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

[Jamesroy]

Because you get a 511.00 trade in.

[Miska]

29 minutes ago, DarwinOSX said:

You are incorrect on the full unfold in hardware and what it involves.

It is actually the first unfold in software that goes to 24/96 and the full hardware decode provides a 24/192 file.

 

Nope, "full hardware decode" is just first doing decoding to 88.2 or 96 kHz rate and then doing upsampling to final rate using one of the 16 upsampling filters (this is what MQA calls "rendering").

 

Quote

For someone who professes to have no interest in MQA you bought a DAC from Meridian that is primary known and sold to do the full unfold in hardware then go on to make an incorrect description of what a full hardware unfold entails and then say why other things are better.

 

I have measured and recorded the "full hardware MQA decoded/unfolded" output from the ME2 and I can assure you that the output doesn't contain any information from the source content that exceeds Nyquist frequency of the 88.2/96 kHz rate. But it does contain quite a lot of digital images (distortion) and extra noise shaping noise.

 

My interest for buying the DAC was to measure and check the MQA's claims.

 

 

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.

 

[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?

[Miska]

13 minutes ago, rickca said:

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

 

That is something I don't have clear opinion about. You really have to listen and evaluate yourself. Technically both are good and similar devices, with their own feature sets. So it's no so clear which one is better... For micro iDSD you'd want to go for the BlackLabel, it is better than it's predecessor especially at DSD512.

 

[asdf1000]

9 hours ago, Miska said:

The "best" is really the crappiest setting. You get good performance with sharp roll-off filter and distortion compensation enabled.

 

So you mean the linear phase & fast roll off filter , performs best if you don’t do PC side upsampling, ie bit perfect playback?

 

with DSD512 and PCM768k upsampling arent the S2 DAC’s filters effectively bypassed?

 

 

[Miska]

7 hours ago, Em2016 said:

So you mean the linear phase & fast roll off filter , performs best if you don’t do PC side upsampling, ie bit perfect playback?

 

Yes, I consider it good compromise and I have that selected for playing content from something like YouTube and such. There are other filter options too, like "minimum phase fast" or "linear apodizing".

 

7 hours ago, Em2016 said:

with DSD512 and PCM768k upsampling arent the S2 DAC’s filters effectively bypassed?

 

Yes, certainly. I think 352.8k upwards already, although I didn't do much measurements at 352.8/384k rate.

 

[asdf1000]

58 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Yes, I consider it good compromise and I have that selected for playing content from something like YouTube and such. There are other filter options too, like "minimum phase fast" or "linear apodizing".

 

 

Yes, certainly. I think 352.8k upwards already, although I didn't do much measurements at 352.8/384k rate.

 

 

Cool, thanks. I have the S2 DAC arriving this week. Looking forward to playing with it.

 

[Norton]

Can anyone confirm that they can play 24/192 over Coaxial to this DAC?  I'm getting terminal stuttering.

[Miska]

9 hours ago, Norton said:

Can anyone confirm that they can play 24/192 over Coaxial to this DAC?  I'm getting terminal stuttering.

 

It is better to stick with USB...

[Norton]

19 hours ago, Miska said:

 

It is better to stick with USB...

 

I'm not looking for an evaluation of the comparative merits of inputs, just whether anyone can verify that their example works fine with 24/192 as advertised on Coaxial input.

[mansr]

On 21/01/2018 at 2:08 PM, Norton said:

Can anyone confirm that they can play 24/192 over Coaxial to this DAC?  I'm getting terminal stuttering.

Try a different cable. Does the same source work with some other DAC?

[Kilauea50]

 I am curious how this Dac compares to the DS2 Ultra other than MQA? 

[asdf1000]

On 21/01/2018 at 6:14 AM, Miska said:

The "best" is really the crappiest setting. You get good performance with sharp roll-off filter and distortion compensation enabled.

 

What is the "optimal transients" filter doing, according to your guesstimates? It sounds like it's very different to "linear phase & fast rolloff", since you say the latter performs best.

 

Or is it too difficult to determine/guesstimate what this filter is, from your measurements?

