This is a review and detailed measurements of the Project Phono Box DS2 phono preamplifier with USB capture capability. It is kindly loaned to me by a member. The DS2 costs US $599 from their dealers.
It is hard to differentiate in looks of desktop products but I think Project pulls this off nicely with a modern, European look:
A reassuring relay click is heard as you change gain settings that go form 40 to 65 dB in five steps. I only tested the 40 dB (ostensibly for moving magnet cartridges) and 65 dB (for moving coil).
Different than other phono preamplifiers is inclusion of USB capture:
You have the nice volume control to set the capture gain and choice of 48 kHz, 96 and 192 kHz PCM and DSD 128. I only tested the 48 kHz setting as otherwise you are likely just capture more noise.
A small external switching power supply generating 18 volts is used.
There is also a line in input so you can use the DS2 as a general purpose capture device for non-phono sources.
Overall, the job is well done as far as functionality and looks. Yeh, some VU meters would have been nice on the capture side but otherwise, good.
Phono Stage Measurements
Let's start by feeding the DS2 5 millivolt simulating a moving magnet cartridge using the 40 dB gain:
Nice. We don't see any distortion product and performance is strictly dominated by the noise level giving us a nice SINAD of 80 dB, likely way better than the source it is dealing with (LP). We can measure the THD (minus noise) by itself:
Very nice.
Frequency response shows good RIAA implementation:
There is very good headroom for 40 dB gain but it shrinks significantly for 65 dB:
Above is at 1 kHz. Running it at different frequencies shows that the headroom shrinks also when frequencies go up:
Since LP ticks and pops are likely to be high frequency in nature, this is unfortunate.
At our nominal 5 millivolt input though, distortion+noise is not frequency dependent (likely because it is noise dominated) except at 20 Hz:
USB Capture Measurements
You are paying good few dollars for USB capture feature so let's test that with phono input:
This is not good. We have a bunch of distortion products and increase in low frequency noise, bring our SINAD down substantially.
As noted, even at max volume, I could not hit 0 dBFS which likely makes the noise performance worse.
Let's switch to line input to see what we get:
Wow, that is quite a bit of distortion. Very disappointing. Needless to say, ranking is at the bottom of the audio interfaces we have tested:
Dynamic range is decent though:
Conclusions
Project has designed an attractive package with nice functionality in DS2. Analog performance keeps up producing very low distortion and good low noise performance.
Sadly the digital section seems to be an afterthought, not matching the performance of the analog section. You can come out way ahead by using another interface instead of the one built-in. Then again you will be paying for functionality you won't be using.
Overall, I like the look and basic analog performance of PRoject Phono Box DS2 USB and on that basis alone, I am going to recommend it. But personally I would not pay that much for it.
Our garden is finally producing lots of vegetables and fruit. So don't need your money for that. But do need it to buy meat and fish to go with it. So please donate as much as you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
It is hard to differentiate in looks of desktop products but I think Project pulls this off nicely with a modern, European look:
A reassuring relay click is heard as you change gain settings that go form 40 to 65 dB in five steps. I only tested the 40 dB (ostensibly for moving magnet cartridges) and 65 dB (for moving coil).
Different than other phono preamplifiers is inclusion of USB capture:
You have the nice volume control to set the capture gain and choice of 48 kHz, 96 and 192 kHz PCM and DSD 128. I only tested the 48 kHz setting as otherwise you are likely just capture more noise.
A small external switching power supply generating 18 volts is used.
There is also a line in input so you can use the DS2 as a general purpose capture device for non-phono sources.
Overall, the job is well done as far as functionality and looks. Yeh, some VU meters would have been nice on the capture side but otherwise, good.
Phono Stage Measurements
Let's start by feeding the DS2 5 millivolt simulating a moving magnet cartridge using the 40 dB gain:
Nice. We don't see any distortion product and performance is strictly dominated by the noise level giving us a nice SINAD of 80 dB, likely way better than the source it is dealing with (LP). We can measure the THD (minus noise) by itself:
Very nice.
Frequency response shows good RIAA implementation:
There is very good headroom for 40 dB gain but it shrinks significantly for 65 dB:
Above is at 1 kHz. Running it at different frequencies shows that the headroom shrinks also when frequencies go up:
Since LP ticks and pops are likely to be high frequency in nature, this is unfortunate.
At our nominal 5 millivolt input though, distortion+noise is not frequency dependent (likely because it is noise dominated) except at 20 Hz:
USB Capture Measurements
You are paying good few dollars for USB capture feature so let's test that with phono input:
This is not good. We have a bunch of distortion products and increase in low frequency noise, bring our SINAD down substantially.
As noted, even at max volume, I could not hit 0 dBFS which likely makes the noise performance worse.
Let's switch to line input to see what we get:
Wow, that is quite a bit of distortion. Very disappointing. Needless to say, ranking is at the bottom of the audio interfaces we have tested:
Dynamic range is decent though:
Conclusions
Project has designed an attractive package with nice functionality in DS2. Analog performance keeps up producing very low distortion and good low noise performance.
Sadly the digital section seems to be an afterthought, not matching the performance of the analog section. You can come out way ahead by using another interface instead of the one built-in. Then again you will be paying for functionality you won't be using.
Overall, I like the look and basic analog performance of PRoject Phono Box DS2 USB and on that basis alone, I am going to recommend it. But personally I would not pay that much for it.
Our garden is finally producing lots of vegetables and fruit. So don't need your money for that. But do need it to buy meat and fish to go with it. So please donate as much as you can using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
