the air-conditioning source. “With our extensive solar panels and heat pumps, we are totally self-sufficient,” Fahim told me. “Those valves over there connect us to the town utilities, and were installed as a failsafe. We have never turned them on.”
After clambering back to the surface, I took a stroll around the ground level. As I said, the main atrium was furious with gear from Pro‑Ject and Musical Fidelity. Turntables, amplifiers, preamplifiers, and more turntables all rested under protective glass covers. Near the front was a fully stocked Pro‑Ject storefront, set up to provide an image of how the brand could be represented in a retail environment.
Behind that glossy, magazine-worthy façade I discovered a working warehouse, complete with a research-and-development section. I took a short tour around the warehouse and found it most orderly and modern, continuing the airy, light-filled feeling of the front office. As I walked around the R&D section, I took note of an unattended desk with a spinning turntable that was obviously directly driven. “Ah yes,” said Fahim. “That’s a prototype of something we’re working on. No photos, please.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket, fired up the RPM Speed and Wow app, and looked inquiringly over at Fahim. “May I?”
“Certainly,” he responded. I placed my phone on the platter and started the measurement cycle. After a few moments it displayed the results—33.33 RPM and 0.03% RMS wow. Can’t get better than that.
Back in the main atrium we spent a short while listening to the three different demo systems. While they obviously featured Pro‑Ject products, I found it most refreshing to see components from other companies—speakers from Guru and Sonus Faber, both of which are distributed in Austria by Audio Tuning.
At the end of the day, I hooked back up with Heinz, and we took a side trip up to his listening room. This is a big-ass space, with giant Klipsch Jubilee horn speakers at one end, ready to rumble with a pair of Sonus Faber Stradivari G2s staring them down from the other. We didn’t actually sit and listen; there was too much to talk about. But I still had to walk around and touch everything.
Perhaps the most interesting component in the room was the J.C. Verdier amplification that was driving the Sonus Fabers. J.C. Verdier is best known for its monster Platine Verdier turntable, which has been out of production for God-knows-how-long. But this was a tube amplifier—a big, well-made muscle-car of an amp—and a quick look around the room didn’t turn up the matching turntable. I hadn’t seen much tube gear up to that point, so I asked Heinz what the deal was here.
“I am going to bring back the brand,” he said, as if to imply of course that’s what I’m going to do. “Not the turntable, mind you. I have plenty of turntables with Pro‑Ject and Musical Fidelity. But Verdier is a great brand, and I think there is a market for it.” Heinz smiled and continued, clearing up something that had been bugging me. “I enjoy doing this sort of thing. Just like with Graham. Bob is 85 now, and he needs some help with his company. I’m providing that help, as the Phantom is a fantastic tonearm and I want it to continue to be made.”
As I left for the day that conversation resonated with me. It was becoming clearer that, yes, Heinz is an enthusiast first and foremost.
The next day I hopped in a car with three of Heinz’s employees, and we drove about two hours north into the Czech Republic to one of three factories that exclusively manufacture products for both Pro‑Ject and EAT. These factories are operated as a long-standing partnership with Audio Tuning. The first factory, SEV Litovel, located in the town of Litovel, is a nine-story structure with an attached warehouse. SEV is an acronym for Specialní Elektronická Výroba, which translates to Special Electronic Production. It performs top-to-bottom assembly and finishing of Pro‑Ject products, with the higher-end turntables built on the top floors, the midrange stuff just below, and the budget ’tables handled on the lower levels.
Up at the very top is where the EAT and top-of-the-line Pro‑Ject turntables are crafted. I say crafted, because this section more closely resembled an artist’s studio. There was no sense of hurry, only a feeling of calm and directed purpose. That seemed appropriate, as the big EAT ’tables are expensive and beautifully made. They’re heirloom pieces, and you can’t rush that.
