Breaking news from DCS….

[caesar]

Traitor ,switching camps again

Its a luxury industry , afaic he should put a diamond imbedded in gold on the frontplate

Usually you say they are all heavily biased /corrupted , and suddenly you need their opinion / confirmation ?

Hi,
Let me clarify: My tastes skew toward planar, omni, and high-efficiency because with the right partnering gear it expresses the emotion of music.

That's why I love CAT - not because it does audiophile tricks like - soundstage, imaging, presence , bloom, treble, bass, dynamics, etc., and all other audiophile garbage, which it all does, but because along with Jadis and Lamm , it communicates the essence of the musical performance.

As far as auditioning, there are too many choices out there. and too many combinations to try. No one in this hobby is selecting products independently, due to this.

We are all influenced by others, and we need to stand at the guard of our minds.

So all I am saying is if others with similar tastes as mine have tried gear, I trust them more than they guys who like box speakers, solid state, and "tube gear" for reasons different than what I am looking for. Life is just too short to spend on experiences I am not interested in.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Caesar, you are getting ahead of yourself. great threads are all about owner participation. no one owns this dac. it's all anticipation and speculation. you are spinning it to your warped view.

Stereophonic is a Wadax owner, but not the Reference. he loves the brand.

those other threads are alive and healthy because of enthusiastic ownership. that has to happen before anything positive can happen. the naysayers have the floor for now. it's how it goes at the bleeding edge. what else can we expect. people's default position is rarely positive.

 

[andromedaaudio]

hat's why I love CAT - not because it does audiophile tricks like - soundstage, imaging, presence , bloom, treble, bass, dynamics, etc., and all other audiophile garbage, which it all does, but because along with Jadis and Lamm , it communicates the essence of the musical performance.

Amen

 

[caesar]

Caesar, you are getting ahead of yourself. great threads are all about owner participation. no one owns this dac. it's all anticipation and speculation. you are spinning it to your warped view.

Stereophonic is a Wadax owner, but not the Reference. he loves the brand.

those other threads are alive and healthy because of enthusiastic ownership. that has to happen before anything positive can happen. the naysayers have the floor for now. it's how it goes at the bleeding edge. what else can we expect. people's default position is rarely positive.

Hey Mike,
With the wadax designer joining and explaining how it's a different / better design will be a much better approach than outsourcing that to worthless guys who have not done him any justice.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Hey Mike,
With the wadax designer joining and explaining how it's a different / better design will be a much better approach than outsourcing that to worthless guys who have not done him any justice.

you should email the Wadax designer and ask him your questions. or ask a dealer about it. or wait for an owner to start a thread.

some principles participate here, and other don't. it's neither the right approach or the wrong approach. the culture of Lampi and Taiko are unique and happened organically. those owners were forum participants prior to growing the brands. it's not the normal thing.

i think Herve from darTzeel said it best.

I do not participate in any kind of forums, since it usually starts gently but ends less politely than it should.

The other reason is also that people who criticize one brand, generally didn't have a listen to them, and further never committed to buy it and then to live with that specific equipment over the long haul.

I do not want to blame anybody here, it is just usual facts.

Apart from this, forums are a must and very interesting to read; I just try to keep outside and interfering as less as possible.

darTZeel NHB-468 mono blocks in my system

Congratulations Mike. Remind me to never listen to 468s so I don't decide that my 108 is completely inadequate ;)The new 108s have a similar design to the 468s... really just a lesser version.

www.whatsbestforum.com

 

[Elliot G.]

you should email the Wadax designer and ask him your questions. or ask a dealer about it. or wait for an owner to start a thread.

some principles participate here, and other don't. it's neither the right approach or the wrong approach. the culture of Lampi and Taiko are unique and happened organically. those owners were forum participants prior to growing the brands. it's not the normal thing.

i think Herve from darTzeel said it best.

darTZeel NHB-468 mono blocks in my system

Congratulations Mike. Remind me to never listen to 468s so I don't decide that my 108 is completely inadequate ;)The new 108s have a similar design to the 468s... really just a lesser version.

www.whatsbestforum.com

I own the DAC and the Server. I bought and paid for it. That stuff ain't free

 

[still-one]

Come to a dCS thread to have to read about Wadex and Lampizator plus all the other BS. WTF.

