Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital: MQA HW decoding at reasonable cost

[rickca]

I'd really like to see listening impressions of Pre Box S2 Digital vs iFi micro iDSD.

[rickca]

@left channel what forum are you monitoring for information about the Pre Box S2 Digital for things like upcoming firmware to fix the pops?

[rickca]

Has anyone seen a comparison of the Pre Box S2 Digital with the iFi micro iDSD (or BL)?  

[rickca]

I'm looking for listening impressions of Pre Box S2 Digital vs iFi micro IDSD.

[rickca]

31 minutes ago, left channel said:

MQA over S/PDIF requires a special decoder.

Is it really a different decoder, or just a different implementation of the same decoder?  The latter makes more sense to me.

[rickca]

16 minutes ago, left channel said:

Think Meridian will tell us?

Funny!  Not a chance.  But this sure is an interesting new wrinkle in the MQA story.  Note that MQA (first unfold only) is shortly coming to the dCS Network Bridge, which currently doesn't have USB output (although that too is in the works).

 

Does the Pre Box S2 Digital just do the MQA first unfold (core decoding) or is it an MQA renderer?

[rickca]

2 minutes ago, mansr said:

I believe, based on PCB photos, that the Mytek Brooklyn routes all inputs through an XMOS processor which is powerful enough to run the MQA decoder. Some other DACs, and I would guess this includes the S2, use an XMOS processor on the USB input but route S/PDIF through an I2S formatter and then directly to the DAC chip. Such a configuration would make MQA decoding of other inputs than USB impossible. Does anyone have high-resolution photos of the S2 internals?

Yeah, this is exactly what I had in mind when I suggested that SPDIF needs a different implementation of the same decoder used with USB.

[rickca]

All this discussion of filters belongs in a different thread, please.

[rickca]

3 hours ago, left channel said:

Here's what I know about the two new updates, one for Windows and one for the unit itself. 

Companies should hire you to run their beta programs!  Excellent communications, thanks.

[rickca]

1 hour ago, wushuliu said:

Now you can get a decent looking mid-grade ES9038 Q2M portable PLUS an xmos208 for $200. That was even faster than my earlier projection. Topping isn't going to titillate this crowd but they make decent budget gear and have for some years now.

They sure publish a lot of measurements.  It will be interesting to hear some listening impressions.

[rickca]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

Sticking on the topic, my motivation for buying the Pro-Ject DAC was because it had the new ESS chip models, seemed to have nice design and it works at DSD512. And I have verified that it performs the best when running at DSD512. And it really does perform very nicely for the price as demonstrated by my earlier posts in this thread, very good price/performance ratio indeed.

Miska, what is your impression of the sound quality of the Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital vs iFi micro iDSD?

[rickca]

6 hours ago, left channel said:

Personally I'm not even using this DAC anymore.

Why?  I'm surprised because you invested a lot of time testing it and helped many other people.  Are you disappointed with it?

[rickca]

4 hours ago, left channel said:

Why am I no longer using it? Because I want to listen to music without constantly debugging this poorly-tested, poorly-supported little box of surprises.

 

I don't really like the sound either, although the many features of this device more than made up for that for a while. And yes I enjoy helping people, but Pro-Ject's so-called support has made this a very difficult. I've had it.

Well, thank you very much it's important feedback.  I'm glad I didn't get overexcited and order one.  Too bad, it really seemed promising.

 

Thanks also to @GUTB for your observations.