With that in mind, perhaps it’s time to meet our all-star cast…
Wadax is far from being some blushing ingénue. Their novel, feed-forward error correction technology has been being refined for the last ten-years. What the Reference DAC does is lift the already impressive musical results of established products like the Atlantis DAC to a whole new level of performance, through more sophisticated implementation and ancillary engineering. The two-box Atlantis was already a substantial beast: the Reference DAC takes clock accuracy, channel isolation and power supplies to a completely new level – and the musical performance too. Reviewed by some of the highest profile writers around the World, the consensus has been that the reference DAC doesn’t just raise the bar, it does so by a significant margin – pretty much lifting it out of sight for the existing competition. The supplied transport is actually the Reference version of the existing Atlantis universal transport, defined by its inclusion of a triple AES/EBU data bus. As such it is an interim solution. Wadax has already launched a Reference Server, housed in the same substantial chassis as the DAC and featuring a proprietary optical interface of unprecedented size and sophistication. It is, if anything, even more impressively groundbreaking than the DAC. Expect a similarly styled and equally ambitious disc spinner to appear in due course.
CH Precision has also been making its 1 Series electronics for a decade – and making increasing waves with them too. Although they started life as very much the cutting edge digital enterprise, their analogue electronics, the L1 line-stage preamplifier, P1 phono-stage and M1.1 configurable power amp have quietly established themselves as benchmark performers, combining astonishing versatility with superb musical qualities, technical excellence with technologically agnostic delivery. If “neutrality” is an over-used and increasingly value-laden term, one that has started to suggest more than just a slight lean from the vertical, then time spent with the CH electronics might well force you to reassess both the concept and its usefulness. Switch from almost any amplifiers, tube or solid-state, to a CH alternative and the emphasis will fall heavily on the impact and licence imposed by the previous system. The studied, unforced even-handedness of the Swiss electronics is so decidedly neutral as to be almost a cliché – if only it wasn’t so musically communicative and engaging. The problem with constantly embarrassing the competition in this fashion is that sooner or later, someone is going to do it to you. I’m not sure if it was ironic or a weird form of just deserts, but when the product finally arrived that finally laid the 1 Series low, it came from none-other than CH Precision themselves.
Enter the CH Precision 10 Series with the L10 line-stage and M10 power amp, the first in a new family of products to sit above the 1 Series in terms of price and shoot higher in terms of ambition. To say that CH has hit its target would be an understatement. First exposure to the 10 Series almost inevitably leads to dropped jaws followed by silly grins, slightly hysterical laughter and then a puzzled frown, because what the 1 Series has been cheerfully doing to all comers, the new 10 Series does to it! Listening to the new, flagship amps forces you to wonder just how you could have been so impressed by theP1, L1 and M1.1. Yet the true measure of the 10 Series’ achievement lies in the fact that the 1 Series is still just as good as it always was. They still set that bar beyond the reach of almost everything else. It’s just that the 10 Series has eclipsed that performance, not so much raising the bar higher as fixing it to a completely different scale, achieving a new level of un-intrusive excellence, operational invisibility and musical articulation. Rather than being a barrier to musical expression, these are amps that seem to help and extend that quality – all without you hearing them do it.
