Fair enough.
Albeit, at the time the Vivaldi One was designed/launched, there was probably much more demand for an all-in-one that included the TOTL CD/SACD Transport.
Agreed
I keep on reading that CD’s have made a comeback. Perhaps that is why the new Wadax studio includes a CD mechanism.
Regardless of everything imho dCS needs to come out with something new. At the high end Wadax and MSB have new products out. The Vivaldi is 13 years old. Enough said.
2 Likes
Apparently the same D&M CD/SACD mech. I’m curious if their streaming board is from StreamUnlimited as well 
As I frequently told my kids when they were young and asking too many questions:
“ask Larry and Sergei” 
I just asked “the boys” who were D&M and came up with this interesting tidbit
So it looks like Wadax is using a mechanism in their brand new player which is already out of production.
Not necessarily. You might have missed the other thread;
1 Like
Maybe from seniors who are smoking crack! ; )
No one under 25 has even owned a CD. They don’t know what a transport is. They do know what Spotify is. They know Apple Music and TikTok.
From an engineering perspective, moving parts are a problem. They make noise and break, just as Gregg mentions.
I see the value in transports for the older generation, who either has a big catalog of CDs/SACDs and does not want, or is resistent to transitioning to digital. I personally was once in this camp.
But those people (sadly) not be alive in 20-30 years, and the transport market will die, just like cassette tapes, VHS and other then timely, but now inferior, media storage technologies.
If you read that statement carefully it sounds like he’s saying dCS already bought all the stock they expect to need to build/support their transports. He didn’t say the news was incorrect or that the mech is not discontinued.
5 Likes
In which case it’s a good thing I’m not looking to purchase the Wadax 
3 Likes
Anyone here on the forum by any chance a customer of Goodwin’s High End (Waltham, MA)?
If so you will be able to listen to the New WADAX Studio next Thursday at its North American premiere, and presumably subsequently compare it with a dCS front end. Presumably the Rossini APEX Player is the closest equivalent.
If anyone is going please report back, very curious to hear impressions from someone used to dCS equipment!
2 Likes
I’ve said before, if Wadax was the best digital sound in the world for half the price of dCS, I’d still have to find someone to build a box I could put around their DAC before I could buy it. 
5 Likes
Honestly, I think the Wadax Studio is a nice looking component. I would love to audition it next to my Rossini (or a Vivaldi) to see how it compares.
People keep saying the Vivaldi is “13 years old” but it’s really only two years old with Apex.
If one is going to make these tech comparisons, one should look at the true age of the technology.
4 Likes
I wonder what our impressions of the Varese will be versus the Wadax…will we sing with apologies to Steely Dan,
“…Oh no, Guadalajara won’t do. The boys in Cambridge really took him to school…”
6 Likes
I was speaking to a friend recently about the increasing difficulty in improving the state-of-the-art in audio reproduction because we’re so close to the hearing thresholds already, and Wadax came up.
He had a very interesting PoV/analogy about Wadax and their musIC processing - “Like spraying air-freshener in the toilet; it doesn’t remove the smell, but adds a new mixed fragrance instead.”
I don’t necessarily share that same exact view, but given my (albeit limited) experience with Room correction digital signal processing, I can imagine extraneous digital signal processing of source bits can be a bad thing.
1 Like
I saw the same schematic and I have to say it raises more questions than it answers. It would appear to me that the “contaminants” (non-linearities, distortion etc.) are all variable, either in the frequency domain, the time domain or both. So the “Map” must be dynamic? If it is a feedback system it will always be lagging behind, the diagram implies it is somehow applied in advance.
So is it like spraying little bits of air freshener as the odor disperses or is it a case of predicting the odor based on what one has eaten, spraying a carefully calculated amount of a selected fragrance preemptively and hoping for the best?? 
That does tend to agree with what Tony Faulkner recently said in this forum in regards to digital processing.
1 Like
Various Forward Error Correction (FEC) schemes are pretty common in the Telecommunications space; where along with the main signal transmission, an embedded test pattern is periodically sent across the system to measure non-linearities and to calculate pre-compensation.
I don’t know how exactly the Wadax system works, but when they use a term such as “System Map”, and given their early history of using musIC for RIAA and Speaker crossover compensation, I’m pretty sure the Wadax scheme is static - which, as you rightly point out, isn’t a good thing as the system is likely to change over time. Plus it can’t compensate for random system noise.
I think there’s a reason why Wadax don’t want their system measured by the likes of Stereophile; I seriously doubt it measures better than the top measuring DACs.
Exactly.
1 Like
I am in fact a customer of Goodwin’s. In my experience they are a competent and thoughtful dealer. I have had a great service experience with them over the years, especially Michael and Jim.
Goodwin’s was/is also the primary location for dCS APEX upgrades for the Northeast portion of the US. Jim (lead tech) has personally done hundreds I am sure, including my Rossini.
They have in fact become more positive on Wadax over the years and so them hosting the event is not a surprise. I personally have never heard Wadax gear, and must confess to being a bit of a skeptic, a sentiment which increased dramatically after Wadax released a ~$100,000 music server, which runs a Roon core (?!) 
Alas, Goodwin’s is outside of Boston, and I am in NYC, so I won’t be able to make it. You’ll just have to do your own auditioning @struts001 ; )
R
2 Likes
I hadn’t read much about their Server till you mentioned it.
Some of what they write about it on their website is almost comically stupid 
https://landing.wadax.eu/reference-server/
Rather than relying on the Ethernet to carry your fragile data from the Reference Server to your DAC, at Wadax we prefer a direct link using USB. But no ordinary USB. Rather than off-the-shelf components, we build our own USB physical layer driver to ensure accurate data transfer.
Ethernet is the most ubiquitous interface on the planet for the simple reason that it’s very robust and proven over billions of deployments. To call it “fragile” just makes Wadax look like fools.
And there’s even more rubbish in the “The Breakthrough” section of that page
1 Like
Agreed.
And the quotes from TAS are equally cringe-worthy.
1 Like