To end, let's talk about what I think has a good chance of being at or near the pinnacle of price as a class of products. As an Audiophile Computer Server, the
Wadax Atlantis Reference Music Server (see recent
TAS review here) hailing from Spain carries one heck of a ballsy price tag!
At a hernia-inducing weight of 106lbs, asking price
starting at US$59,000 (up to US$76.5k with the optical cable and module for their DAC) for a relatively small 2TB M.2 SSD storage system, these people want you to spend twice as much as the
previously discussed Taiko SGM Extreme! While the Taiko at least looks pretty good to me with its clean design, I find the Wadax to be rather ugly. Obviously this is an opinion, and I guess the outlines and angles in the industrial design could go well with Wilson speakers if you like that kind of look.
The Wadax Server is relatively inexpensive compared to the
Wadax Atlantis Reference DAC, which costs an astronomical US$145,000 (touted to have "5500 discrete parts" - is that supposed to be good for sound quality?). I'd love to know what the THD+N/SINAD is of that baby. ;-)
Anyhow, like with other expensive Audiophile Computer Servers, here's
their "attribution theory" in the marketing to justify having done something useful for the (utilitarian) purpose of enhancing sound quality (emphasis mine):
"But from an audiophile perspective, there are a number of issues with current bit-perfect protocols. In theory, a buffered input at the receiver (DAC) end of the transfer prevents cable-induced distortion, but this overlooks two important factors. In any buffered system, the system itself has a transfer function that is constant and thus effectively invisible. But more importantly, digital transfer actually occurs in the analogue domain! The USB encoder has to convert the digital data to voltage square-waves in order to transmit it down the cable, reconverting to the digital domain at the far end. The problem is that producing perfect voltage square-waves is far from simple, even with a purpose built, high-end USB encoder.
Once again – in theory – this shouldn’t matter, as the buffered input clocks and reconstitutes the data. The problem is that this process effectively ‘counts’ data blocks rather than assessing their shape, so that distortion and displacement in the waveform, induced in the analogue domain, remains incorporated in the reconverted digital signal, invisible to the digital encoder. That doesn’t matter in many real-world computing cases, where the raw data is essentially simple binary. But in the case of audio recordings, that data is incredibly time, amplitude and phase sensitive, with small errors rapidly eroding the integrity of the whole.
Once we researched the problem and realised its implications, a whole series of related issues fell into focus. In particular, it explained why different USB cables sound so different – and why different lengths of the same cable also sound different."
As usual, there's nothing in this marketing material to suggest the expensive box does anything useful nor is there evidence that sound even changes based on the above rationale. There's an unusual section in the text talking about "counting data blocks rather than assessing their shape". At the end of the day, digital transmission is basically the accurate waveform representation of "bits" and "counting" of those waveforms to reconstruct the data. So long as the squarish waveforms are good enough to represent the data with wide enough tolerance from errors, what does it matter their exact "shape"? Digital audio data transmission is no different from "real-world... simple binary". Furthermore, if there are indeed "small errors rapidly eroding the integrity of the whole", we'd be experiencing errors in the USB transmission and the errors will be obviously non-bit-perfect with audible degradation (
as per this demo years ago).
Interestingly, they're making a big deal with the "
three rotary knobs that allow users to adjust/compensate for errors in the rise-time and amplitude of the sent signal as well as the spacing on the return channel (counteracting echoes and reflections)". They call this the "Digital Waveform Control" and touts "
more than 200 parts mounted on 12 proprietary circuit boards".
Again, is this complexity supposed to be impressive? I don't understand why they didn't just select the "best" rise-time and signal amplitude settings to begin with to reduce risk of errors as per formal USB (presumably USB 2.0) spec or their optical output. Are we to believe that reducing rise-time or dropping signal amplitudes (input and output) somehow can improve digital accuracy? This is weird and I'd love to see measurements of DAC output changing based on those adjustments! In digital, either we drop the signal below a safe threshold (thus creating potential for bit errors), or we don't; there's no need for some kind of variable knob to seek for an "optimal" setting. This kind of thinking is just fooling around with old-skool audiophiles who still engage in analogue-think when it comes to digital; which seems to be exactly what these guys want you to do (echoes of
old John Swenson talk - I don't think he has ever produced any evidence over the years for his claims).
I'm quite sure digital audio end-users would not want to play around with knobs that could lead to errors or worsen jitter if set too high or too low! This is literally what's being implied by the controls. Are there any other manufacturers claiming such a thing?
As expected, the reviewer Robert Harley hears all kinds of things. Apparently "
The optical interface seemed to provide an octave of deeper extension, with greater solidity and power below 40Hz." Wow, that's really quite an awful USB interface inside there to filter those <40Hz frequencies! Furthermore, of course Harley feels that there's benefit in those knobs since his (unspoken) job appears to be selling this nonsensical product to you [
nothing new]:
"The Speed control subjectively seemed to affect the timing of the bass guitar and kick drum; when ideally set, the two instruments combined synergistically, almost as though they were one pulse driving the rhythm. Moving the control out of its optimum setting (which you set by ear) seems to make the bass lag, with a less precise sound and diluted propulsive drive. Of course, the adjustment to the waveshape has no objective effect on the timing of the bass, but that is the subjective impression rendered by the Speed control."
So fellow audiophiles, "
In Robert's ears we trust!" or are we reading bovine excrement? Do we believe that there has been "
Qualitative advance in sound quality that is unlike the improvements I’ve heard in a single product" or is this even more
serpent lipid? I'll leave it to you... I'm just the simple audiophile who says "
Bits Are Bits" unless Wadax can demonstrate otherwise to show us the benefits of their science.
While it's impossible to know with luxury products, I think there's a good chance that we're seeing the pinnacle of expensive Audiophile Computer Servers for this economic cycle for various reasons including gross lack of value as a product class. Nobody has a crystal ball (that works 100%) and it doesn't take too much for any company to put up a big MSRP sticker, make up stories of why it's worth it, and put up a fancy web site. But I think it will be hard to to top the shameless audacity of this Wadax Atlantis Reference Server computer.
BTW, it's thoughtful of Wadax to include a height-adjustable USB cable support when you need to install your "phat" and heavy USB cable. Furthermore,
check out the girth of that patterned yellow/gold AKASA optical garden hose / anaconda Wadax uses to connect to the DAC - hilarious and IMO very ugly!
It's good to see that
TAS also reviewed the Topping D90SE DAC just before this Wadax box. Talk about a juxtaposition of no non-sense value high-fidelity gear versus IMO frivolous expense intended to boost the ego of certain individuals who feel that this represents some kind of objectively meaningless "
high end".