[Miska]

3 hours ago, Em2016 said:

What is the "optimal transients" filter doing, according to your guesstimates? It sounds like it's very different to "linear phase & fast rolloff", since you say the latter performs best.

 

It is very short, like the MQA filters, leaking a lot of images. It doesn't do much of anything.

[asdf1000]

9 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

It is very short, like the MQA filters, leaking a lot of images. It doesn't do much of anything.

 

Ah right. I wonder if this is really Pro-Ject's own filter (they say it's Pro-Ject preferred) or MQA's own filter.

 

Similar to the MQA filter mode on the Mytek Brooklyn, where even non-MQA files pass through this filter unless you disable MQA decoding?

 

[Miska]

15 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

Ah right. I wonder if this is really Pro-Ject's own filter (they say it's Pro-Ject preferred) or MQA's own filter.

 

No, I think those are standard set of ESS filters. You can see some of those in the Manhattan review:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mytek-hifi-manhattan-ii-da-preamplifier-headphone-amplifier-measurements

 

16 minutes ago, Em2016 said:

Similar to the MQA filter mode on the Mytek Brooklyn, where even non-MQA files pass through this filter unless you disable MQA decoding?

 

Different one, but also leaky...

[asdf1000]

2 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

No, I think those are standard set of ESS filters. You can see some of those in the Manhattan review:

https://www.stereophile.com/content/mytek-hifi-manhattan-ii-da-preamplifier-headphone-amplifier-measurements

 

 

Different one, but also leaky...

 

Ok cool. What is distortion compensation actually doing? I saw you mentioned you prefer it enabled all the time.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Em2016 said:

Ok cool. What is distortion compensation actually doing? I saw you mentioned you prefer it enabled all the time.

 

It is some ESS DAC chip feature. But based on my measurements it does precisely that - reduces distortion significantly. And I cannot see any negative effects on it either.

 

[asdf1000]

4 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

It is some ESS DAC chip feature. But based on my measurements it does precisely that - reduces distortion significantly. And I cannot see any negative effects on it either.

 

 

Nice. Thanks for this info.

 

[gkarkalis]

Where i can find the 2.12 firmware and flash tool?i download the drivers from the web site but not firmware included and flash tool.

i have version 2.10.

thanks

[GromitInWA]

14 minutes ago, gkarkalis said:

Where i can find the 2.12 firmware and flash tool?i download the drivers from the web site but not firmware included and flash tool.

i have version 2.10.

thanks

Curiously it seems to have disappeared from the website. It was a link that did not require a serial number to download.

[left channel]

@GromitInWA I've got the firmware and other files in a download folder for anyone who needs it, no email address or login required. Just send me a PM like @gkarkalis just did.

 

Pro-Ject took 2.12 off their website after we reported the bug described above, but they should have left it up as earlier versions have many other problems. And of course they didn't explain or announce any of this until Pawel badgered them on Facebook.

 

Personally I'm not even using this DAC anymore.

[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?

[GUTB]

I’ve decided to return the S2. It is definitely the best value in affordable DACs I’ve ever come across. In terms of resolution, distortion and naturalness it performs very well, certainly above its price point. It’s done the best job with MQA that I’ve heard so far, and for a while I thought of keeping it as a secondary MQA DAC. It has two major bottlenecks that keeps it from finding a place in my audio ecosystem. 

 

1. Weak line out signal. I shouldn’t have to go full blast on my pre.

2. Lack of dynamic power.

 

These 2 issues are probably related to the same design shortcoming— a baby output stage. It’s a little box that runs off of 5v and fits in your hand. It can’t compete with serious desktop DACs, of which I already own a few of. The Cyan is also DSD512 except better in every way. For this reason I couldn’t use it with my headphone system as it dails back my TH900 too much and is not a good match with my Mjolnir 2. It does MQA better than my Dragonfly Red, but the DFR is a better portable / travel proposition.

[oldson]

the Qutest is only 5v too! that can chuck out 3v output.

does your pre have input gain adjustment? (im assuming this would help)