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


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Lots of talk about this DAC/Pre around forums at the moment. On paper it certainly looks incredibly promising and worthy of an audition. 

 

I like how this has a separate 5Vdc input to the USB port, for those that want to try that instead of powering the entire unit by USB.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
22 minutes ago, MagnusH said:

The pops are annoying since they can be quite loud. It will be fixed in a firmware upgrade, but for now I up-sample everything to 384 khz in Roon, so the DAC never needs to switch sample rate hence no pops (it also improves the SQ a little to up-sample, but takes a little extra CPU).

 

Can it take higher withRoon, to it’s max 768kHz?

 

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8 minutes ago, gahabana said:

i have no problem upsampling to 705.6kHz or 768kHz (mutliple's of 44.1 and 48kHz).

Works out of the box. Roon endpoint running on linux SBC.

 

As for DSD upsampling - out of the box works to DSD256 on Linux (via DOP) and with one line kernel patch one can upsample to DSD512. I guess all of the above would apply to Windows which I am not using.

 

 

Nice, so you can up-sample to the max supported rate. Fantastic. How does it sound !?

 

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12 minutes ago, gahabana said:

it sounds very good. I'd lie if i said i hear dramatic differences. 

They say the difference between music lover and audiophile is that former uses system to listen to the music and later music to listen to the system. I guess i am more of the former ;)

I would need to invest a lot of time to discern differences between regular (maybe it's even upsampled within the DAC chip for all i know) , upsampled to 384/768 PCM or to DSD256/512. And i mean hours ... as time i do not have a lot i rather spend it on enjoying music and fact that my digital gear all works well with this DAC. 

 

Hehe excellent. It is up-sampled within the DAC chip unless you send it PCM768k and DSD512. They say if you up-sample from Roon or whatever, to the DAC's max supported rate (768k in this example) then the DAC does less "work" and that results in better sound.

 

Glad to hear it does what it says on the tin though - i.e. supports both PCM768k and DSD512.

 

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15 minutes ago, GUTB said:

There’s literally no chance this tiny 5v box seriously competes with a real DAC.

 

I have a DirectStream and Hugo2 (real DACs?) and I purchased a tiny 5V iFi iDAC2 for my old man (my dad). The iFi sounds shockingly good, especially when fed with quality power and a quality USB signal (ultraRendu + Uptone LPS-1) and fed with up-sampled DSD256 via Roon.

 

I can't wait to try this little Pro-Ject unit. I may upgrade the old fella's iFi with this.

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
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3 hours ago, left channel said:

 

You need to first install the Pro-Ject driver and control panel in Windows, then run the firmware update feature from the control panel. I will send you a with a link to all the necessary files and instructions.  I even edited their update PDF to remove the pages that will confuse people.

 

Hi left channel

 

In your discussions so far with Pro-Ject Support, have they indicated a plan for Mac software, for firmware upgrades?

 

 

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2 minutes ago, left channel said:

 

They have not given even the slightest indication of such a plan, sorry.

 

 

Oh no. Had you asked them already?

 

If not, since you have quick responses from them so far, could you kindly ask the question?

 

On behalf of us Mac users - please :$

 

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1 minute ago, left channel said:

@Em2016 OK in my next go-round I'll ask, although I think I really blew the guy's mind with my firmware utility bug report and instruction sheet proofreading today. But I can already tell you that

 

Ha! You can only do what you can do. Can't ask for more than asking the question. Sincerely appreciated :)

 

And congrats on your amazing work with feedback to their Support team. It's helping Pro-Ject and the current end users and potential future end users!

 

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51 minutes ago, Norton said:

I'm not knocking this DAC, it looks to be terrific VFM and I quite fancy one myself.  But if chips matter, then it's worth pointing out that, according to spec sheet and despite being marketed as having ESS's "flagship DAC-chip", the 9038 chips are the Q2Ms intended for mobile applications and not the 9038 Pro used in some much more expensive desktop DACs.  9038Pros look to retail at $75+ a piece alone.

 

As per the late great Charles Hansen, the analogue section and power supply are more important than the chip these days.