Moving down, I encountered about a 60/40 split between assembly benches and large, industrial tooling machines in almost surgically clean work areas that looked like they had been there forever. SEV Litovel is housed in an older Soviet building that looks like it was constructed just after the Czechs had gotten tired of throwing up cool-looking Brutalist monuments. It’s a solid building that seems like it’ll last another hundred years, but there was no thought given to elegance. I’d say the thought process went something like: it works, it’s gonna last—that’s good enough. The lathes, drill presses, and transformer-winding machines were coated in that immediately recognizable flaking green paint that signifies rooted-to-bedrock reliability.
Descending further, I came across racks of Pro‑Ject’s AC/DC turntables, part of their Artist Collection. These racks were set up just like you’d see at a bakery, like bread and pastries left to cool after coming out of the oven. Moving even further down we reached the basement, a decommissioned Soviet-era nuclear shelter. Apparently, it took forever to smash out the reinforced walls in order to expand it. Here we found the paint booths, which I smelled before I saw them. Environmental regulations are apparently laxer here than in Canada.
The next morning, bright and early, we headed out to the other Czech Republic factory in Červenka-Litovel, also run by SEV and just around the corner from the one we visited the day before. The difference between the two factories couldn’t have been starker. Where the first Litovel factory seemed like time had stopped in the late 1970s, this facility was 21st century all the way. The large main floor was stacked with 26 big, complicated CNC lathes, each ingesting dowels of assorted metals of varying diameters. Out the other side came many of the parts that comprise a turntable. Bearing parts of both sexes and tonearm components seemed to be the majority of the products at hand that day.
When I say these machines were large, please understand that I also mean they were expensive—in the most literal meaning of the term. As I walked up and down the rows of machines, it began to sink in a bit. These two entire factories were devoted to making turntables.
When I left the second factory that day, I was muttering to myself, trying to understand it all. The scope of the Audio Tuning investment in vinyl playback was huge—far greater than I’d anticipated. And then it began to make sense. That wide range of turntables you can see on Pro‑Ject’s website? If you want to buy a turntable, it’s totally reasonable to just browse their models and choose one based on your budget or, alternately, the features you need. The scale of the Pro‑Ject and SEV facilities made that huge range of turntables entirely feasible. Need bearings for a batch of entry-level Elemental turntables? Load the program, stuff a few dowels of steel into the machine, and they’ll get spat out the other end. Then upstairs to the second floor’s assembly area, or round the corner to the older factory to get them fitted. What’s that? A dealer in Canada needs three high-end RPM 10 Carbons? Same deal, easy as pie.
Another consideration—there’s an additional Pro‑Ject and SEV factory in Slovakia that’s dedicated to manufacturing electronic components, including Pro‑Ject’s Box series. That’s three factories. Due to time constraints, I didn’t get a chance to tour that facility. That’s okay; I was there as an analog guy, and I wanted to squeeze every drop of juice out of the turntable angle.
Later that day, back at the headquarters, Heinz described some of the forward-thinking modifications he’s implementing. Of particular interest to me was the configuration tool—the ability to order a turntable with specific factory-installed options. Limited for the time being to the Debut and Xtension lines, but coming for other models, the configuration tool provides the ability to choose between finishes, tonearms, cartridges, and electronics. The finalized configuration page will instantly deliver a rough quote, with a detailed price following from the distributor. Upon approval, the turntable ships to the local dealer within 48 hours. Spend more than 15 minutes talking to Heinz and you can practically see the gears in his head turning.
I remarked that I was surprised by the scale of Pro‑Ject’s headquarters and the size of the dedicated factories. “We are the largest privately owned hi‑fi company in Europe,” he said. “I won’t sell out, because I would lose the importance of why I founded Audio Tuning. I won’t compromise.”
The following day—my last in Austria—I returned to the main facility with Heinz’s wife, Jozefina Lichtenegger, the owner and driving force behind European Audio Team. My relationship with EAT dates back almost as far as that with Pro‑Ject. I’ve reviewed four EAT products—the Jo N°8 cartridge, the Fortissimo S turntable, the C‑Major turntable, and the E-Glo S phono stage, and found each of them to be great-sounding and physically beautiful.
