Pro-Ject White Paper # 02052007 NEW BOX DESIGN PRODUCTS Vienna, May 2007 takes the next electronic step to provide the HiFi market affordable audiophile products. Pro-Ject s first electronic box-product the Phono Box is today a huge international success. More than 200.000 pieces have been sold up to now. The audiophile quality, the low price, as well as the unique straight forward design of this box with its high standard of finish, including all important features, makes it to an ideal no fuss best buy product. and its owner and designer Heinz Lichtenegger tried always to reach the lowest price for high level high fidelity performance. The goal is, to offer affordable clever designed products for a wide audience of music-lovers. Why not expand the success of the turntables and the Phono Box to more HiFi components? Pro-Ject BOX DESIGN LINE will offer a wider selection of electronic HiFi components. Boxes like amps, sources, accessories are now, and will be, designed according to the Pro-Ject philosophy. Functional Design Most of the products today are designed wrongly. The theoretically ideal product (whatever function) is a black (silver) box, as small as possible, which makes the job (function) as good as possible, with the most simple of use for the lowest possible price. If you look what the industry is offering today, we are far away from the ideal. Boxes are big nobody can install them. To much functions nobody even uses the functions (95 % use only the basics). Very over-technical, computerized products nobody can use products today without a big manual. Additional you have to be a computer-specialist to get it work or to understand it. Low quality of performance all costs go into the features and cosmetics. The real function sound quality is lost due to cheap components at the sonical critical stages of the product. Too high price customers pay a fortune for all the designs and functions, which they never use. General the quality difference is very small due to the low overall performance.
Pro-Ject BOX DESIGN LINE has. The smallest possible size The most basic important functions Audiophile highest performance sound quality No money for the designed box all money into the components Superlative easy to use Mix and match principle you buy only the boxes and function you will use Electronic designed components by the latest technical standards Astonishing low price Pro-Ject s new small boxes in the BOX DESIGN LINE Pre Box, Amp Box and Amp Box Mono Pre Box and Amp Box are the first 2 products of the new box design line They are an audiophile, minimalist, miniaturised amplifier combination. Maybe the smallest in the world. The goal is to offer the highest level of sound quality for the lowest price in the smallest possible box. Amp Box comes in 2 versions: A stereo-type with 2x30W at 4 Ohms and 2x25W at 8 Ohms and mono type with 2x40W at 4 Ohms and 2x28W at 8 Ohms. The heart is a sophisticated digital amp module, designed by a famous specialist for digital amps with 20 years of experience. The sound quality can be described as airy with great depth of image and midband is fast and open, but not harsh like on other digital designs. You can hear lots of microdynamic and a very nice colourful picture of the instruments. The detail path is without any boomeffect.
Pre Box is designed to match the Amp Box in its unique sound-quality. It uses high grade components in the drive stage, input selectors with golden contacts, as well as sophisticated motorized volume control-pot. Pre Box offers two inputs and remote-control. The special IR-codes are designed to be compatible with more boxes following later (eg. Switch Box for more inputs) and to avoid interferences with any other electronical items. Both boxes have the same size as a Pro-Ject Phono Box II. The quality of the boxes is underlined by high end, heavy duty golden connectors for the inputs and outputs. Pre Box is powered by small low 16V power-supply. Amp Box is powered from special 20V power supply which can deliver up to 7A peak. An interesting audiophile option is to multiamp speakers, by 2 stereo boxes for 4 monoblock. A bracket to mount the amps on the back of a speaker will be available too. Customs installation features: Both boxes offer 12V DC trigger function. The remote power-on signal of the Amp Box can be relayed to further units. We will have two options of cables: An audiophile grade cable with the possibility to use 15 meters between Pre Box and Amp Box without any loss in audiophile terms. A special sonically selected high quality low capacitive CAT 5 type for runs up to 100 meter more. Special adaptors on CAT 5 basis, which transport signal, 16V power, IR commands will be available as an accessories also. Pre Box and Amp Box are available in black and silver front-panels as all other Pro-Ject boxes. 4 boxes (Pre Box, Amp Box, Amp Box Mono and Head Box II) in one row placed gives the standard HiFi-rack mount of 44cm with. 2 boxes above each other is the same height of a Phono Box SE II or Head Box SE II. A mix and match in size is easily possible. Pre Box and Amp Box have close to unlimited possibilities of application in the stereo audiophile world as will for professional use, everywhere where a superlative small, coolrunning amp is needed.
