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


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2 minutes ago, franz159 said:

 

Still not clear to me how actually annoying are the pops and clicks upon master clock frequency changes....

very. :) I am just hopeful that Pro-ject will release FW upgrade soon.

but in the meantime - if using roon or lms - easy to set it all to same frequency (all to PCM @352,4 kHz or all to DSD256 etc).

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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).

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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 hours ago, MagnusH said:

Roon reports the DAC max to 768 and DSD256, but only allow up-sampling to 384 or DSD256. I don't think there is a technical issue for this, if someone wants it the Roon devs might increase the maximum to 768.

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.

 

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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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2 hours ago, Em2016 said:

 

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

 

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. 

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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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@Samuel T Cogley @arcman that UK retailer certainly looks like the best deal! And the Italian eBay seller is still a backup plan. The German eBay seller replied to me, saying Pro-Ject isn't delivering stock, so the seller raised the price rather than remove the listing from eBay entirely. Maybe they mean this is temporary, I don't know. The listing still shows they have several units in stock, but maybe they don't really have them. Sigh. #eBay

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16 hours ago, franz159 said:

 

Still not clear to me how actually annoying are the pops and clicks upon master clock frequency changes....

 

As others said, it depends on how loud the volume is. Loud volume = loud pop. At my usual volume setting I can live with this temporarily, and anyway it doesn't happen every time, only when it changes between series (44.1 kHz vs. 48 kHz and their multiples). It's in the left channel when switching higher, and in the right channel when switching lower.

This is what we get for buying version 1.0 of anything. :-)  It's great that John Westlake is so responsive, like the Schiit guys among others. Speaking of which, I opened my unit to check and it does not have the pink-and-silver capacitors that he caught the manufacturer using in pre-production models. They're blue-and-silver instead. I took a photo:

 

open-box.jpg

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34 minutes ago, left channel said:

 

As others said, it depends on how loud the volume is. Loud volume = loud pop. At my usual volume setting I can live with this temporarily, and anyway it doesn't happen every time, only when it changes between series (44.1 kHz vs. 48 kHz and their multiples). It's in the left channel when switching higher, and in the right channel when switching lower.
 

 

At least there seems to be a mute relay on the output, so it is likely fixable with a firmware update...

 

Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer

Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers

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15 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

At least there seems to be a mute relay on the output, so it is likely fixable with a firmware update...

 

 

Yes that may be what the designer meant when he posted this:

 

We will try to reduce with a firmware update - basically increasing the time before the DAC comes out of Mute after sample rate change.
 

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52 minutes ago, beautiful music said:

Does anyone have a Chord DAC, so we can see a comparison between these DACs'.

 

I spoke to someone who compared the Mojo with the Pro-Ject dac: the Mojo is warmer, but which one sounded best was more a matter of taste according to him. I considered a Mojo myself, but for desktop use next to computer the Pro-Ject dac is so much more practical.

 

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On 10/3/2017 at 8:34 AM, left channel said:

 

Thanks for the comparison. So far I've found this DAC quite similar to my Modi 2U, when output through preamps directly to active speakers. Both are very neutral. They are so close I fear any difference I think I'm hearing may be due to expectation bias, but the Modi 2U may be just a bit smoother. I'm still comparing them, but that's my tentative initial impression.

I'm still in the process of comparing the headphone amp to my Magni 2U, and am not ready to comment on that yet. As @arcman and I agreed above, the options in this unit can be a distraction and are not entirely necessary for most of us. I really should leave them on their defaults if I'm every going to stop comparing. And then there's the MQA and ultra hi-res features, which make it even harder to concentrate on this goal.

But again, these are nice problems to have. What an amazingly feature-packed little unit! One thing I can already say definitively is that it's a very good value for the money.

 

OK, now for the Magni 2U comparison. I perceive more difference between the headphone amps than the DACs alone. The S2 and the Magni 2U are still very very close in sound, but I feel the Magni offers slightly more detail, in a fuller, smoother, more pleasant experience overall. Could be expectation bias again, though that's far less likely at this stage. But the SQ differences are not large, and I look forward to hearing others compare these two.
 

As for amplification power, the Magni is much stronger but the S2 has had no trouble driving my 250 ohm cans. Overall, I think that as with the Magni and Modi in their category, the S2 sets a new benchmark of price and performance for MQA and DSD DACs, and is an amazing little treasure Box that no competitor can ignore.

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I am very pleased with this dac more and more. I would say this is the DAC bargain of the year. Plus, the pre amp section, driving m Nuforce STA200 and zu omen def speakers sounds fantastic. Plus, my zus are 101db efficient, its quiet as a mouse. I’ll be curious when the dac hits the US, how many comparisons ( brooklyn, schiit, etc) we will see. MQA will be the big selling point on this one. 

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On another forum I was told MQA licensing rules do not allow filters, and asked if the S2 allows filtering in that mode. I checked, and filters are indeed disabled in MQA mode. Distortion Compensation can still be enabled, but the filter buttons on the unit and the remote stop working. I've suggested to the designer that Pro-Ject be urged to add this information to the manual and datasheet.

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

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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