As if to ram that point home, owners can choose to add the $58K USD external Reference Power Supply to the Transport. Not satisfied with the already over the top power supply provision within the chassis, Wadax offers the opportunity to take DC quality a whole stage further by adding the ultra-quiet external supply first developed for the Server. This further segments the internal DC arrangements, taking responsibility for the reading and output functions, leaving the internal supply split across the motor drive and display/operational functions. Along with the external supply comes a choice of Akasa DC umbilicals to join the two boxes together, with standard (black), Studio (blue) or Reference (red) options, with prices ranging from around $1000 to $20,000 each.
Such an extravagant upgrade path might seem like overkill, especially for a dedicated transport, but it simply moves the Reference disc spinner onto the same level as, sharing the same priorities as, the other Reference components. Wadax has, from day one, stipulated the critical importance of power supply quality to digital replay, a stance embodied in the external supply architecture of the Pre1 Ultimate and Atlantis DAC, but fully realised in the three-box design of the Ref DAC. Not only is power supply and DC quality the foundation on which digital replay (and all audio performance) is built, it’s an obvious avenue of attack in improving and extending the performance of the already impressive Atlantis Transport.
Data transfer…
Having developed the proprietary Akasa optical interface to ensure the cleanest possible, wide-bandwidth data transfer from the Reference Server to the Reference DAC, it was an obvious step to include the technology in the Reference Transport, although in doing so, Wadax presented themselves with a practical problem. The Ref DAC only offered a single Akasa Optical input, necessitating the development of a dual optical input module, with connections individually optimised for the Server and Transport if users wanted to use both sources. Despite the almost cult-like devotion to high-res file replay amongst the audio community, the expected performance of the Reference Transport (not to mention the elastic budget of most Wadax Reference owners) made this more than just likely. Meanwhile, the proprietary Akasa optical interface is itself far from small, another design consideration mandating a larger chassis. The Reference Transport chassis might be big, but inside, it’s packed…
The application of the Akasa technology – and especially the user tuneable Digital Waveform Control (DWC) feature – to the field of optically-derived data transfer presented a different set of challenges. DWC was developed to handle the wildly differing error patterns occurring in file replay and network data transfer, the results of different file provenance, source locations, routing and network infrastructure. But the Reference Transport is a closed system with far more consistent source material and encoding standards. Moving data from disc surface to the DAC’s optical input will always involve a transfer function or error, but in this instance it’s possible to calculate that error precisely and correct it using pre-defined DWC settings that are auto calibrated into the transport’s Akasa output.
