I’m late to the party, but I just added a great little component to my home audio system – the Pro-Ject Pre Box S2 preamp and DAC. I’ve wanted a solid state preamp to compare with the ancient tube pre I’ve used, and the S2’s price made it an easy call. The fact that it has a great DAC included and that the snooty curmudgeon of audio reviews, The Absolute Sound, gave it a great review, didn’t hurt.

Right out of the box, it sounds great. Part of that may be that I’m using my much-loved Wyred mAmp monoblocs with the S2 preamp. Those things are beasts. But I never really loved the sound of the mAmps with my tube preamp, and right now I’m *really* liking the mAmp-S2 combination. Plenty of power, deeply quiet when it should be, zero background hiss. Just clean, sharp reproduction of great recordings. Nice.

And the S2 is *tiny* – I wasn’t ready for it to be one pound and the size of a deck of cards.

I don’t listen to the stereo as much as I used to – I worry that I can’t trust my ears any more. I know I have some serious high-end hearing loss, so a lot of music sounds a bit more compressed than my memory says it should. But fuck it, I love the gear and the music still sounds good, even a little compressed. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. And the S2 is definitely good enough.