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Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 digital DAC

Remove the two screws on the bottom only. Slide the case rearward over the back panel. Nothing else.

A tap or two with a rubber mallet or equivalent would be useful, in or out or all around the corner edges, but basically you need to just pull.

No worries @Mark Dirac I've been opening and breaking things since I was a baby ham radio operator.
 
left channel said:
@MagnusH understood. When I need it optical sounds great here too, even over cheap plastic pipes. But to your point, your computer likely is the USB culprit especially if your iffy iFi iUSB (or eye-whatever) has died. The best solutions I've tried cost as much as the S2D or more, unfortunately. I use UpTone and Sonore products with other DACs here. As I'm sure you know, you could also slap together a RasPi just for music and control it with Roon. Some of us spend more time tinkering than listening, but whatever floats your boat.
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Im actually thinking about buying an USBridge, seems like a neat little product, and should isolate the DAC from the computer. From what I have heard others saying, its very close to more expensive streamers like sotm sms-200.
 
MagnusH said:
Im actually thinking about buying an USBridge, seems like a neat little product, and should isolate the DAC from the computer. From what I have heard others saying, its very close to more expensive streamers like sotm sms-200.
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Looks good! That may be all you need, and certainly worth a try.
 
I am a new member here...read the entire 38 pages of this thread to educate myself on the S2. Have one running from W10/Tidal/MQA, FW 2.12, Chinese LPS, Pass-through MQA in Tidal, Highest bit rate and sampling frequency in the Windows Driver - latest version (though should not make a difference for exclusive device control under Tidal/MQA). Observations so far:
1. Did not like Wyrd Decrapifier in between the PC and S2 - kept loosing PC connection.
2. On Tidal MQA content, there is a couple of seconds gap before MQA lock is achieved.
3. On some Tidal MQA content, sampling rate that shows in S2 window is 44.1Khz, which seems suspect.
4. Sounds good and getting better.

If someone could give a couple of Tidal/MQA titles' unfolded frequencies that are "known right" so I can check what S2 is reporting, I will appreciate it. I have not had a chance to download and check the L2 MQA samples.
 
Thank you, LC! I will check and report back if the S2 is correctly decoding/displaying the sample rates.

My previous MQA "solution" was Brooklyn DAC, which worked flawlessly, but did not quite agree with me sound-wise. Oppo UDP-205 was going to be the next one, however, sadly Oppo is ending its audio business...Brooklyn DAC+ seemed to promise better SQ, but having sold the original DAC I felt doubly stupid to buy it again.

Oppo did add MQA file support to the player a month ago, but in my communications with their tech support it turned out that streaming decoding is technically very different from file decoding. They told me that the Xmos USB interface the player has does not lend itself well to allow for MQA rendering of the partially software unfolded stream from Tidal. So, it is probably unlikely that they will be able to implement USB MQA decoding, given their current business plans. I hope I am wrong, but that's the impression I got.

I was planning to download the MQA content I wanted to listen to and play it back locally with UDP-205, but it turns out Tidal desktop app does not allow for that and using my LGV30 to download files, transfer them to PC or USB storage for playback seemed labor intensive. So S2 came into my system as the least expensive MQA decoder other than the Meridian's Explorer.
 
Anatomy of Sound- Sound Circus from 2L. Available on Tidal Master. Good music, good recording, worth listening if you want to test high quality MQA.
 
The Excel MQA list is MUCH longer than the Masters section in the Tidal desktop app! Very welcome news! How come Tidal doesn't have it all in one place? 2L music is very high quality - listening to their sample cuts through Brooklyn convinced me that MQA has a future.
 
DimitryZ said:
The Excel MQA list is MUCH longer than the Masters section in the Tidal desktop app! Very welcome news! How come Tidal doesn't have it all in one place? 2L music is very high quality - listening to their sample cuts through Brooklyn convinced me that MQA has a future.
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The Tidal interface is not designed for audiophiles. It's designed for teenage hip-hop fans with Attention Deficit Disorder. :) Seriously though, it's a mass market commercial UI, and that compounds the deeper problem: no documentation. For example, sometimes there are multiple versions of the same "Masters" album in Tidal, and it's impossible to tell them apart without listening. Often some of those are conversions of later remixes that sound terrible to me, and I don't want to waste time picking through them much less inflict those tracks on my ears. (Of course they all light up the blue LED on your DAC, because the copyright holder confirmed the source, but they are certainly not the original release the way the original artists and recording engineers intended.)

I prefer Qobuz, which has an interface better designed for me, and also has 1 million Hi-Res tracks vs. Tidal's 100,000 MQA tracks. (A problem with Hi-Res streaming is, sometimes, watermarking. But that's another conversation.) Back on point: Tidal is a mass-market coup for MQA, but not so much for us. But MQA continues to grow, you have other sources. I know somebody who recently purchased a Bruce Springsteen album as an MQA download: here, under Buy Show > HD-Audio > Format. It wasn't cheap, but it was there. He and his Brooklyn+ are very happy.
 
