The operative word here is “risk”. Musically coherent digital front-ends exist – as the Wadax and CH CD replay chains demonstrate. More affordable options also exist, both from those companies and others, but it’s notable just how successful the Wadax Studio Player has been in the real world, often replacing far more expensive, multi-box digital solutions from the likes of dCS. It’s doing it on the basis of superior musical coherence. Likewise, large and complex speaker systems from companies like Magico (the new S7 2026), Göbel and Rockport have all demonstrated what’s possible with a truly coherent speaker design. I’m sure that somewhere, there’s a genuinely high-end solution that combines digital and analogue functionality in a single box – although I’ve yet to find it. Meanwhile, musically satisfying record players are abundant, if not exactly ten-a-penny…
The implications of this are both easily demonstrated and far reaching, especially if you want to understand why entry-level audio systems are so unsatisfactory. If CD players face a challenge, working with fixed, physical media, streaming solutions are effectively all at sea. It’s not just that they can’t see solid ground, they don’t even have a compass to point them in the right direction.
Fast-forward back to the present day and you can see those implications writ large in the Wadax/CH/Göbel system we’ve expended so much time and so many pixels discussing. The Wadax Reference Transport/DAC and the CH Precision D10/C10/Conductor sit head and shoulders above the digital competition, setting an entirely new standard for digital replay. They are musically quite distinct, one from the other. But technologically they have a number of similarities, not least an unprecedented emphasis on power supply (and noise floor) and an obsession with timing and interference between circuit blocks. The Wadax employs heavily segmented chassis components, while CH has taken the step of removing all of the critical DSP circuitry from the same box as the DACs. Neither step is an accident, nor is its successful contribution to the musical whole a surprise. We’ve known for a long time that clocking errors erode the quality and accuracy of digital reproduction, while spurious noise and RF interference has an equally destructive impact on the performance of DACs. But arguably, these products are the first to take the issues if not seriously, then seriously enough.
Meanwhile, too many speaker systems concentrate on individual aspects of performance, going for easily demonstrable ‘wins’ rather than overall improvement. Musical reproduction is about pattern – the pattern of notes defined in terms of time and amplitude – but imbalances in the system pull that performance out of shape and those imbalances are and always have been, most obvious in the transducers. Nor is it just the design of those speakers. The way they’re used can be just as destructive, from poor placement to system topology.
The classic example is the re-emerging trend for horizontal and differential bi-amping – using one amp to drive a speaker’s upper registers, a second, different (often different type of) amp to drive the bass. Not only does this throw aside the topological benefits of a single amp dealing with a single, full bandwidth (rather than seeing twice the demands from a limited bandwidth – at least if using stereo amps) it introduces a discontinuity in character, generally in the rhythmically and dynamically critical mid-bass, where musical coherence is at its most vulnerable. Sonic gains through greater ‘grip’ or ‘bass control’ always come at the expense of musical balance and continuity – the hardest qualities to achieve in any multi-way speaker design. “But the different legs of the crossover impose different loads anyway, so a different amp might handle those demands better,” or so say the advocates. Good luck with that. Yes, the different legs present different loads, but do you really think that their impact on identical amp channels (especially stereo amp channels deploying their power supplies to maximum advantage) outweighs the differences between completely different amps?