 

[stevebythebay]

Given the current state of high end audio, with a shrinking number of brick and mortar stores, and their current product line, I’m wondering if they’ve painted themselves into a corner. Wouldn’t be out of the question that dCS is positioning themselves to be acquired in some fashion, especially if they need longer term funding for R&D and new product introduction, etc.

 

[Al M.]

Come to a dCS thread to have to read about Wadex and Lampizator plus all the other BS. WTF.

WTF? No, WBF .

 

[John Giolas]

Given the current state of high end audio, with a shrinking number of brick and mortar stores, and their current product line, I’m wondering if they’ve painted themselves into a corner. Wouldn’t be out of the question that dCS is positioning themselves to be acquired in some fashion, especially if they need longer term funding for R&D and new product introduction, etc.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, dCS remains wholly committed to our distribution model in the US (and globally) for high-end two-channel systems. This year, dCS will dedicate our efforts in the US to new strategic solutions that will augment and further support the US speciality dealers' efforts to sell and market dCS products.

David Steven is committed to remaining independent, and none of his decisions is related to an external acquisition.

I'm relatively confident that no other digital company invests as much in research and development as dCS. Indeed, it is the only digital company that offers an entirely bespoke and internally designed solution for digital for both the software and hardware aspects of the design. In this area, and in the resulting technical and measurable performance, dCS remains unique.

 

[caesar]

the culture of Lampi and Taiko are unique and happened organically. those owners were forum participants prior to growing the brands. it's not the normal thing.

Hi Mike,
I respectfully disagree. I don’t think any of this is organic per se. Adoption follows a fairly steady pattern of moving from an early market, dominated by few rich guys interested in luxury for its own sake in this case, to a more “mainstream “, “larger” block of more pragmatic customers who need to understand concrete differences between products before jumping on the bandwagon.

For Wadax, the early stage has been dominated by guys who are seeking a personal luxury. And yes, high end audio is a personal luxury that is no different than someone buying a $750 toilet brush or Gwyneth Paltrow’s $15k gold dildo - for people's own personal identity. Pleasure of luxury of very nice things for their own sake is a real thing as we all know in this hobby for many people who do not invite visitors to their house (vs. buying an expensive car or wearing a huge hunk of diamonds that others see).

The more mainstream customer, on the other hand, is driven by a strong sense of practicality because so many audio products are just passing fads. So they are willing to wait and see how other people are making out before they buy-in themselves. They want to see well-established references before investing substantial skin in the game.

So things move from an early market stage to the mainstream market stage, and Lamipizator and Taiko have gone through the same process already (as have dcs and msb earlier). Like everyone else, they found a few dogs who ate the dog food and like it. They now have a small minority of vocal consumers and fans who evangelize and proselytize on their behalf. Those companies have crossed the “chasm”, if you would. It’s not an easy transition and many companies fail. And although is seems organic at this point for taiko and lamipizator , it wasn’t always this way.

Wadax needs to do the same to be successful or it will fade away like so many audio companies. So far we have only pretty much heard from mis-incentivized “audio journalists”, who have just stroked their egos and have oiled the audiophile’s machinery of desire by saying the product is THE BEST.

Yet If a true value proposition is discovered, rather than empty claims from disgusting “audio journalist” scumbags, wadax will be successful. Marketing is all about associations, and wadax shot themselves in the foot by associating with the worst elements in the industry

(Latest example from these scum bags : $200K plus CH amp is best. But for every taste and every situation???? Why do these despicable guys choose to mislead people?)

And the time may for wasax be right, as Dcs is still trying to milk their older platform and not ready to release a new one. It will be interesting to see if wadax will turn out to be a disruptive innovation at the high end of the hifi “audiophile market” and displace dcs and Msb . (I'm sure when dcs is ready with the new platform , they will waste no time to send it the stereophile wilson reviewers like Fremer and others.)

But I’m equally interested to hear if wadax will appeal to guys like me , who could care less about the audiophile sound (big soundstage, pinpoint imaging, sounds and noises one only heard on a recording ), but are interested in the emotion of music .

Alex Halberstadt has a superbly written review of the latest jadis dac in Stereophile. He claims that Jadis , unlike many expensive audiophile dacs that only excel at audiophile vocabulary, has an ability to breathe life into just about any recording. If wadax can do that, I’ll be a big fan.

