dCS Varese short review

[JiminGa]

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.

I think many people would share your observations. I've not yet heard but will. My conceptual thoughts about their feed forward mechanism are more academic. if it makes digital sound better by (possibly) clever filtering and therefore not being more "accurate" is that OK? Someone commented that different DACs shouldn't sound very different from one another because they should sound like"music" But music is many different things. Hip hop splicing "beats" and filtered vocals has no live unamplified equivalent to compare it to. i think its possible that no DAC can satisfy everyone's idea of "music". As I said speaker designers make their choices as to what their customers want to hear. There is a Wilson "sound" and a Magic "sound". Both are examples of fierce customer belief in their vision for what music should sound like but they are very different from one another. If Wadax has masterfully found a way to convert digital to analog which minimizes "errors" AND shapes the sound in an appealing way is that a good thing if it doesn't measure as well as say DCS? I'm not saying it doesn't measure as well. This is just a thought experiment. Thoughts?

 

[Amir]

I think the big enemy of the sound quality is AC power because of the main source of noise/distortion comes from AC power.

I guess the Wadax secrets are in power supply design and lowering noise approaches not feed forward error correction.

I do not think dCS could compete in this regard

 

[MarkusBarkus]

...I don't use vinyl, but don't all the different carts and designs have a similar varied effect to sound?

 

[JiminGa]

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.

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.

If you look up the Ultra Audio review they have both in house and toggled back and forth. They concluded: "If you didn't know would you even know?" I will listen for myself before concluding

 

[microstrip]

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

Excellent analysis. "Error correction" out of context is a dangerous expression - it will be mistaken as "bit correction" - and I expect that any top high machine will be bit perfect.

Most modern speaker builders surely learned from the Floyd Toole research and were influenced by it - some acknowledge it. IMO proper knowledge is always a good thing. BTW, the Harman curve is just a way to avoid an hobby where experts tell us that 95% of the systems are poorly set up and sound poor - an interesting subject for another thread. The Quad ESL63 measures excellent according to the Harman curve.

 

[Elliot G.]

you have both now?

i have both meaning the studio player and a reference system.

 

[Al M.]

I think the big enemy of the sound quality is AC power because of the main source of noise/distortion comes from AC power.

I guess the Wadax secrets are in power supply design and lowering noise approaches not feed forward error correction.

I do not think dCS could compete in this regard

Evidence? What makes you say this? Just your obvious biases?

 

[wil]

If they sound very different then obviously digital hasnt gone very far .
Good equipment should converge in something like .....music

This statement makes no sense to me.

Every phono stage, turntable, pre amp, amp, speaker, interconnect, speaker, cables, power, cables, vibration, platforms…. Sound Different.

Yet, you think because DACs sound different they somehow are un-musical?

 

[JiminGa]

I think the big enemy of the sound quality is AC power because of the main source of noise/distortion comes from AC power.

I guess the Wadax secrets are in power supply design and lowering noise approaches not feed forward error correction.

I do not think dCS could compete in this regard

At this level all of the major DAC manufacturers have largely solved this. The big differences are in analog reconstruction. This is what explains why 1s and 0s can sound so different.

 

[JiminGa]

This statement makes no sense to me.

Every phono stage, turntable, pre amp, amp, speaker, interconnect, speaker, cables, power, cables, vibration, platforms…. Sound Different.

Yet, you think because DACs sound different they somehow are un-musical?

I also largely disagree with Andromeda here but I take his point in one instance. I would agree with him if we all used live unamplified music as our standard. A lot of people (most) don't do this. How can you compare DACs playing sampled synthesized studio digital creations that are never played live? What's the reference? That's why in many cases the cables/equipment you reference are made intentionally different to appeal to a sound the buyer caters to. How can Magico and Wilson (which sound very different) both be state of the art? Shouldn't they "converge" into similar sounds? They don't because "music" means different things to different people. I am one of the people who still uses live unamplified music as my reference. I personally think it's the only way to truly compare equipment and its ability to tell the "truth". In this scenario yes equipment should converge to this truth. Not everyone wants this. They want what they want and that's fine by me.

 

[Amir]

At this level all of the major DAC manufacturers have largely solved this. The big differences are in analog reconstruction. This is what explains why 1s and 0s can sound so different.

I disagree you, I think Wadax designer should explain about his artwork. He knows what is the answer.

 

[Amir]

I also largely disagree with Andromeda here but I take his point in one instance. I would agree with him if we all used live unamplified music as our standard. A lot of people (most) don't do this. How can you compare DACs playing sampled synthesized studio digital creations that are never played live? What's the reference? That's why in many cases the cables/equipment you reference are made intentionally different to appeal to a sound the buyer caters to. How can Magico and Wilson (which sound very different) both be state of the art? Shouldn't they "converge" into similar sounds? They don't because "music" means different things to different people. I am one of the people who still uses live unamplified music as my reference. I personally think it's the only way to truly compare equipment and its ability to tell the "truth". In this scenario yes equipment should converge to this truth. Not everyone wants this. They want what they want and that's fine by me.

There is no reference point when you listen to playback and claiming the un-amplified music is the reference is not right.

