Review on 🔊 Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital - Black: High-Performance Audio Converter with Sleek Black Finish by Shannon Connolly

So, the good news first. Acoustically it's amazing. This is a very, very good DAC that can give terribly good playback when recorded correctly. As with all audio gear, how impressed you will be with this piece will depend on your other gear. In my opinion, the better your system, the more impressed you will be. Of course, if money is no object, you can certainly find better ones, but for the price of the Pro Ject S2 it's nothing short of amazing. Now for the bad - it can be VERY frustrating to make the best of it. One of the main reasons to buy this device is to listen to MQA files from your PC, which are usually streamed by Tidal. This is by far the main reason I bought it. So for MQA streaming to work properly, you need to bypass the audio controls in Windows. I've been working on getting MQ through work for almost two days, surfing the web a lot and fiddling with settings on my computer for hours. If there's an easy way to get it working, then that knowledge is well guarded. I finally found an article that says that if you get another software, namely Jriver Media Player, and then adjust the settings in Jriver, it would work. Viola, magic happened with this puzzle piece. Note that the Jriver software costs $60. While it's not much, I do blame Pro Ject for not providing instructions on how to get proper functionality on Windows, or admitting that you need third-party software and someone else's instructions to get it working. Shame on them for dropping the ball when the device itself is such a technological marvel. I'll leave the DAC and sing its praises, but buyers beware - the S2 isn't a plug-and-play device for streaming MQA from your PC.