I am pretty sure you are going to enjoy yourself tremendously with these three dials ….i almost forgot......ah yes, those 3 dials......
i had a business trip last week to Las Vegas, this next week gone to another one in Napa Valley. now that my optimizations are just about behind me, once i return those 3 dials will get my attention. it's time.
after that......mid April my vinyl upgrades will start rolling in......
Wadax Reference Dac and Server arrive
- Thread starter Mike Lavigne
- Start date
This is very interesting, Mike. Thank you for this report.*
*I am not embarrassed to concede that I am engaging happily in confirmation bias here.
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Mike wrote something similar about his preference for his vinyl when he had the MSB DAC. One presumes that the new DAC and server get him closer to the music then did the old combination. Mike also wrote that despite advancements in the digital world, vinyl is not standing still and continues to improve as well.
So far the preference remains unchanged, but an increasing percentage of time seems spent listening to the digital.
So far the preference remains unchanged, but an increasing percentage of time seems spent listening to the digital.
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A while back I had issues
that even myself felt needed attention in bass
boom lack of clean articulated sound. i fixed it with dsp. now before some bash starts dsp is good lol. after a while I went back to a non dsp playback. Wow I was shocked how much grunge and noise was back. I did fix the bass issue non dsp by then.
be it analog or dsp digital
music has what we perceive as warts but when we remove them we cannot be sure we did not
removed some music .
Some preferences may need to be changed if incorrect at first.
Some say we must know how real music sounds
At small venues or concerts
I agree but it too has faults. It's not in our room nor a recording we did ourselves or were there for both live and playback.
What music sounds like is learned and becomes preference later . So what is right ?
The distance we listen at has , I think a great effect on the objective view and that person's preference .
Any given venue adds or effects the sound of the music.
This maybe a bit off topic but to me is an attempt to square off rounded corners , and yield some light on the topic.
While Mike has amazing
Literal observations and we are lucky to have him take the time to bring us into his place . I wonder would I like his place ?
I'm sure I would and this too has an effect on me needing to adjust my preference.
that even myself felt needed attention in bass
boom lack of clean articulated sound. i fixed it with dsp. now before some bash starts dsp is good lol. after a while I went back to a non dsp playback. Wow I was shocked how much grunge and noise was back. I did fix the bass issue non dsp by then.
be it analog or dsp digital
music has what we perceive as warts but when we remove them we cannot be sure we did not
removed some music .
Some preferences may need to be changed if incorrect at first.
Some say we must know how real music sounds
At small venues or concerts
I agree but it too has faults. It's not in our room nor a recording we did ourselves or were there for both live and playback.
What music sounds like is learned and becomes preference later . So what is right ?
The distance we listen at has , I think a great effect on the objective view and that person's preference .
Any given venue adds or effects the sound of the music.
This maybe a bit off topic but to me is an attempt to square off rounded corners , and yield some light on the topic.
While Mike has amazing
Literal observations and we are lucky to have him take the time to bring us into his place . I wonder would I like his place ?
I'm sure I would and this too has an effect on me needing to adjust my preference.
the ranking/preference did not change, but the relative compare did by a significant degree. the landscape is now different. might my pending vinyl moves stretch it out again? we will see?
this morning i spent 2 hours listening to digital large scale classical references and the rightness of everything was a wonder. the bass performance in every way is superb. complex passages liquid, flowing and calm, dynamics explosive......i hated to have to get to work.
I don't know. I think you can get to the pinnacle of TTs without spending anywhere near that amount and I don't feel that even vintage tables have been superseded by modern tables at all. I wouldn't say the same about digital. Who here is still using digital that is more than 30 years old?
I continue to have Wadax experience although not in my system. Really enjoy hearing it time to time. Imo it is a well made cappuccino not a really well brew espresso. If I had a Wadax I would try to find way to peel off layer by layer more ( or reducing milk) like a few owners I know doing. Good espresso can be had from a decent tt/cart/arm/phono/cable for under $100,000 and probably much less if not me. Most digital I perceive as instant coffee.
I do not drink coffee so I am not sure if I fully understand your ‘coffee analogy’: could you please explain in somewhat more detail what you are exactly saying?
Brew espresso is unadulterated coffee with good flavor. It requires a good coffee roast and coffee filtering etc. Put in a bad roast and it tastes bad. But you get the coffee flavors when present. Cappucinno and such...you add a lot of milk to disguise coffee taste. So you taste the milk. Kind of like adding a lot of tomato ketchup to any dish you make, or dipping sushi in a lot of wasabi
If I - after the explanation of Ked - understand you correctly you are implying that the Wadax reference combo is adding its own (musical) flavor (milk in the ‘coffee analogy’). If that is indeed your point, RH in his recent TAS review (strongly) disagrees: see in particular what he wrote about the reproduced sound of a music album he recorded himself many years ago.
Interesting...more to come clearly with Wadax as more people hear it...particularly those who have SOTA analog.
You could always just have purest spring water, and forget the coffee completely.
I think Tang's analogy is that digital at its best is cappuccino compared to vinyl's brew, not particularly about Wadax. Personally I appreciate good digital but never cappuccino. Always brew my coffee. I now travel with temparature-adjustible kettle, and V60 mug, paper filters, and coffee.
One could say the same thing about alcohol. We drink it for reasons other than taste. There are many inexpensive coffees that are mild.Chock Full of Nuts is just one example. Recently I discpvered the best commercially available coffee at Sheets gas station. No buffer required
I am curios to know if Mike thinks of his new digital source as pure spring water, a refreshing drink and transparent to the recording or more like a flavor, a particular taste. He has four turntables with different arms and cartridges, presumably choosing each one for when the mood strikes.
I do not think it is so much about what flavor the rest of us think the Wadax sounds like but more about why Mike chose this particular device. There seems to be more certainty about the digital source and an interest in variety with the vinyl sources.
I do not think it is so much about what flavor the rest of us think the Wadax sounds like but more about why Mike chose this particular device. There seems to be more certainty about the digital source and an interest in variety with the vinyl sources.
I have never quite understood why so many of us fear adding flavour. If it sounds great, I have no issue. Otherwise we would all be eating that impossible meat crap...
If someone wants coffee, why will they want pure spring water? This does happen though, when people set out to get a system, on the way they forget what they were here for
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