For existing owners of Wadax Reference DACs, the arrival of the Reference Transport finally realises the potential in the electronics they’ve already invested in. The server was good. The Reference PSU made it better. But the Transport is a whole new musical ball game. You don’t own a Ref DAC unless you are serious about your music. If you are serious about your music and you own a Ref DAC, you need to hear the Reference Transport. It really is that simple.
For those whose interest is less invested or more academic, the question is how the Reference DAC and Transport stack up against other digital source options and where they rank in the overall scheme of audio performance. Is there an optical disc replay chain to challenge the performance of the Wadax components? Do these Wadax products finally allow optical disc replay to challenge what’s possible from vinyl records? CH Precision’s D10, C10 and T10 combination (by far the most credible digital alternative) is incoming. In its most ambitious, eight-box configuration it promises to present the Wadax with some serious competition, while standards of vinyl replay continue to improve. We certainly live in interesting times and we’ll see how the immediate future plays out. Meanwhile, I’m certainly living an interesting life – thanks to my entire CD collection just getting a whole lot better…
Prices and availability:
Wadax Reference Transport – €106,000/$115,000 USD
Dual Akasa Optical Input Module for Reference DAC
Akasa Optical Cable
Wadax Reference PSU – €54,300/$58,000 USD
Akasa Reference DC umbilical – €21,000/$22,600 USD 1.0m
All prices plus local sales tax.
Manufacturer
Wadax S.A.
Ronda de Abubilla 33 – Bl. 10
28043 Madrid
Spain
*The physical characteristics and mechanical behaviour of the optical disc itself have been massively underestimated in the shadow of the industry obsession with higher resolution and bigger numbers. You would have thought that, in the case of something as high-tech and with a fully automated production process like CD, sample consistency shouldn’t be an issue. Yet, recent experience with the CD Sound Improver lathe has demonstrated not only that few CDs are genuinely concentric, but the variation between discs is enormous and the error in some cases, astonishing.
Of course, optical replay systems incorporate servo compensation to adjust speed and laser location to allow for this variation, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch and those error correction operations generate their own noise and power supply artefacts, affecting not only the accuracy of the correction itself, but potentially impacting downstream operations too. Consider also, that the CD’s rotation is the result of a direct-drive motor and the implications of trying to constantly and precisely vary the speed of the disc become obvious.
Yes, there are exceptions to the description above. Belt drive transports exist, while Pioneer produced their Stable Platter mechanism, a transport that mirrored record replay, by having a platter and mat while reading the disc from above. However, despite both approaches delivering interesting results, they remained minority solutions.
