Sorry to hear. Yeah, there are a LOT of people experiencing this issue. It sucks because it’s a great DAC. Unfortunately, MQA is the reason I bought it so it went back. Good luck though bud.
Also, yes, render only works on some devices however, i think if you’re going to spend $400 on a device especially for it’s MQA capability, it should perform the full, hardware decoding. As far as i know, and from what I’ve read, all it would take is a new firmware update but unfortunately that’s not going to happen. Frustrating for sure.
Hello, I haven’t even made it this far with my Pre Box S2 D experience. Via the MiDi app on MBPro I can max out the bit rate but I do no see MQA displayed on the dac and I lost after reading this thread as to where you guys are making all these adjustments. The Pre Box only has a handful of options, where are you tweaking it??
ALSO I fear there is a hardware issue with mine, it thinks the headphones are still in the jack so it’s not outputting through RCA. 
Wow. I should proof read…
Also I’m aware with Tidal you need to bypass in order to output the file and have it unfold at the dac.
Remember to have all volume settings to max, also internally in Windows, if volume in win is 98% it will not give you MQA/MQB, I dont know why, but that is a fact (I dont if that’s your OS), in Audirvana the dac must be set as renderer, not auto, and you wil get the MQB in ProJects display, which means Audirvana does its first unfolding, then the dac does the rest. The quality is exactly the same as MQA.
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That’s due to the authentication part, the file needs to be transferred bit-prefect for checksum to work. If you apply software volume control the output is no longer bit-perfect.
The Project Pre Box S2 Digital is MQA decoder, it can do full MQA decoding on it’s own.
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In deed it is a fully functionally MQA decoder of its own, but: " The S2D is more sensitive than most DACs to imperfections in an MQA signal, though it’s much improved in firmware 2.12. Those imperfections do indeed seem to be coming from Tidal, as some of us have managed to reproduce the same dropouts in the same exact spots on the same tracks. It’s been argued by someone far more expert than I that the way another manufacturer, Mytek, compensates for this issue risks ruining all non-MQA tracks, so perhaps the S2D will remain unable to maintain a lock on imperfect MQA.
As this problem originates with Tidal I suspect a Stream Box will not fix it, but it’s certainly worth trying and anyway the Stream Box offers other advantages. However, I should note that Pro-Ject marketing materials do not claim the Stream Box itself supports MQA, though it apparently can pass MQA along from Roon and perhaps other sources.
Another solution to your MQA dropouts problem would be to use the 1x software decoding built into the computer app. Sent to your your S2D via USB, that signal will be rendered to its final resolution in the DAC, which will display “MQB” to indicate rendering is taking place."
Copied from: https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/pro-ject-pre-box-s2-digital-dac.201691/page-54
Thank you so much for this bit of info. Have been frustrated for about 6 weeks trying to figure out why my DS2 would no longer detect MQA files, not to mention the fact that DSD was inaudible. And here the Windows volume was at 72. Turned it up to 100 and the MQA light is shining bright again.
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Hi @MarkSubsonik, did you get a replacement and did you eventually solve your problem? I am having a similar issue but it’s hard to figure out if it’s a hardware problem, since the DAC works fine when used outside of Audirvana. They still sell it so I would expect that issue to have been resolved by now.
Did you disable the software volume control?
@bitracer Thanks for the suggestion. Honestly I don’t know, and the trial is over so I cannot test any more. I would expect it to work either ways, though.
It should work with the software volume disabled. For MQA to work, there needs to be bit-perfect transfer of the data to the DAC. With the software volume control this is not the case.
If you were interested in Audirvana, subscribe for a month and see if it this works. You can also write to support and ask for trial extension and see if they‘re receptive to this.
@bitracer My file source is local FLAC files, I am not using any MQA. I did test Audirvana Origin but unfortunately not long enough to figure out whether the problem is with the software or with the DAC (which works hour-long without interruptions, if used with other pieces of software). There’s many variables and it’s difficult to isolate them, when the problem only occurs randomly, and not so often. I might ask for a DAC replacement but it would be good to know what was the experience of those who had similar issues with this model.
There have been well documented issues with this DAC related to MQA functionality. With plain FLAC it should work without problems.
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For what it’s worth my Pre Box S2 always worked perfectly with Local FLAC, Tidal FLAC, Tidal MQA and Studio or AV3.5 using a couple different macOS computers.The only rule to follow was having the volume out to the DAC at 100% I’m no longer using Studio or Tidal so unfortunately I cannot do a test on the current versions for you. I’m doubtful that the DAC is your issue but it would be good to test if you could possibly substitute another DAC in its place
Hello everyone. The problem with this DAC can be partially solved by changing the default filter. The death attempt does not.