Maiden Voyage: Herbie’s piano sounded warm, inviting and timbrally rich. Soft, yet percussive, it flowed together perfectly with incredible sustain and life. I really could feel the emotion pouring through my system and out of my speakers like I have never before felt. “Yes!” I thought. “This is what analog really sounds like!” I have heard videos on YouTube of people playing their records through very nice equipment with good A/D conversion, and while very impressive sounding, the digital conversion mixed with YouTube’s compression and limited frequency range detracts from the presence and weight that with vinyl you can almost feel more than hear. Strange, right? Again, through the S2 there was a slight increase in depth and dimensionality compared to the Denon. Imaging was better, bass was cleaner, the S2 just is a better preamp.

The audio world knows of Pro-Ject Audio Systems as a major brand of turntables, but this Vienna-based company also makes an extensive line of electronics that lately have been winning all kinds of awards. For the past three years, Pro-Ject has received awards for its turntables and its electronic components from the Expert Imaging and Sound Association (EISA). Then, for precisely 30 seconds, the on/off LED flashes during the warm-up period, the muted output preventing any nasty pops from greeting the user at switch-on. To demonstrate just how closely Pro-Ject pays attention to the tiny details, even with cost-effective models such as the Tube Box DS2, the LED that shows which output has been selected doesn't light up until the warm-up period ends. IMO, NO repeat NO switching electronics should ideally ever be used in any phono-linestages. It will simply impair the sonic musicality.There’s no option for tubed headphone listening -- the headphone amp is strictly solid-state. It’s a DC-coupled design with no coupling capacitors, even on the output. One annoyance: When you plug in a set of headphones, the line-level outputs are not muted. If you want to listen to headphones but not speakers, you’ll have to turn off your power amp. That’s not a big deal -- unless you’re using active or powered speakers, as I do. When I wanted to use the Pre Box RS2 Digital’s headphone output, I had to turn off the power switches at the bottom rear of my Elac Navis ARF-51 active speakers. With a new rise in popularity of vinyl over the past several years, the market is exploding with a whole new generation of record players containing the latest plug-and-play technology. There is much to recommend using pots on the inputs for CD and Tuner in particular, so their levels can be matched to the other signal sources you have. Although this option is not shown here, it is described in Project 02, and the pots would be used in exactly the same way as shown in the original hi-fi preamp schematics.

Sound quality is seriously talented and it comes bursting with texture and insight. It's a wonderfully clean and crisp sound, with more low-end weight and substance sitting alongside Cyrus’s traditional values of precision and speed.

Phono Box S3 B

It did. The first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth sounded a little denser through the NAD C658 (with Dirac Live disabled) than through the Pro-Ject, and without as much harmonic richness. String textures were less transparent. Brass instruments had similar bite, but their tone wasn’t as burnished. The sense of space was slightly dryer -- the warm glow of the Musikvereinssaal wasn’t as obvious through the NAD as through the Pre Box S2 Digital. (Note: Roon was resampling this file to 24/176.4 PCM -- the C658 doesn’t support DSD.) Whether it is a phono stage or an external preamp, it boosts the signal from the turntable to the correct level, so that it can be received by your stereo system or speakers.

The final movement of the “Moonlight,” Presto agitato, is in complete contrast to the first -- it’s fiery, tempestuous, dramatic -- and here I could really appreciate the dynamic capabilities of the Pre Box RS2 Digital. Say’s muscular chords exploded out of my speakers, his runs were beautifully articulated -- and there was still that marvelous sense of the recording space.Much of Andrew Bird's My Finest Work Yet (Loma Vista LVR005557) was recorded live in Stevie Wonder's old studio in Los Angeles. The opening cut, "Sisyphus," has some studio ambience. Starting with the MC setup, with gain at 63dB and the recommended 400 ohm loading, the group seemed to be positioned between and behind the speakers. Imaging, scale, and depth of field were how I'm used to hearing them, which wasn't surprising: Bird's vocals and violin—indeed all the instruments—sounded rich, full, and substantial, yet studio-natural without oversaturated colors. All sounded complete, of a piece. The Pre Box RS2 Digital is the bigger brother of our award winning and ground breaking Pre Box S2 Digital. It uses the same excellent sounding DAC chips as the S2 version, proving once again that the Pre Box S2 Digital was already at the very top of high-end DACs and absolutely beyond its competition. Based on the same core-design principles, the feature set is extended and driven to new heights. The result is a fantastic sounding and very versatile box. The perfect partner for the cream of the crop of high-end amplifiers and speakers alike!

I used 680nF (0.68µF) input and output caps, because I had run out of 1µF 63V units - 1µF/100V MKT caps are too big to fit in the space allowed. Even so, low frequency response is perfectly acceptable as indicated above. A -3dB frequency of 2.3Hz is adequate for all normal listening pursuits . If preferred, you can use a 10µF electrolytic, which can be polarised or bipolar. There's no DC voltage to speak of, and even polarised electros will have a long and happy life. Self-Service? Full Service! – With the new Dual CS465, all you have to do is put the record on and flip it over. The fully automatic turntable cares for everything else – without compromise. If you have a vintage amp or receiver that was produced before 1980, then it’s likely it has a built-in preamp. Carnhills are widely used in 1073-type units and contribute to the Junior’s vintage sound. It’s not the most transparent transformer, but it has bags of character and responds well to being driven hard. The Junior’s circuit is quite straightforward in a traditional style, with just three transistors used in the gain stage and three in the output stage; the output transformer is driven by a 2N3055 power transistor running in pure Class-A mode.Match the Pre Box RS2 Digital with a suitable source component -- a CD transport such as the CD Box RS2T or a network streamer like the Stream Box S2 Ultra, both from Pro-Ject -- and you have a fabulous, small-footprint digital front end for a pair of analog active speakers like my Elac Navis ARF-51s, or for a more conventional system comprising a power amp and passive speakers. No matter -- that tubed stage served up an extra dollop of harmonic and spatial goodness. Voices were a little more embodied -- it was easier to appreciate that notes were being sung by flesh-and-blood human beings with bodies rather than a pair of vocal cords vibrating in space. While the soundstage wasn’t wider or deeper in tubed mode, it was more filled in. Instead of a space between and behind the speakers in which sonic events were occurring, the soundstage became one big performance space. Earlier boards included RF interference suppression by adding a small capacitor between the two inputs of U1 (the space for this cap can be seen in the PCB photo, which is of an early board). This has now been removed, as it caused more problems than it solved - in particular, opamp oscillation with some devices. As Herbie’s Fender Rhodes e-piano entered, the wider soundstage kind of tossed the piano around the room as it oscillated between both channels. As Herbie’s ARP PE-IV String Ensemble faded in, the value having a slight increase in depth became clear: the sound was larger and a little more expansive. One downside: the S2’s improved detail retrievel revealed the audible distortion produced by the Debut Carbon’s rather short 8.6” tonearm.