Jozefina Lichtenegger
Jozefina radiates competence, calm, and elegance. She’s the perfect foil to Heinz’s intensity, and as a couple, they work together to balance and reinforce each other’s strengths. That balance is just as evident in person as it is in the contrast between the Pro‑Ject and EAT product lines. While Pro‑Ject’s turntables are all business, doing their jobs with function as their primary goals, EAT’s products incorporate physical beauty as a first principle.
As we sat talking in Jozefina’s office, I noted the stark difference from Heinz’s work area. An easeful view of the gardens through the window, the elegant vases and artwork, the placement of the tonearm and cartridge samples—everything seemed just so. As I started touching things, picking up small, beautiful boxes and putting them down again, Jozefina told me, “The inscription on our new Jo N°10 cartridge is hand-painted. A calligraphy expert applies it.” The flowing script on the new top-line cartridge looked very similar to that on my own Jo N°8, but a close examination revealed that, yes, this was done by hand.
From that small detail, the EAT approach flowed outward. We walked upstairs to an atrium illuminated by a soft glow delivered through multiple skylights. Here we found many pedestals, each crowned with a different EAT turntable—the full lineup. Jozefina was content to let me walk about, the experience here feeling different compared to the frenetic hive of activity at High End 2025 in Munich, where I’d also seen most of EAT’s products. This was calmer, more introspective.
In this wing of the building there were several listening rooms. We walked into one of them, where I was drawn to the same Ferrari-red Forte turntable I’d seen in Munich. Here, though, it was placed on a stunning baroque sideboard inlaid with delicate burled wood. This was the natural environment for this turntable, and for the substantial E-Glo I tubed integrated amplifier that was off to the side.
Jozefina opened up a large wardrobe that stood at the rear of the room and unrolled several samples of the leather that EAT has been applying to the surround of the Fortissimo turntables. “It’s the same leather that Ferrari uses in their cars,” she confirmed. “Customization on our higher-end turntables is a service we offer, one that isn’t mentioned on our website, but we can make the turntable in any color combination the customer would like. I will consult with the customer to help make the final product work for them. And given the scale of our workshops, we can build and deliver the turntable quickly.”
From there we walked back downstairs and into the warehouse. Occupying a large corridor near the rear were row after row of LPs—more records than I’ve ever seen in one place, I’d say. “This is part of our collection,” said Jozefina. “I think the total is somewhere around 100,000, but they are not all here.” A young man was purposefully pulling out several records at a time and inspecting the labels. “We are sorting them. It’s a task that we have been working at for some time.” I inquired as to the sorting order, given my interest in this endeavor. “Period first,” said Jozefina. “Followed by composer, then composition.”
Jozefina then pulled out her phone and showed me several photos of small record collections—I’d say about a hundred LPs each—arranged above Fortissimo ’tables. “I recently delivered these customized turntables along with curated record collections. We are seeing a growing need for this service, from customers that would like to begin enjoying vinyl but are starting off without any records.”
This sense of continuity, of an almost cosmological closing of a loop, built up in my mind, becoming more and more profound by the minute. Here, in the same building, in the same family, we had the entry-level turntables that Pro‑Ject produces and sells for not much more than a nice dinner out with wine, and EAT’s planet-smashing, custom-made turntables, both produced for the same purpose—spreading the love of vinyl.
Obviously we’re talking about different income levels, but really, it’s easy to imagine a student in their dormitory room, listening to a thrift-store Beastie Boys record on a new Pro‑Ject ’table. And it’s just as easy—but a bit more detached from my lifestyle—to picture a luxury penthouse with a couple sharing a thousand-dollar scotch while listening to a pristine pressing of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion on a big EAT.
It all circled back. Two enthusiasts, two evangelists. And two companies working from opposite directions toward the same purpose. I was right to come here.
Jason Thorpe
Senior Editor, SoundStage!
