DAC + WADAX Server ATLANTIS REFERENCE + Link AKASA

Where it is about an extraordinary couple, costing the price of a pretty country house, bordering on provocation for many. This is not refuted by the distributor Sound & Colors, adding that sales of such cars will be counted, in France, on the fingers of one hand. However, should we deny its existence? In the United States, the Wadax Atlantis Reference DAC/server pair is hitting the headlines: “all this technology for reading digital files, but anyway, we've known how to do it for a long time, so what's the point? » read on the forums, from reviewers who have had access to one or the other machine, “if you expect digital – even very, very good digital – you are going to be in for a shock” ( Roy Gregory on the DAC, theaudiobeat.com, November 2020).

The Wadax company, based in Madrid, is managed by Javier Guadalajara. Dedicated to digital audio, it publishes two ranges, Atlantis and Atlantis Reference, and boasts a very strong investment in R&D. For the Atlantis Reference range, particular attention is paid to questions of wave correction, wireless transmission jitterreduction of background noise (clocks and power supplies). Added to this is a design completely organized into distinct sub-assemblies.

The Atlantis Reference DAC adopts a dual mono to dual differential DAC design, therefore fully symmetrical, with the left and right channels strictly independent. Wadax implements a proprietary musIC 3 technology running at 128 bits; the algorithm anticipates possible conversion nonlinearities based on variations in the input signal. The Zepto clock lowers the level of jitter at just 12 fs (femtosecond: 10-15 s). The DAC receives a large number of inputs: USB 32 Bit/384 kHz, DSD256 and MQA, AES/EBU, S/PDIF RCA and BNC 24 Bit/192 kHz. The audio outputs are XLR.

The technical achievement is pushed to the extreme. The chassis, milled from solid aluminum blocks, has separate compartments for the different sub-assemblies and their power supplies. There are more than 5,500 components divided into 23 boards, 10 wound transformers for power supplies, 30 local regulation stages and 5 DC regulation stages. This results in a noise level of barely 0.5 µV (1 Hz-100 kHz), which is almost unmeasurable. The weight is: 78 kg.

Appearing in 2020, the Atlantis Reference Server is even more surprising. Rarely will a network reader have developed such pacified processing of files passing through RJ45 (Ethernet) before.

Although autonomous, it is primarily intended to be coupled with the Atlantis Reference DAC. A “strongly recommended” option is the Akasa optical link kit developed in partnership with “a major Japanese optical engineering company”. Connection which requires the installation of dedicated driver and receiver cards in the server and the DAC, and has the advantage of galvanically isolating the two entities while optimizing the transfer of music files (see photo). 200 components, 12 printed circuits, a chassis cut from aluminum for a weight of 48 kg underline its excess.

The server is Roon and only Roon, a claimed choice, and features a USB output and S/PDIF outputs making it compatible with other DACs. It can also accommodate four SSD drives. THE Digital Waveform Control (DWC) allows, using three rotary knobs, to adjust/compensate for errors in the rise time and amplitude of the signal sent to the DAC.

An entire afternoon in their company at Présence Audio Conseil was not enough to get around it, let alone get tired of it. The complete system implemented Greek Pilium Ares and Achilles electronics, Magico M2 columns, all wired in Crystal Cable Da Vinci. Isotec Super Titan mains treatment for amplification and Super Nova for sources, plus a TechDas Air Force 3 Premium turntable and a Soulution phono stage reduced to the role of figuration. Main observation: we forget (almost) that it is dematerialized music, as the notes gain in airiness, intensity, reality, without this willingly overrated side of digital. Fond memory of the voice of baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in “ Good night ” of Winter trip by Schubert (DG), analog recording transcended by the Wadax. The page ends. To conclude, let us quote this American Internet user, srrxr71: “This money would be better spent on therapy” (audioscience-review.com/forum). If we consider the beneficial effects of music precisely demonstrated by science, it is debatable.

PPI : Atlantis Reference Server : 76 890 €.

Atlantis Reference DAC : 186 000 €.

Bottom: 22 920 €.

Reference Power Supply : 58 920 €.

soundandcolors.com