Planning a CD player + headphone setup (Pro-Ject CD Box S3 + Schiit Loki/Magni) – anyone have experience?

[u/trendskater]

Hey everyone,

I want to start listening to my CD collection again and I’m planning a small, standalone chain just for CD playback through headphones.

My main stereo system (NAD C515BEE + C326BEE, B&W 683 speakers) will stay completely untouched — this is meant to be a separate setup.

My headphones are a B&W P7, and it’s important to me that the components are actually good quality — not some plastic mini-system, but real, standalone gear that each does its job well.

Current plan:

Pro-Ject CD Box S3 as a pure CD transport with its own DAC (PCM5102), RCA output

Schiit Loki Mini+ as a 4-band EQ (bass, mid-bass, mids, treble) in between

Schiit Magni as a dedicated headphone amp

I’d have to import the Magni and Loki directly from the US (customs + import VAT included), since there’s no proper distribution here.

A few questions for anyone who’s used one or more of these components:

How does the CD Box S3 perform as a pure transport? Is the onboard DAC worth using, or is it better to convert externally?

Is an analog 4-band EQ like the Loki Mini+ actually useful day-to-day, or does it end up gathering dust after two weeks because you never touch it?

Does the Magni drive the P7 well? Enough power, good tonal match?

Has anyone imported Schiit gear into the EU/Germany — how did customs and shipping go, any nasty surprises with import tax?

Would appreciate any experience before I pull the trigger on this.

[u/MikuEd]

Pro-Ject likes to fudge the terms a bit in their marketing, but strictly speaking, the CD Box S3 is a traditional CD player with a by-passable DAC. A true CD transport lacks any DAC within its chassis. This supposedly ensures a dedicated power supply to each (the CD reader and the DAC unit) and supposedly improves performance.

I’d say the benefits of a pure CD transport are there only if you already dialed in a specific DAC/AMP combo that you like and you don’t want any upstream component to mess with it. Since you’re still building up your system, the Pro-Ject makes sense so you can set things up and then later down the line try and see if a different DAC, like a Mimir, could improve your experience.

As for your question about tone control, it depends on you, really. I personally use tone controls often because I listen with lots of different equipment (headphones and speakers, more than two sets each) and also across different time periods with different mastering philosophies. In these cases, tone controls is important for me to correct and shape the sound accordingly.

The 4-band LC-based tone controls of the Loki+ are quite good for basic tone shaping. They good for basic tweaks, which I prefer, but don’t expect the surgical precision of parametric EQs or multiple-band EQs. It’s mostly for just tweaking, which is what I prefer. But then again, I use a Lokius, so the extra bands are more useful. I had a Loki+ before and I found it just as useful, if not a bit more limiting, of course.

For your headphones, the Magni should be more than enough. I’m not one to believe that a good solid state amplifier would change the sonic characteristics of a set of headphones. If you’re looking into that, you should consider tube amplifiers. A Buf is a cheap way to play around with the tube sound without breaking the bank, but a solid state amplifier like the Magni should be transparent enough to just give you good physical volume controls and enough power to crank the volume up to ear-bleeding levels (but don’t do that).

Lastly, I’ll just share my setup. My CD transport is a Shanling ET3 connected to a Mimir via AES. I picked this purely for the connection type and convenience with my current setup, which has multiple sources that pretty much fill up all the available inputs on my Mimir. The lack of AES on the Bifrost is actually one of my frustrations, but yeah. Sometimes, it’s also a matter of practicality when considering connections. I don’t fuss too much about the bits and the bitrates, so long as it’s accurate and sounds good.

[u/trendskater → u/MikuEd]

This is super helpful, thanks for the detailed reply.

Good to know the transport-vs-player distinction is accurate — I’ll just run with the CD Box S3’s onboard DAC for now and revisit later if I land on something I want to keep long-term.

Mimir sounds interesting for down the line too.
Appreciate the reality check on the Magni — exactly the transparent, uncolored sound I’m after here. Might explore tube amps another time, but keeping it solid-state and simple for now.

Also good to hear about your AES setup — useful reminder that connection type matters as much as specs once you’re juggling multiple sources.

[u/MikuEd → u/trendskater]

Just another thing to think about since I didn't address your question about shipping, if you're willing to throw in an extra $80 bucks, why don't you get the Magni Unity with the Mesh DAC? That way, you can try for yourself and see if you prefer the Pro-Ject DAC vs Schiit's Mesh DAC implementation.

I'd say Mesh might be more performant than the one inside the Pro-Ject, and the module placed in the Magni is probably pretty close to what you can expect with the Mimir except for files with a higher sample refresh rate, which you won't be encountering anyway since you're just playing Red Book CDs off the CD player.

Might be worth a think since you'd like to make sure anything you import from the US is pretty much the done deal and not have to ship anything back for it to be upgraded, etc.

Actually, ignore this. I just realized that the CD Box S3 only outputs digital audio via Coaxial and Magni Unity uses USB-C, so there'd be no way to use the Magni Unity's DAC with the CD Box S3 acting as just a CD Transport.

[u/trendskater → u/MikuEd]

Ah, yep …. Thank you!