Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital DAC Black - High-End Audiophile Home Audio/Video Equipment for Vinyl & Digital Music | Perfect for Home Theater & Hi-Fi Systems

In short, for the price you really can't do much better than the Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 Digital I'm sure if at all! As someone who also has a much more powerful and roughly double the MSRP amp/DAC combo unit, I still think this is very worthy purchase!Brief breakdownI originally intended to purchase the Pre Box for it's MQA ability specifically, but was also interested in the potential updates I could see from the DAC in general. What made me decide to pull the trigger was a combination of a strong desire to have something cleaner, more refined, and more powerful than my Denon X2300W AVR for when I want to watch movies or play console games with headphones (Oh, the wonders of apartment living as an audiophile!) and an open-box unit being available for just a little over $300. This fits the bill perfectly! With a USB input for my PC and a optical input for everything else, this does everything I need it to. Now, to give a little more of a breakdown of my other equipment in use I will just list everything below to make things easier.Headphones: Audeze LCD-2 (70 ohm), Sennheiser HD 600 (300 ohm), Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro (250 ohm)Amp/DAC: Audeze DeckardWith that out of the way, you can kinda see what I'm working with the Audeze LCD-2s and the Deckard have been my daily drivers for the longest and I've always been very happy with both. I just wanted to see if MQA was all it's chalked up to be and see what benefits I could get from a higher end DAC aside from the additional option to use optical devices and this unit has really impressed me! I've been using it with the AC adapter and when comparing output quality and volume of the headphone output between the Pre Box at max volume (0db) and my Deckard at max volume (low gain) they sound identical to my ears (Note: Pre Box used as source DAC for Deckard as well). That's with all my cans! No distortion and ultra clear detail. The Pre Box can drive all my headphones without issue. The Deckard only beats it on those terms when bumped up to mid gain, but in all honestly I usually don't listen to music any louder than what I can get from the Pre Box at 0db. I think that's what impressed me to most. I expected to need my second DAC at all times to get any kind of volume, but I was dead wrong! My Deckard usually doesn't need to be turned on. Nice since it saves me a couple bucks not having to run a class-A as often.In terms of the MQA performance, I'm a Tidal user and while I do like having the ability to have the full master quality experience, I honestly can't tell if it's better than normal 16-bit/44.1Khz with what I've listened to so far. Most everything I listen to is just in standard "Hi-Fi" FLAC quality, but everything sounds excellent on this DAC!In summary, I love it! It's an excellent piece of kit and holds it's own against much larger and expensive pieces of gear. It gets plenty loud on it's own, but if you need extras juice it will can give your amp the high quality source it needs to sound it's best! The ability to input a PC and my entire home theater/gaming setup to it makes it indispensable for my needs. I'd recommend it to anyone and everyone who want high quality sound and to keep their life savings. You'd be hard pressed to find a better DAC for less than four figures I'm pretty certain.