(Damn, Alex Halberstadt is GOOD! What a brilliant writer! A real breath of fresh air! If he had mainstream tastes, he could be the next Valin. But I hope his tastes stay just like they are. )

https://www.stereophile.com/content/jadis-js1-mkv-reference-da-processor-page-2

Anyways, looking forward to reading your comparisons to discover that true value proposition.

 

[caesar]

Come to a dCS thread to have to read about Wadex and Lampizator plus all the other BS. WTF.

The future of dCS can potentially be greatly impacted by Wadax

 

[Stereophonic]

The future of dCS can potentially be greatly impacted by Wadax

The future of dCS is being potentially greatly impacted by itself wrong steps...

 

[stevebythebay]

I personally like to think about products in terms of what brings someone to the market on the side of creator first. If they see a "problem" they want to fix with a "solution" they have, and believe that there's a market for it, as nobody else has addressed it, then that's one thing. However, it's tricky, since the sales environment is quite diverse and competitive. Differentiating your product and making it available for people to hear is no mean feat these days (especially as fewer brick and mortar stores continue to exist).

In the arena of digital reproduction, much of what we are offered depends on where we started. Many, if not most, began with USB-based processors (typically all computer based systems, either PC or Mac or UNIX/Linix). A smaller group have begun or evolved into using network connected designs (Ethernet or WiFi). And that's before we talk about streaming versus local library. That's a fairly clear decision point.

Even worse, we all are not buying a finished "system" ... off the lot, like autos. It's a rare and financially secure person who can choose to buy a complete solution these days, let alone have a room that's suitable and comparable to what they "heard" when checking out such a system.

So, we're left with bringing in a new "player" into our homes and hoping it works for us. I'm leery of anyone who makes such bold claims about any product as best, when our personal musical ecosystem is more than likely to differ. That's even before we get to predilections of musical taste, presentation, etc.

I've heard some systems that are incredibly wonderful on a small subset of music (be it opera or small chamber pieces) and it's superior mastering and engineering, but fall flat on it's face when dealing with the vast majority of sources we listen to, whether produced in grand halls or bedrooms.

I will agree that the bottom line for most audiophiles is how we connect to music reproduction at an emotional level. And to a lesser extent, how well the system disappears, without calling attention to itself, and mitigating noise to an extent that the psycho acoustic elements that our brain "hears" are revealed.

This ear/brain combination is really extraordinary as we literally feel it in our bones as much as hear it. You are there within the recording venue is what makes the experience so thrilling when it happens.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Hi Mike,
I respectfully disagree. I don’t think any of this is organic per se. Adoption follows a fairly steady pattern of moving from an early market, dominated by few rich guys interested in luxury for its own sake in this case, to a more “mainstream “, “larger” block of more pragmatic customers who need to understand concrete differences between products before jumping on the bandwagon.

caesar, typically you take my comments out of context. i was only referring how those principles of their brands happened to be so involved in the threads about their products. you are then trying to make it bigger than WBF. not me.

For Wadax, the early stage has been dominated by guys who are seeking a personal luxury. And yes, high end audio is a personal luxury that is no different than someone buying a $750 toilet brush or Gwyneth Paltrow’s $15k gold dildo - for people's own personal identity. Pleasure of luxury of very nice things for their own sake is a real thing as we all know in this hobby for many people who do not invite visitors to their house (vs. buying an expensive car or wearing a huge hunk of diamonds that others see).

The more mainstream customer, on the other hand, is driven by a strong sense of practicality because so many audio products are just passing fads. So they are willing to wait and see how other people are making out before they buy-in themselves. They want to see well-established references before investing substantial skin in the game.

get over your focus on elitism. buyers for 'uber' sources are not the bling-bling consumers. they are all-in performance geeks/enthusiasts. 'uber' speakers....not so much. a different crowd for those. you are not doing your homework.

So things move from an early market stage to the mainstream market stage, and Lamipizator and Taiko have gone through the same process already (as have dcs and msb earlier). Like everyone else, they found a few dogs who ate the dog food and like it. They now have a small minority of vocal consumers and fans who evangelize and proselytize on their behalf. Those companies have crossed the “chasm”, if you would. It’s not an easy transition and many companies fail. And although is seems organic at this point for taiko and lamipizator , it wasn’t always this way.