 

[JiminGa]

There is no reference point when you listen to playback and claiming the un-amplified music is the reference is not right.

Ok. Wow. Please try and truly think about this without prejudice. If you know with certainty what a saxophone played live sounds like ( without the added distortion of a sound board and a bunch of sound guys altering it as is the case in EVERY amplified concert) the you know whether or not your equipment is achieving this or how far off and in what direction it is veering. What reference exists for digital studio recordings. Were you listening through headphones during its recording. Were you in the control room listening over monitors to the playback? If you weren’t how could you know which DAC etc. is more truthful? It’s perfectly ok for you to say you prefer one sound to another but your preference is purely subjective and only applicable to you. I accept most people are after a particular flavor. Good on you. Just don’t tell me that my experience listening to live music ( and spending time in pro studios watching the recording process) doesn’t inform my listening skills. It absolutely does.

 

[microstrip]

I think many people would share your observations. I've not yet heard but will. My conceptual thoughts about their feed forward mechanism are more academic.

IMO "feed forward" is too ambiguous to have any meaning. Technically feed forward has a meaning in real time processes, where guesses must made about future actions to avoid errors due to them. Considering that digital playback is not a real time process it becomes mainly a marketing term, as used by many other high-end manufacturers. IMO, I am prepared to learn new things if something explains them.

 

[microstrip]

(...) I am one of the people who still uses live unamplified music as my reference. I personally think it's the only way to truly compare equipment and its ability to tell the "truth". In this scenario yes equipment should converge to this truth. Not everyone wants this. They want what they want and that's fine by me.

Yes, live amplified music is an excellent personal tool to tune our preference and choose high-end equipment. But everyone listens to real music in a different way and fills the blanks of stereo differently to create the illusion needed to suspension of disbelief. We can't expect for universal and unique findings in stereo, although we enjoy debating preferences.

 

[JiminGa]

Yes, live amplified music is an excellent personal tool to tune our preference and choose high-end equipment. But everyone listens to real music in a different way and fills the blanks of stereo differently to create the illusion needed to suspension of disbelief. We can't expect for universal and unique findings in stereo, although we enjoy debating preferences.

Of course. My preferences are my own.

 

[LL21]

IMO "feed forward" is too ambiguous to have any meaning. Technically feed forward has a meaning in real time processes, where guesses must made about future actions to avoid errors due to them. Considering that digital playback is not a real time process it becomes mainly a marketing term, as used by many other high-end manufacturers. IMO, I am prepared to learn new things if something explains them.

From what Wadax is printing in their materials, it appears they have:

1. Taken a given DAC chip and studied what happens when perhaps 100 different various signals go through the chip and measured what 'errors' the DAC chip appears to produce due to its intrinsic design.

2. Then created '100 adjustments' to the D/A process to account/correct for each of these 100 kinds of errors.

3. Then they create algorithms that read the incoming signal of music to see which of the 100 errors would apply...and quickly apply 1 of those 100 adjustments so that the D/A output is [theoretically] better/closer to the original.

Doesnt seem crazy given today's computing power...as ever, its about execution.

 

[PeterA]

The effort to change the subject from dCS’s new DAC to the Wadax has been very successful. Pages and pages of interesting discussion that has little to nothing to do with the original post.

I am curious how for instance a recording like Beethoven’s Middle String Quartets sounds different on the dCS and Wadax. Does anyone really know or is it even important?

 

[tima]

you are not an amateur. you are a dealer and reviewer and blogger

not a reviewer

 

[PeterA]

I also largely disagree with Andromeda here but I take his point in one instance. I would agree with him if we all used live unamplified music as our standard. A lot of people (most) don't do this. How can you compare DACs playing sampled synthesized studio digital creations that are never played live? What's the reference? That's why in many cases the cables/equipment you reference are made intentionally different to appeal to a sound the buyer caters to. How can Magico and Wilson (which sound very different) both be state of the art? Shouldn't they "converge" into similar sounds? They don't because "music" means different things to different people. I am one of the people who still uses live unamplified music as my reference. I personally think it's the only way to truly compare equipment and its ability to tell the "truth". In this scenario yes equipment should converge to this truth. Not everyone wants this. They want what they want and that's fine by me.

I think it’s a very interesting topic. Different violins played by different musicians in different halls all sound different. But they all sound like a violin. We are told that every speaker design is a compromise full of trade-offs. Same for every assembled system and room. Constant choices between compromises and trade-offs. If that is in fact the case, we then select the gear which we think conveys certain qualities that we recognize in live music better than does other gear. And if we don’t use live music as a reference, then it’s whatever individuals like.

I happen to use live unamplified music as a reference against which to judge system quality or performance. I also happen to think that certain components and set ups in rooms are less compromised than others, and if chosen well, and set up properly, some systems rise above the rest. This group of exceptional equipment stands the test of time and becomes rare and coveted in the future. We can all look back and select certain components that we think are better than the rest based on our individual knowledge and experience. That group tends to converge for each of us. It is the group that reminds us the most of the experience of listening to live music if that is the reference. If there is no reference, it is whatever the listener chooses as his favorite gear based on his criteria at the time. That group of favorites should also tend to converge for that listener.