A phenomenal new CD transport-Pro-Ject CD Box RS2 transport


I have had in-house for the last week Pro-Ject's new CD Box RS2 transport to review for the website Stereo Times. I was very curious to assess its performance because it uses the Pro 8 drive with the Blue Tiger CD-84 servo card. This drive was developed and built by StreamUnlimited a company started by the original Phillips designers that historically built the finest CD mechanisms. Only two other companies use the StreamUnlimited 8 drive and Blue Tiger CD-84 servo card, their pieces cost $16,000 and $39,000 compared to Pro-Ject's sane price of $3,000!

My reference for the last two years has been the excellent Jay's Audio MK-II transport that had out-performed much more expensive highly regarded transports in my system. Well, across every sonic parameter  (transparency/micro-details-overall dynamics/bottom-end extension/purity of tonality- a much more airy sound-stage with wonderful 3D imaging) compared to the Jay's Audio transport.

That's way I titled this thread a "phenomenal new CD transport" because while not inexpensive, it just might be a bargain based on its performance. Mind you, this superlative level of performance is based on using the switching power supply that Pro-Ject ships the transport with. I have shortly coming a custom 20 watt 3 amp linear power supply from Linear Tube Audio and Pro-Ject's own upgraded power supply to see if the RS2 transport performance will even go to a higher qualitative level of performance.

I'll be writing a full detailed review for Stereo Times in the near future. However, I wanted to share this information to GON members who still spin CDs. I have had numerous CD transports in for evaluation and this just might be the best sounding of all of them.

Teajay (Terry London)




amorstereo
Thank you for your response jaudio1 , I take. delivery of my RS2T next week , it’ll be interesting to directly compare it to ripped CDs out of a 432 Evo Aeon at three times to retail price of the Project transport.
well since I received the rs2t 3 weeks ago I added the project 4 way uni power supply a week later, very nice improvement all around. so last week I built a 20v dc power cable and the parts came from vh audio, again very nice improvement . today I added a fuse in the power supply [ hifi tuning supreme silver] it brought it up another level . this transport is unbelievable the more you upgrade it the more it likes it. unbelievable machine. 
@kully560,

The I2S on my unit doesn't appear to work.  The cable worked fine with the Jay transport.  Has anyone had a similar issue, and if so were you able to correct it and how?  BTW it sounds very good using a Black Cat digital coaxial cable. 

Has anybody compared the SQ using I2S, coaxial, AES/EBU?

Thanks
@lrm1jaf  I think the I2s is only for Pro-Ject’s corresponding DAC. That, or it only works with DAC of a certain i2s configuration, as there are like four different ways i2s output can be configured…
 The Denafrips Terminator has a function to set the configuration of the i2s input to accept from different sources… But again, I believe the one on this unit is for Pro-Ject use only.