Phono Box II USB Phono Box II USB is based on a standard Phono Box II plus digitalisation of analog signals for recording direct to disk via USB with suitable recording programs. The use of the unit is maximal simplified. Easy connection to the Computer via a standard USB cable, no additional drivers are required. The Phono Box II USB will be automatically recognised by Windows XP and installed as a sound card. Your settings will not be modified permanently. After disconnecting the Phono Box II USB, the computer will return to the previous settings. The unit runs on Windows, MacOS and Linux operating systems and has a very high quality Burr Brown 16 bit Sigma Delta AD converter with fully compliant with USB 1.1 specification. There are many low costs products out on the market. Our goal was to offer a unit of true fidelity quality to store his analogue jewels best for a relative low price.
Other boxes from the small BOX DESIGN LINE.. Phono Box II Speed Box II Head Box II Power Box II Tube Box II
Pro-Ject s new big boxes in the BOX DESIGN LINE Pro-Ject introduces the new Phono Box SE II, Head Box SE II, Tube Box SE II and Speed Box SE II in the new style of boxes which fit and match to the standard boxes. A SE II box has twice the height of a small box and exactly the same width. All the SE II boxes have been improved according the newest available components and manufacturing methods. Phono Box SE II The Phono Box SE II is a completely new design at a different much higher level. A new high quality chip-set, better power supply, first class components are used. The input section uses 5 pieces of operational amplifier per channel in parallel mode. The internal building is done using SMD technology, which reduces the length of signal path dramatically. All this new features result in a much better sound quality and minimized overall noise. The universality in use is guaranteed by jumpers for capacity and impedance-matching and a switchable Subsonic filter. The new Phono Box SE II is, sonically and technically, a big step forward in comparison to the old Phono Box SE.
Tube Box SE II In comparison to the Phono Box SE II, the Tube Box SE II is based on the similar design of the highly regarded old Tube Box SE. The improvement is done by much higher level of audiophile graded components in all sections. The OPA2134 used are now at the newest superlative level. A better power supply and the use of SMD mounting technology allows to reduce the noise dramatically. We use now very special even unique new tubes. Premium ECC803S measured and selected and equipped with the famous EAT cool-dampers as a standard. (tube cooling and damping device) Tube Box SE II keeps the same basic sound quality as warm and musical, but improves in dynamic and openness of the soundstage and more details. Internal and external build-quality, first rate components make the Tube Box SE II to a high end audio item cost no object. Head Box SE II Similar to the Phono Box SE, we increased the already fantastic sonic quality of the Head Box SE. The Phono Box SE II and the Head Box SE II are real high end units in every respect yet for the same price. All components have been radical changed. New High end Burr Brown chip-set
New power supply SMD technology leads to incredible low noise of 120dB and 0,0014 THD distortion. Also sound wise the unit has nothing to do with the previous model: Much lower noise, rich sound with beautiful realistic image. Speed Box SE II At Speed Box SE II we have not been able to change a lot as its quality is already very advanced. The improvement is in the use of the new level of internal build quality of the PCB and SMD technology. The display read out of the new Speed Box SE II will be in blue colour to match the blue control LED s of the SE II boxes. All new SE boxes have a beautiful 4mm thick brushed aluminium-front-panel for extra rigidy of the housing. We are proud to announce that although we improved the performance of the units dramatically, we managed to keep the prices on the same level of the first generation.