CD Box E - CD Player
silver - Pro-Ject

Streaming has not displaced the CD - it has re-evaluated it. Anyone who owns a growing collection of silver disks has a culturally and sonically valuable archive in their hands that is not fully available on any platform. And if you take this collection seriously, you need the right player for it: a dedicated CD player that has been developed for precisely this one task - not a universal player that does CDs as a secondary task. The Pro-Ject CD Box E is the entry point into Pro-Ject's box ecosystem and makes audiophile CD playback accessible at a price that makes it attractive to a very broad audience.

The device is compact - in the so-called half-width format, which fits seamlessly with the Pro-Ject Stereo Box E and fits into any shelf space. The CD Box E shares its brushed, anodized aluminium front panel with Pro-Ject's significantly more expensive S, DS and RS lines - the metal housing reliably shields sensitive circuitry from electromagnetic interference. However, what makes the CD Box E stand out in terms of sound is decided on the inside.

A DVD or Blu-ray player that also plays CDs does the job - but rarely particularly well. The reason lies in the compromise: the drive is primarily designed for the higher data densities of video discs, the D/A converter is optimized for multi-channel sound, and the entire circuit architecture shares the signal path with video electronics and their sources of interference. A dedicated CD player, on the other hand, has a single task: to read and convert the 16-bit/44.1 kHz stereo sound stored on the compact disc as correctly and without interference as possible.

The genuine Red Book CD drive of the CD Box E is designed exclusively for this standard - it reads errors with the error correction defined by the CD standard and passes the digital signal on to the D/A converter with minimal jitter. The mechanism is mounted decoupled in a shockproof bracket to keep drive vibrations away from the rest of the circuit. This is more complex than a simple built-in solution - and audible.

The heart of the sound electronics is the Relmon MS8413 - a low-jitter 24-bit/192 kHz multi-bit delta-sigma converter, which is not part of the standard repertoire of inexpensive CD players. Jitter - minimal timing errors in the digital data stream - is one of the most important sound-influencing parameters in D/A conversion: it obscures the fine timing information that gives a sense of precision and spaciousness. The MS8413 minimizes these timing errors by design, which independent testers unanimously cite as a sonic strength of the CD Box E. StereoNET attests the device a sound that puts significantly more expensive CD players to shame - and at a price that is simply astonishing for this quality.

The 1:1 bit-accurate playback - the same architecture as Pro-Ject's larger CD Box models - ensures that no signal content is lost due to faulty oversampling or poor converter implementation. The output buffer with very low output resistance ensures that cable capacitance and amplifier input resistance do not distort the signal over the last meter - a detail that is rare in this price range.

The CD Box E is more than just a standalone player: the S/PDIF coaxial output allows it to be used as a pure CD drive that feeds a high-quality external DAC device. If you already own a DAC or would like to invest in external conversion in the future, you won't lose a single euro of your investment with the CD Box E - the drive then works as a precise transport, and the sound quality limit lies with the external converter, not the drive. In tests with the Chord Qutest - a DAC that costs many times more than the CD Box E - the sound image opened up further as expected, the sound was more open and higher in resolution. At the same time, the jump was much smaller than the price difference would suggest: the tester would have got away with running the player in its original form.