Thanks again for the full MQA list, I have found tons of albums I want to listen to!

I can now report that the device is displaying correct sample rates for all the albums I tried.

I will have to try out the streaming service you recommend...another annoying thing about Tidal is that you can't seem to be able to search by recording label, a must for even a half-serious listener.
 
Has anybody tried this dac directly into a power amp ? Even better compare it to the original Mdac pre?

Cheers
Howard
 
Hayche said:
Has anybody tried this dac directly into a power amp ? Even better compare it to the original Mdac pre?

Cheers
Howard
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Yes I've run the S2D directly and via a Magni 2U head/pre-amp into several amps: a Pro-Ject Amp Box S2, a NuPrime STA-9, a Marshall Stanmore active speaker, and a couple of little SMSL amps. In most cases a PSB Subseries 100 subwoofer was also connected via pass-through or splitter. The RCA output is not very powerful, and the subwoofer annoyingly goes to sleep at low volumes. The S2D drives the main amps OK and each amp heavily influences the result, the two extremes being the Amp Box S2 which offers the very bright Pro-Ject house sound, and the STA-9 which makes the sound warmer and almost tube-like.

The difference in sound quality and signature between this DAC and other DACs of similar vintage and quality in the same chains is usually more subtle than the difference heard when changing amps, and takes time to pick out. It was a vast improvement over the 10 year-old internal DAC in a Logitech Squeezebox Touch, but very close in quality to the younger Modi 2U and NuPrime DAC-9. I found those two much warmer and smoother, while the S2D is more neutral and resolving.

@Mark Dirac offers a comparison with the MDAC here: https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/pro-ject-pre-box-s2-digital-dac.201691/page-35#post-3351750

He has also helpfully organized and summarized information on this product from three or more forums in a Google Doc here: http://goo.gl/LbevA6
 
I was initially planning to use the S2 directly into the Home Theater Bypass input of the Emotiva XSP preamp but became concerned that the digital volume control will introduce some audible artefacts due to bit truncation, etc, especially with MQA... so I use it with a standard input. I don't really understand how digital volume controls work...a nice stepped attenuator like in the Nuprime DAC is a really nice feature. Is Nuprime going to have an MQA product sometime soon?
 
DimitryZ said:
I was initially planning to use the S2 directly into the Home Theater Bypass input of the Emotiva XSP preamp but became concerned that the digital volume control will introduce some audible artefacts due to bit truncation, etc, especially with MQA... so I use it with a standard input. I don't really understand how digital volume controls work...a nice stepped attenuator like in the Nuprime DAC is a really nice feature. Is Nuprime going to have an MQA product sometime soon?
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Just set the S2D volume control to 0 db, control volume only with the Emotiva preamp, and all will be well.

In a post on AudioCircle, Jason of NuPrime stated they're not planning MQA products at this time. Personally I can live without it.
 
That's the current setup...My problem is that I am always running out of inputs. I have a 6 tuner modules Denon box, shortwave radio as well as VCR (concert videos), cassette and 8 track (yes hell has frozen over...) and minidisc, in addition to all the standard inputs. I have three goldpoint switching boxes and one balanced box and use all the inputs Emotiva has...

Nuprime gear looks great and is well priced. The owner had a previous, successful audio company as well, if memory serves.
 
@DimitryZ nice problem to have: too many toys, not enough ports. :)

When NuForce decided to go mass-market, the top engineering and product people bought out the high-end line and founded NuPrime. ("High-end" is a relative thing. NuPrime is positioned as a good value.)

The core of my desktop system is Schitt, by the way. Love all these small companies. Sonore, UpTone, and Vortexbox/Small Green Computer too.
 
@DimitryZ let me Google that for you. :)

What do you need to play them?

An MQA CD is a Red Book CD and is 100% compatible with any existing CD player. The audio on the disc is MQA-encoded PCM, and will play back happily without a decoder. In this case, the sound quality is slightly better than a typical CD, because the audio is already de-blurred in the studio. However. if the bitstream is passed to an MQA decoder, it is unfolded to 176kHz (in this case) and rendered to the DAC at 24-bit.

Besides the Meridian player equipped with MQA, can anyone connect a CD transport to an MQA-enabled DAC, perhaps from another company, and decode the MQA.

Definitely. The digital output of a CD player or Blu-disc player can be fed into an MQA-capable DAC such as Mytek, Brinkman, Meridian 818 or UltraDAC, or any MQA decoder with bit-accurate S/PDIF, optical, or HDMI input. At a forthcoming press conference, we will demonstrate a normal CD player connected to Mytek's Brooklyn and Meridian's Ultra DAC, as well as to a Meridian 808v6 CD player.

Any transport can mate fine with the Ultra DAC as long as there is no upsampling in the player. Also, this week Technics has announced the SU-G30, a network/CD player/amplifier with MQA decoding.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mqa-encoded-cds-yes
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So one could, for example, connect a NuPrime CDT-8 or CDP-9 to the Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital via coaxial.
 
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