 

This DAC has a nice analogue section (Charles gave this DAC the thumbs up) and with external power input, you can go bonkers with external power. John Westlake has said performance improves with better quality external power. 

 

 

 

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On 04/10/2017 at 5:55 PM, gahabana said:

i have no problem upsampling to 705.6kHz or 768kHz (mutliple's of 44.1 and 48kHz).

Works out of the box. Roon endpoint running on linux SBC.

 

As for DSD upsampling - out of the box works to DSD256 on Linux (via DOP) and with one line kernel patch one can upsample to DSD512. I guess all of the above would apply to Windows which I am not using.

 

 

Hello again gaha!

 

If you don't mind me asking, which linux distro were you using here and which SBC, for up-sampling to PCM768 and DSD512 to this DAC?

 

DietPi on a Pi3 running RoonBridge?

 

And how exactly did you patch (native?) DSD512 support?

 

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2 minutes ago, left channel said:

Huh. I just found a post by the designer saying it does native DSD512. Looking forward to learning how though.

 

That was the only way it could work with Roon as Roon does not support >PCM768kHz which would be a requirement for DSD512 via DoP to work.

 

gahabana mentioned he patched the kernel manually though. Let's wait for his reply in the other thread.

 

We really need all posts of this thread moved to the other one, perhaps? @The Computer Audiophile

 

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20 minutes ago, MikeRock said:

I am having no problem running both DSD512 and PCM768.  I'm running Roon and using a Raspberry Pi3 running Ropieee with Ropiee configured for a USB DAC.  Worked the first time I tried both.  

 

With my other PI HAT DACs, I was never been able to reach the advertised upsample rates on either DSD or PCM.  I tried both Ropiee and DietPi. I thought maybe my old Macbook running Roon wasn't powerful enough to do the upsampling, but clearly that wasn't the problem.

 

Thanks Mike! I assume with DSD, you have Roon set to output Native DSD?

 

It sounds like RoPieee is up to date with it's Linux patches (as Harry is usually).

 

Is that with external power or are you using the Pi3 to power the Pro-Ject DAC via USB power?

 

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Many thanks @gahabana . Lots of detail there.

 

2 minutes ago, gahabana said:

@Em2016, am curious if you have tested that scenario (DSD128/256/512 do NOT suffer from hiss/noise but but plain/simple DSD64 does) - could you check that on your setup ?

 

I was holding back on this purchase, awaiting clarification on DSD512 support. I'm pretty happy to proceed with the purchase now and I can revert when I get it.

 

@MikeRock above might be able to test in the mean time?


Does setting resync delay to 0 seconds in Roon help? I saw Brian (Roon) mentioned that the less time between tracks, the less duration of the noise - obviously this is not a cure to the problem but can sometimes help make it less painful.

 

Thanks again !

 

 

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3 hours ago, gahabana said:

hi @Em2016,

since 2 months most recent Liinux kernels (4.9 and later and even 4.4) have been updated.

it is ONE line in Linux Kernel source ... file to be patched is under 'sound/usb/quirks.c'

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/sound/usb/quirks.c

line #1351

https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/sound/usb/quirks.c#L1351

it was added just after Oppo HA-1

image.thumb.png.5daf4f171fb44fb51e50ea8e7b14432c.png

 

Many thanks again! Appreciated

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7 hours ago, gahabana said:

Even as it is - it sounds great and is one of the most versatile DACs esp with USB/computer sources !

 

Thanks for all the info gahabana! 

 

As soon as it's available in Australia, an order will be placed.

 

I could buy from the US or Germany right now but I do like having a local warranty, just for peace of mind.

 

The increased competition and quality in the ~USD500 DAC market is great. 

 

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2 minutes ago, GUTB said:

My main PC motherboard uses a clean 5V feature, and my audio PC uses a battery-powered PPA v3 USB card so power quality isn’t a concern for me. Currently I’m burning in the S2 on the audio PC

 

Excellent. So I'm guessing you won't be using the S2's external 5Vdc microUSB input?

 

Just running off clean bus power?

 

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