IMO vegetarians writing about steak restaurants will always trigger extreme comments. Particularly when addressing Michelin starred restaurants.
This is a cute, but not accurate, analogy. I have digital, and I use it regularly.
dCS Varese short review
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This is a cute, but not accurate, analogy. I have digital, and I use it regularly.
Which seems almost too good to be true. Every review so far says that it is really close to their flagship. One set of reviewers had both in house and went back and forth between them and said it was really close. This is without PS or clock. My guess ( and this is just a guess) is that their feed forward "error" correction has a lot to do with the sound they get. It's a software solution which doesn't take up much real estate. All the rest of it (isolation, noise rejection, clocking, PS) make a positive but smaller contribution to the sound. I'm not sure DCS can do something like this because the have a more hardware based solution which takes up a lot more space. I'm listening to Varese on May 3 and would love to hear the Studio/PS/clock when it comes out. I currently have Vivaldi Apex to compare as well. I think this is an exciting time for digital.
Ok, I could have written am addicted McDonald's cuisine lover, but found it unfriendly.
Well, we read it all the time. But I never found it to be true after the initial enthusiasm. Can you list past cases when it was true?
Probably it is why some people love it and others not. Until we have proper technical information and measurements we can only guess and speculate. The important point is that people should listen in adequate conditions and choose according to their preference.
dCS and Wadax sound very different. And it has been an exciting time for digital for a long time, we did not need very expensive units to know it.
Elliot G.
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They are supposed to show the clock and optional ps in Munich .
That’s what I hear
Elliot G.
Industry Expert
Your initial reaction implied a. the critics are motivated because they believe that Ron has some kind of hidden agenda and b. owners of expensive digital gear might feel foolish due to Ron’s voicing casu quo comparison.
Ad a. My criticism was not inspired at all by such believe. Good to see we (seem to) agree on that.
Ad b. Why would this be the case? Speaking purely about myself: I am a happy Wadax reference owner because I know inside out how awfully impressive this reference digital gear sounds and Ron’s personal taste or preferences are (at least for me) totally irrelevant in this regard.
However, I have no problem at all to withdraw my earlier qualification “stupid”, Jim.
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Needs the clock and io. Not sure why they list it this way. When I looked at it I asked about permutations and was told that you must buy the io, 2 dacs, core and clock.
If they sound very different then obviously digital hasnt gone very far .
Good equipment should converge in something like .....music
The IO is needed only if you want to listen to CDs and do not intent or want to buy the Varese CD player that will be soon available and uses the ACTUS cabling.
Anyway I appreciate knowing the individual prices.
There is always a lot of initial enthusiasm but I will listen for myself. "Error correction" could mean a lot of things. "Sound shaping" is one possibility. Speaker manufacturers sometimes apply some form of the Harmon curve to their speakers output. Experienced listeners, novices, professional musicians tend to have different preferences. Most want some sort of subtle high frequency roll off and small mid bass bump. There are no Wadax measurements yet. Would it matter if they indeed do show some sort of filtering to make the sound more appealing (tape like)? Is it more important to be accurate to a digital recording if people don't like the sound as much? I ask because I don't have an opinion yet. Could it be that this is the heart of the difference between DCS and Wadax? All of this is just conjecture but it would explain a simple Studio on one hand and a 5 box Varese on the other
This is a very interesting opinion Andro. I once raised a similar observation about top tube and SS amplifiers asking if their presentations were converging or if they were sounding more and more different.
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regarding what the error correction is doing.
in Jan 2021 i did my initial compare of the Wadax dac and server to the MSB Select II dac and Taiko Extreme server in my own room
i went through various compares; the MSB with the Wadax server using USB, the Wadax dac with the Wadax server with and without the Akasa optical, the Wadax dac with the Taiko Extreme server. i did this over a few weeks, and spent quite a bit of time with each variation to try and get my head around causes and effects.
one fundamental difference was that my long term digital references were 'fixed' with the Wadax dac compared to the MSB Select II. all my familiar cuts with all the warts here and there i had always associated with the music over decades of various dacs were exposed as digital nasties. and so the musical flow much more resembled my vinyl. there was no smoothing or messing with the textures or detail; just a lack of those miscellaneous critters that got in the way. in that A/B environment it jumped out.
it was also easy to hear what the Wadax Reference Server was doing, and also what the addition of the Akasa optical link was doing. but those things were a bit different than the actual dac differences.
this is not anything scientific. and like anything not fully understood; skepticism is expected. but error correction is a bridge too far for any other digital i have heard of or know about.
a year+ later as they became available, i added the Reference Server Power Supply, and then 6 more months later added the 3 Akasa DC cables to bring my Wadax to Level 4. but the error correction was a big deal with only the dac.
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If their error correction is a critical lynchpin to their success, I wonder if that could explain why the Wadax Studio series apparently sounds so close (for the money) to the main reference stack. The main reference stack seeks to further enhance beyond the forward error correction with heroic version of more 'traditional' means of high-end digital architecture (independent power supplies, cables, connections, isolation, etc).
i've not heard the Wadax Studio Player, but your comments are likely correct. the big boy Wadax does deliver lots more when you take it all the way. with the References each piece of the steps up to Level 4 bring more performance.
in hugely simplified explanation.........the Server and the Akasa optical bring lots of realism. the Server power supply brings muscle, authority and lowers the noise. the Akasa DC cables bring textures and timbral rightness and nuance and flow. but for sure the other pieces build on the foundation of rightness in the performance from the dac.
i'm sure there is trickle down of some of that stuff too.
If you look at the comments of the two reviewers who actually made an a/b comparision between (i) the Wadax Studio and (ii) the Wadax reference set up - Roy Gregory and Robert Harley - carefully there is no doubt that in their view the latter is clearly sonically superior to the former. That is - not surprisingly - also the opinion of the various Wadax people I have spoke to since the Wadax Studio was introduced. That said the Wadax Studio seems to be a mighty fine player.
Thanks, Mike. It is interesting to read about Wadax...I will try to hear it at some point. I think about the original architecture of our Zanden digital...5 different power supplies inside, each separately powering different parts of the Transport, etc. All the shielding inside the DAC, inside the digital cable, the various layers of physical isolation for the Transport. That was 15-20 years ago. But as always it begins with the D/A itself.
Absolutely...perhaps recognizable 'DNA' between the two (again, I suspect the error correction) but clearly the all-out assault design is superior.
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