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

[left channel]

@arcman great. I hear no pops/clicks at all now.

 

Before you pay for Parallels, you may want to try VirtualBox and see if you have patience for it, because it's free.

[left channel]

30 minutes ago, GUTB said:

Wait. You guys said this was a hardware MQA decoder? Then WHY does it need the USB interface for MQA? Could it be that this isn’t hardware decoding at all but software running on the USB controller?

 

Full 4x "unfolding" is only possible on Meridian-certified hardware. Not promoting, just saying.

 

[Miska]

7 hours ago, left channel said:

 

Full 4x "unfolding" is only possible on Meridian-certified hardware. Not promoting, just saying.

 

 

You mean 2x unfolding followed by 2x upsampling with a poor filter...

[MagnusH]

2 hours ago, Jazz55 said:

Is it possible for left channel to send me the PDF manual for the s2 to [email protected].

The manual is available from their product page here: http://www.box-designs.com/main.php?prod=preboxs2digital&cat=default&lang=en

 

[left channel]

5 hours ago, Miska said:

 

You mean 2x unfolding followed by 2x upsampling with a poor filter...

 

:-)  Elsewhere on CA, Charles Hansen of Ayre Acoustics is making compelling arguments about what actually happens at that stage.

I think I can now safely say that MQA is something I can live without, but I did have to try it at full unfolding before making statements about it. Sometimes MQA improves the music, at least temporarily, and sometimes it makes the music worse. But there are plenty of threads about MQA, and this thread is about the S2, so I'll just leave it at that.

[left channel]

7 hours ago, Jazz55 said:

Is it possible for left channel to send me the PDF manual for the s2 to a...........com.

OK, I'll send the link to you via PM. I've also an image of my little correction to the power section there. (The manual alone is actually available on the Pro-Ject product web page.)

Everyone who needs the CD image, firmware or other files:
• all you need to do is PM* me,
• I do not need your email address, and

• I will give you a Dropbox link, no login required.

You guys posting your email addresses here should contact the moderator and request that those posts be deleted. @Jazz55 I suggest you ask the mod to get it out of @MagnusH's reply too. Spammers send "spiders" out to crawl the web collecting email addresses. Most people think Gmail and others do a good enough job filtering spam, but eventually something with nasty malware will get through.

*To PM (send a private message), click my screen name to go to my profile, then click the "Message" button.

[MagnusH]

Btw, left channel, what power do you use, and did you compare with/without better power and USB regen/reclocking?

 

As I said on the pink forum, when I tested I got noticeable better SQ with better power, but not much change if I added USB regen/reclocking, which indicates that the DAC does a good job for that. Best price/performance to improve SQ for the S2 DAC seems to be a iFi iPower for $50 (or some similar stable 5V), which you connect to the DACs micro input. The DAC will switch to that input for power if power is present (the manual is wrong about this).

[left channel]

@MagnusH thanks for the reminder. I'm sure I'll hear an improvement when I apply non-USB power, and am very interested to learn if reclocking by the REGEN will provide improvement as well. I just need a sufficient amount of uninterrupted time with no noise in the surrounding environment. Life happens. :-)

[Jazz55]

Thanks a lot left channel. Very much appriciated.

[GUTB]

My first experience with USB conditioning was a few years ago when I experimented with the Wyrd. I went in very skeptical, figuring I could just return it if it didn’t do anything — and the improvement in SQ was shocking. The Wyrd is one of the simpler USB conditioners, it re-creates the USB signal with a little internal transformer and clock. Since then I’ve learned a lot from the engineers who post here; signal reclocking and power conditioning is a complex hard-to-understand topic for laymen, but it’s real and anyone who is serious about SQ (ie, audiophiles) owe it to themselves to look into this seriously.

[left channel]

@GUTB agreed, I'm getting good results with a USB REGEN on other equipment, and will test it with the S2 soon. I bought the REGEN because the Wyrd went out of stock that month. Schiit has since added their USB-to-coax Eitr box as an alternate way to clean up USB, and also upgraded many of their products with their "Gen 5" USB boards.

But the S2 does include some interesting USB filtering, described in detail on the last page of the data sheet. And on the previous page, the data sheet notes that the ESS9038Q2M includes a "Time Domain Jitter Eliminator". So, it will be interesting to see what results I get with the S2 when adding in my power and re-clocking accessories here.
 

[rickca]

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

[left channel]

43 minutes ago, rickca said:

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

 

There is a brief comparison in the article I posted here:
https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/34777-pro-ject-pre-box-s2-digital-mqa-hw-decoding-at-reasonable-cost/?tab=comments#comment-714527

 

[rickca]

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

[arcman]

I think MQA is dying a slow death. I also think HDTracks streaming ( starting soon) needs to reconsider the MQA thing and just stream straight hi rez like Qobuz. Even MQA files are too large for cellular thus no benifit. Too much “you need to unfold this to unfold that etc”. Qobuz is great. Plus, for cellular, one can have it automatically lower resolution which still sounds great

[left channel]

2 hours ago, arcman said:

I think MQA is dying a slow death. I also think HDTracks streaming ( starting soon) needs to reconsider the MQA thing and just stream straight hi rez like Qobuz. Even MQA files are too large for cellular thus no benifit. Too much “you need to unfold this to unfold that etc”. Qobuz is great. Plus, for cellular, one can have it automatically lower resolution which still sounds great

 

I'm a big Qobuz fan, with a Sublime+ subscription, and am starting to use it more than Tidal. Qobuz has proven hi-res streaming is possible, but Sublime+ is too expensive for the average user. (See the subscription plans page here.) To subscribe from the USA requires some initial acrobatics which I'll be happy to share, but using it after signing up is as simple as opening the app.

