http://www.box-designs.com/main.php?prod=preboxs2digital&cat=s2-line&lang=en
Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital initial impressions
- Very good build quality, heavy for its size, the small input/meny buttons are a little āplasticā though. Voulme is ok, not as oily smooth as some, but nice and stepped (each step is 1 db)
- A small but very nice color display, showing volume, connection, sample rate (and other stuff when in meny or filter select)
- Drivers came on a home-burnt Verbatim CD
- Roon does not support it fully, no icon and Roon reports 192 khz max. Selecting āWork around drivers that misreport device capabilitiesā fixes that
- Pop/crack noice when switching sample frequency base-multiplier. I solved this by upsampling everything to 192 in Roon, and set 24/192 in windows. I heard that a fix for this is coming as a firmware update
- Volume setting āUse Device controlā in Roon is not supported (i.e. USB volume), but this is also going to be fixed with firmware update. But since it has its own volume this is not a big deal.
- There is a small remote control included, plastic but a fun feature is that you can press prev, next, pause, play and Roon obeys. The remote also has input selectors, volume, filter selector and buttons for opening and controlling menu.
Sound
I can only compare it to my previous dac which was a DragonFly Red, and it sounds much better in every way out of the box. I leave it to others to give a better review for this, since more experience from listening to DACs is required.
Conclusion
A very nice little box with very nice audio quality, but its low price does show on plastic buttons and a cheap (but ok) volume control. But I guess I rather have top end ESS stuff inside, than metallic buttons on the outside
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Time for some coffeeā¦ and some good music then
Looking at the manual in German on their site it looks like the menu items are different for different languagesā¦ primarily the options within the menu items.
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The icon is coming in the next release. We had a mix-up with the USB IDs because official and pre-production units identified themselves slightly differently.
Common issue among XMOS-based DACs/drivers with WASAPI. iFiās have this too. Annoyingā¦but thatās what the setting is for
This would be really exciting.
Tested some MQA from Roon in hedphones, and that worked provided you turned off all DSP and volume leveling in Roon. Even a nice MQA symbol on the screen. The sample rate shown on the DAC is after MQA unfolds, obviously all unfolds are done in the DAC since Roon donāt support first MQA unfold yet.
Volume with MQA is higher than without though, not sure if thatās due to MQA or the DAC (maybe some cheap MQA feature to make it appear to sound better) It did make A/B tests harder though, so I let other decide if and how much better MQA is compared to CD quality. It sounds good though!
The DAC headphone amp was more than able to drive my B&W P7 Wireless (running passively), but I donāt think they are especially hard to drive so maybe that donāt mean much. At -30dB the volume was very high.
@Magnus, glad iām not nuts your findings are very similar to mine. THough I feel stupid, I keep switching between Benchmark DAC2 and Pro-ject S2 and though i think i hear bit of a difference between the two - it is really so small that I can only continue to be impressed !
Will order nice remote as soon as itās available and if pops go away in the meantime - youāll find my benchmark on audiogon.com
The pops are a bit annoying, so I set max sample rate to 192khz in Roon, and up-sample everything to max PCM (i.e. 192khz). Sounds very good, donāt take to much CPU (about 1% on my computer), and no more pops. And then I regenerated my room correction to 192 khz, and use the .wav file directly as convolution.
I donāt have any DSD music or flacs with > 192khz, so this worked very well for me.
Thanks @Magnus - I was wondering why I wasnāt getting MQA on it. It seems you have to set the maximum sample rate and bit depth for it to work. Initially I tried with DSP off and volume levelling off, but still no MQA. When I set the PCM maximums, it worked.
@anon73739233 - yes - as long as roon or source does not change any bits - MQA will be recognised. I do not have to set it to maximum sample rate ā¦ as long as roon does not mess with volume or DSP is not active - MQAās arrive recognised and sometimes they are 48, somtimes 96khz and sometimes 192khz on the DAC as it shows sample rate and MQA logo goes blue. Good news is remote controls volume for MQA music as well ā¦ guess when firmware upgrade adds USB volume control it might work from there as well ā¦ so the only thing that I will miss is āReplayGainā ā¦ but no solution today supports it ā¦ guess the only way to make that work would be via DAC that must have precise volume control and RoonBridge receiving unmodified MQA file as well as Volume (replaygain) and applying it to the musicā¦ but that sounds prone to volume going wild between some songs etc 
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Curious - I now have the PCM max rates both set to disable and it is still working (wasnāt beforehand). I also have DSP on now (with Crossfeed enabled) and it is working. Maybe it is dependent on what DSP one applies. The volume levelling definitely kills MQA
And no pops this side. Even without up-sampling. But I was assured when I ordered mine that it wasnāt the first batch.
Pops only occur when switching sample multiplier (like 44.1 to 96), what SW version do you have on your S2? Mine is 2.1 and drivers are 1.61.4
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SW is 2.10. Iām using a Mac - so not using the drivers. I asked the distributor about the batches and the capacitors and was told that this wasnāt from that batch. Not sure. But no popping when changing sample rates. Maybe it is a driver issue?
I also have the second batch (or so I think and hope), but I donāt know how to check which batch it is. I donāt mind opening it, but unless I know what to look for itās kind useless.
But just to be clear, its only when changing sample rate multiplier that I get pops, for example going from 44.1 to 88.2 is silent, 48 to 96 is also silent, but 44.1 to 96 makes it pop.
My problems are same as @Magnus ā¦ MPD we all have same SW/firmware version - 2.10 ā¦ and if you do not have issues - you are using mac ā¦ i am using linux (on SBC like RaspberryPI but am using Odroid) as well as tried Windows 10 with latest Creater updates that has native USB 2.0 UAC drivers ā¦ and i also get pops on 44.1 vs 48 and their multipliers as desciribed by Magnus.
@anon73739233 When using Mac and you play one file with 44.1 (CD) and another @96khz or @192khz you do not get any clicks/pops ?
Correct. Sorry if I wasnāt clear. If I change between sampling rates it does not pop. As in going from 44.1 to 96.
ok ā¦ will try Mac. come back tomorrow
Thanks. Let us know how you get on. As for knowing which batch it is - first batch had silver / pink capacitors and second batch is silver / red apparently.
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Btw, an easy way to test for those pops is to go to Roon DSP Engine -> Sample Rate conversion, select Custom and then while playing a 44.1 khz tune select 44.1khz > 48khz, then back to 44.1 and so on. If I do that, I get loud pops 3 out of 4 times or so.