Lampi and Taiko are not reasonable acts to follow. and they are each too unique within themselves to be very much even compared to each other. Taiko was more evolving from DIY computer audio, Lampi big with tube rollers. neither of these give us a path to follow. we just respect both for their relentlessness. and be glad they both exist in our community.

Wadax needs to do the same to be successful or it will fade away like so many audio companies. So far we have only pretty much heard from mis-incentivized “audio journalists”, who have just stroked their egos and have oiled the audiophile’s machinery of desire by saying the product is THE BEST.

Yet If a true value proposition is discovered, rather than empty claims from disgusting “audio journalist” scumbags, wadax will be successful. Marketing is all about associations, and wadax shot themselves in the foot by associating with the worst elements in the industry

(Latest example from these scum bags : $200K plus CH amp is best. But for every taste and every situation???? Why do these despicable guys choose to mislead people?)

And the time may for wasax be right, as Dcs is still trying to milk their older platform and not ready to release a new one. It will be interesting to see if wadax will turn out to be a disruptive innovation at the high end of the hifi “audiophile market” and displace dcs and Msb . (I'm sure when dcs is ready with the new platform , they will waste no time to send it the stereophile wilson reviewers like Fremer and others.)

But I’m equally interested to hear if wadax will appeal to guys like me , who could care less about the audiophile sound (big soundstage, pinpoint imaging, sounds and noises one only heard on a recording ), but are interested in the emotion of music .

Alex Halberstadt has a superbly written review of the latest jadis dac in Stereophile. He claims that Jadis , unlike many expensive audiophile dacs that only excel at audiophile vocabulary, has an ability to breathe life into just about any recording. If wadax can do that, I’ll be a big fan.

(Damn, Alex Halberstadt is GOOD! What a brilliant writer! A real breath of fresh air! If he had mainstream tastes, he could be the next Valin. But I hope his tastes stay just like they are. )

https://www.stereophile.com/content/jadis-js1-mkv-reference-da-processor-page-2

Anyways, looking forward to reading your comparisons to discover that true value proposition.

Wadax needs to be the best Wadax it can be and then go with it. i think they are working hard on that and i'm glad to be involved in it. they focused hard on making a better mouse-trap, and did not hold back. took risks. now just going for it. we are all better for it.

all the hifi press stuff is so much noise; now the reality begins, will owners be enthusiastic to keep the buzz going? will it build or fade? stay tuned!

i think the only area where Wadax needs to mimic Taiko is the server side of things and how much hand holding is needed. that is not a trivial point and hard act to follow by Taiko.

 

[Lagonda]

caesar, typically you take my comments out of context. i was only referring how those principles of their brands happened to be so involved in the threads about their products. you are then trying to make it bigger than WBF. not me.

get over your focus on elitism. buyers for 'uber' sources are not the bling-bling consumers. they are all-in performance geeks/enthusiasts. 'uber' speakers....not so much. a different crowd for those. you are not doing your homework.

Lampi and Taiko are not reasonable acts to follow. and they are each too unique within themselves to be very much even compared to each other. Taiko was more evolving from DIY computer audio, Lampi big with tube rollers. neither of these give us a path to follow. we just respect both for their relentlessness. and be glad they both exist in our community.

Wadax needs to be the best Wadax it can be and then go with it. i think they are working hard on that and i'm glad to be involved in it.

A few positive private adopters of your caliber and their detailed feedback would take them a long way ! Something for Wadax to consider when they quote you a price Mike ! You have singlehandedly put a few pricy product to general attention before !

 

[skids929]

Makes me happy I chose MSB..I might have considered DCS for like 10 seconds, still always though highly of their designs. Hard to beat the business model of MSB and their service is always top notch. I always figured DCS was just as solid a company but apparently not, and Wadax has come on strong with dealers in the US, that I know because MSB has pulled away from some of those dealers.

 

[Stereophonic]

You are right….

 

[skids929]

You are right….
View attachment 87233

And your point? They're probably awestruck at the hideous look of it.

 

[XV-1]

Hi Mike,

For Wadax, the early stage has been dominated by guys who are seeking a personal luxury. And yes, high end audio is a personal luxury that is no different than someone buying a $750 toilet brush or Gwyneth Paltrow’s $15k gold dildo - for people's own personal identity.

Wow, learn something new everyday- Gwyneth Paltrow has a 15K gold dildo

Looks like it may may a great remote control as well