I’ll get to the question of musical merit in a moment. But first, there are a couple of critical set-up considerations to cover. The Studio Player sits on four, shiny, adjustable, cylindrical feet. Pick it up and you’ll notice that they rattle. Place the Player in situ and you’ll also find that they are somewhere between hard and impossible to adjust. So – BEFORE PLACING THE UNIT – you turn it on its side and loosen the feet so that they can turn freely. Like any optical disc transport, this Wadax needs to be level, with a readily audible musical impact when it is – and if it’s not. Given that the Wadax sound is built on temporal and spatial coherence, it’s not that the Studio Player is any more demanding of levelling – just that it’s so much more obvious when it isn’t.
With the Studio Player standing on its supporting surface, take the time to get it level with all four feet equally loaded. Having said that, the profiled top-plate makes that far from easy. You will either need a level that is long enough to stretch across the machine’s shoulders, or one that’s small enough but also accurate enough to sit within the flat surface between them. I resorted to course levelling using a 60cm builder’s level and then refined that with the small, T-shaped dual-axis Level Developments bubble level that I use for suspended turntables.
Feet first…
That’s the bare essentials – but it’s only step one. Those rattly feet are an historical anomaly that need to be airbrushed from current consciousness with an almost Stalinist resolve. Back in the day, the Pre 1 sat on a quartet of shallow, adjustable, conical feet. The problem was that, despite its slim dimensions it was still pretty heavy, making placing it in a rack without scratching the supporting surface a delicate operation. With the arrival of the even heavier external power supply, followed by the Atlantis series, which were bigger and heavier again, Wadax introduced stainless steel spike shoes to help protect delicate surfaces. These slipped over the cones and were held – loosely – in place by three small grub screws that prevented them falling off, or the unit getting un-shipped during placement. The problem is, they really don’t sound as good as the cones sat directly on the supporting surface. Of course, removing them is easy enough – just as long as you realise it’s an option, which relatively few people actually appreciate. Loosen the three grub screws and the shoes slip off. Don’t worry – even loose, you can still use them to slide the Player into place: then just lift the unit one end at a time, they’ll drop away and you can shift them out of the way.
When it comes to setting up the Studio Player, getting it absolutely level and sat on its conical feet, sans shoes, is the first and easiest option. But as soon as you realise that the shoes need removing, it’s equally obvious that the cones themselves can be replaced with any alternative that runs on an M6 thread, offering the opportunity to tune and/or upgrade performance.