 

In comparing the two services, I find that Tidal HiFi still wins in the non hi-res category, because those files stream from Tidal at higher bitrates. But Quobuz hi-res is simply, well, sublime.

[left channel]

@Jazz55 & @arcman regarding your difficulties streaming MQA through the Bluesound NODE2 via coax to the S2, a Pro-Ject support manager tells me that MQA doesn't work over S/PDIF, and this is something Meridian is working on. But Bluesound must have gotten their coax output to work with other external MQA DACs, or they wouldn't have put up this support page. Comments?

[left channel]

At my request Pro-Ject has placed the CD contents on their website. Scroll down to the "download the latest Driver" section, between the Reviews and FAQ. You'll have to enter your serial number to reveal the link. The serial number label is on the bottom of your unit. Download and extract the Zip file, then click setup.exe

 

The beta firmware has been sent out to Pro-Ject distributors, but I will still pass it directly to anyone who PMs me. I do not need your email address, and will give you a download link. I hope after the update is out of beta they will simply add that file to the Pro-Ject website too.

 

They're reviewing the incorrect user manual section that says you shouldn't attach both USB and the power adapter at the same time. Apparently the English-language manual is not written in-house. I've begun experimenting with plugging them both in, and on high-res files or streams I do believe I hear a small SQ improvement. More on that soon.

[MagnusH]

I could not hear any difference if I used the same improved power with the USB signal or into the separate micro USB. But if I for example used USB direct from computer, and supplied clean power on the micro USB, then the difference was quite big compared to only computer USB.

 

The iFi nano iUSB3 I have is nice for experimenting, since it has 2 USB outs, one with improved power only, and one with improved power and re-clocked/regenerated USB signal. For now I use a UpTone USBA>B adapter to get both improved power and improved USB signal from the iFi nano iUSB3.

[left channel]

38 minutes ago, left channel said:

@Jazz55 & @arcman regarding your difficulties streaming MQA through the Bluesound NODE2 via coax to the S2, a Pro-Ject support manager tells me that MQA doesn't work over S/PDIF, and this is something Meridian is working on. But Bluesound must have gotten their coax output to work with other external MQA DACs, or they wouldn't have put up this support page. Comments?

 

Already got an answer from John about this one: MQA over S/PDIF requires a special decoder. There is no space for that on the S2 board, but they apparently did experiment with it during development, and found it caused clock jitter while also raising the cost.

My first impulse was to think "well, you shouldn't have put it on a daughterboard or something", but then remembered what we have here is a competent little low-cost box not originally envisioned as a component in a system worth thousands of dollars. We early adopters with all our toys are certainly not representative of the target market for a product like this.

Hopefully Meridian will solve this by themselves. Or S/PDIF will be retired, which would be a good thing if it's as "sonically flawed" as John and other audio developers say it is. Out in the mass market, Apple is certainly pushing it towards retirement.

[arcman]

1 hour ago, left channel said:

@Jazz55 & @arcman regarding your difficulties streaming MQA through the Bluesound NODE2 via coax to the S2, a Pro-Ject support manager tells me that MQA doesn't work over S/PDIF, and this is something Meridian is working on. But Bluesound must have gotten their coax output to work with other external MQA DACs, or they wouldn't have put up this support page. Comments?

So the MQA over s/pdif that works with MYTEK is not true MQA?

[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.

[left channel]

32 minutes ago, arcman said:

So the MQA over s/pdif that works with MYTEK is not true MQA?

 

See my answer to my own question, just above your reply: MQA over S/PDIF requires a separate decoder. From what I know of MQA, that decoder would have to be approved by Meridian so yes it would be true MQA. But the Mytek Brooklyn/Brooklyn+ has a lot more real estate inside, and is five times the price of the S2. Meridian themselves do not include this in their smaller products. In most cases you'd have to add the Meridian 218 Zone Controller, which is a component for larger home systems. I see the 218 is available for £750.00 at Martins Hi-Fi.

 

8 minutes ago, rickca said:

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

 

That is an interesting question. Think Meridian will tell us?  :-) But based on what John posted, it appears to be an add-on component.

[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?

[left channel]

3 minutes ago, rickca said:

Does the Pre Box S2 Digital just do the MQA first unfold or does it do the whole MQA process?

 

It does the whole thing, whatever that is. The first unfold can be done in software, and that's how Tidal gets it to 24/96. The higher stages are (a) a renderer like the AudioQuest DragonFly which requires the 1x software unfolding ahead of it in the chain, or (b) a full decoder like the S2 which can accept the raw bitperfect passthrough MQA signal without software decoding and is supposed to be individually optimized for each DAC. Much digital ink has been spilled here on defining what actually happens in that last stage...