Wadax Reference Server
- Thread starter CKKeung
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I guess many people still admire Taiko Extreme Server. So they are not excited about Wadax. They didn't appreciate Wadax at all, even Wadax Reference DAC. Prejudice is a bad thing.
very high end music servers deserve and require a level of technical handholding for customers that exceeds any other high end product. hard to imagine any hifi dealer being truly capable of the degree of support they require. therefore; it is on Wadax to prove they are up to that task for this server.
the problem for Wadax is not a 5000 post thread. the problem is that it's easy for potential customers to observe the other-worldly level of support and continuous passionate engagement from Taiko for the Extreme and it's owners. the bar is impossibly high. and this is assuming that the product makes the performance case that it's equal or better.
maybe Wadax has established a presence and support level for their products that does indicate they are up to this task. i've just never seen or heard about it if that is how it is.
and then are the implications of the potential of TAS as a standard setting software.
lastly will Wadax appeal to the DIY computer audio group to get some moral support and benefit of the doubt?
so it's not that there is not excitement about this new ultimate server; only that it's not a dac or transport......and not plug and play. so there are huge hills to climb and gravity to overcome. it will have to ring the bell pretty hard the first go to get over the hump. and maybe it will. i know i'd like to hear it, and hopefully when Audio Shows start again i will have that chance.
as an aside; i wonder what they were thinking with the whole design and look of this product? i keep trying to like it, but so far it's not working. maybe in person it pulls you in.
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It is not prejudice, it is simply that we did not have the opportunity of listening. The distribution is very limited, people can't listen to it easily and we must remember that Covid is not helping. I only got excited about the DCS Vivaldi after listening to it several times. But people I know well told me that it sounds excellent.
I listened to the Atlantis DAC in a shop a couple of years ago and it was not sounding great. Wadax have now a new distributor, I hope to be able to listen the Reference sometime next year.
Disclaimer: I'm in no way related to Wadax or Taiko, I'm just thinking out loud.
I do agree with you about Taiko Audio, reading the Extreme thread is something revelatory, not only because the Extreme server is beautifully build, but also because Taiko Audio goes great lenghts to ensure that every Extreme is perfectly setup and optimized. The level of customer support is mind blowing, they truly inspire confidence.
However...what if we look at the other side of the coin. What would happen if the Extreme wasn't an optimized Windows computer, but one build from the ground up just to play music? Would that render the continuous support useless, because the unit will come just with one mode ("the universally good one") and be plug and play once you download the app and select your DAC after connecting it to the server?
Of course, this means ditching the Intel CPUs and programming an FPGA (or an ASIC, like the ones in Wadax DACs). Probably a whole chassis redesign too, because FPGAs consume much less power and wouldn't need heatsinks compared to multiple parallel Intel CPUs...
There's also the argument that the best customer support is the one that you don't need to chat with, because the product works without problems and doesn't require a complex setup, the only interaction needed may be a merry christmas automated email...
Wadax doesn't use off the shelf DAC chips, not even FPGA, but custom ASIC chips programmed by them. An ASIC chip, AFAIK, usually costs 5 figures and aren't sold 1 by 1...if someone can pull a server without using a Windows/Linux platform, considering the actual product line...that someone may be Wadax.
While the Reference server looks hideously huge, I don't see external heatsinks on it...probably a clue and proof that it also uses a custom ASIC chip and not an off the shelf Intel/AMD CPU+motherboard?
I might be wrong and the Reference server could perfectly be a stripped down off the shelf computer with a huge chassis, but the company products and the lack of external heatsinks points otherwise. Considering that the Reference DAC costs 6 figures, and the Server probably costs the same, Wadax has more than ample margin to pay for the R&D required to fab and code the ASIC chip for such a task.
I don't mean to bash Taiko or Wadax, just giving an opinion/thinking out loud. The audio server world is certainly more interesting than ever.
Nor I am one...but the answer may be: programming a line of code compatible with it?
A broader question: how do you program an ASIC to be a DAC?
I can't answer that question either, but Wadax certainly can, thus they should have no problem solving the Roon integration with an ASIC, IMHO.
PS: I've been looking at their Atlantis server, the mid-tier model, and it is a Windows 10 PC. Does this means the Reference server is also a Windows PC? No one knows at the moment, I certainly hope that, for +100k dollaroonies it has a proprietary ASIC/FPGA with proper custom OS and not Intel/AMD + Windows 10.
You'd hope for $100k that Wadax have the equivalent of TAS up their sleeve. And at that price, better than TAS.
You said you were not a computer expert...how do you know it is not easy?
Depends on the programmer, an expert may write a perfect line of code in 4 hours, and me, someone who has absolutely no idea, may write it in 6 months (and with the help of 4 experts, LOL).
Without qualification, we shouldn't judge things we have no idea about as "easy" or "difficult", that's just plain wrong, @nonesup.
One thing for sure: for +100k (and not in pesetas), one should expect not just difficult, but heroic engineering. It certainly has to have something out of the ordinary to justify being several times more expensive than it's closest competitor.
Expecting them to run Roon of an ASIC is just the bare mininum, considering not only the price, but also the company's bread and butter: programming ASIC chips
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