High End 2019 • Best of Show

When we were asked that perennial show-favorite question, “Seen/heard anything good?” this was the system to which we directed those asking. Last year, Spanish brands Wadax and Fono Acustica, the room’s co-sponsors, posted the best sound from a system using a digital source, with Wadax debuting its complete Atlantis digital front-end. This year, Wadax went one better, delivering what was for us the most impressive performance at the show -- not least because it did so with another digital front-end, the recently released Wadax Atlantis Reference DAC along with its dedicated transport. Having already experienced the new monster converter at a special Audio Exotics launch event in Hong Kong, we were expecting great things, but we were still taken aback by the results -- not least because the portents seemed questionable to say the least.

Last year, the Atlantis DAC delivered its signal to a Robert Koda K15 line stage, feeding a pair of Engström Lars monoblocks, driving an Avantgarde Trio spherical-horn/active Basshorn system. This year, much of the chain remained the same with the Fono Acustica Virtuoso cables hooking together the latest Robert Koda K15EX line stage ($58,000) and Engström Lars amplifiers ($68,750 per pair), only this time around they were being asked to drive the massive Kharma Exquisite Grand Signature loudspeakers ($280,000 per pair), passive monsters with seven drivers a side, including a pair of 12” bass units. Even at a claimed 92dB sensitivity, that’s a world away from the part-active Trio rig, with its 107dB efficiency, and it looks like an awful lot of loudspeaker for 42 watts of power. Presumably, Wadax and Fono Acustica thought so too, as they took the precaution of ensuring the presence of a second set of Lars monoblocks. Even so, we approached the room for the first time fearing a system that might be more Florence Foster Jenkins than Frederica von Stade. As it was, we needn’t have worried, and right from the start this system was clearly very special indeed.

As impressive as the line stage, speakers, cables and the single set of Lars monos -- amps that proved quite sufficient to the task -- undoubtedly were, the star of this particular show was the monumental Atlantis Reference DAC ($130,000). We’d seen the pictures and been warned, but believe us when we say that nothing quite prepares you for the reality of this massive, multi-chassis alloy monster. Spread across a single platform, it measures fully 866mm or almost a yard wide, with each block being very nearly a foot tall and quite a bit deeper than that. Fortunately, you can array the twin power supplies beneath the head unit, allowing it to be arranged vertically in a standard rack, but there’s no escaping the visual impact of the creature when it’s arrayed in a single rank. Totally dual mono and fully balanced in topology, this is also the first dual-differential implementation of the Wadax MusIC technology, the innovative and musically impressive error-correction system, a load sensitive, algorithmic feed-forward based technology that corrects for DAC-induced time and phase errors. Massive, heavily filtered and regulated external power supplies feed extensive distributed regulation throughout the circuitry, while card-cage construction ensures that each critical circuit block is field serviceable or updatable. That requires no fewer than 23 individual circuit boards, ten individual transformers and over 5500 discrete components to implement -- which along with the carved from solid chassis construction and extensive mechanical grounding helps explain the huge cost.

One thing that rammed home the musical superiority of this system was the choice of demonstration program material. The Wadax Reference DAC accepts native DSD from a dedicated Atlantis transport ($45,000) via a new triple AES/EBU connection that replaces the dual Ethernet hookup on the standard Atlantis. Dedicated DSD decoding rather than conversion to PCM really shows the musical benefits of the SACD format, and it was no surprise that much of the music played on this system was from the high-res discs. Musical performance was astonishingly natural and unforced, devoid of the tell-tale digital fingerprints of normal optical disc replay or the rounding warmth and temporal imprecision of analog sources. Here was a sound that was neither digital nor analog in nature -- it was simply music. Smaller-scale acoustic pieces sounded almost preternaturally real, while the human, organic nature of the sound was immediately appealing and communicative, with no audible trace of the digital or mechanical process that had produced it.

Playing the familiar Benedetti Michelangeli/Giulini Beethoven First Piano Concerto, a recording that’s become an acid test of system performance, both for its inherent musicality and its availability across all formats, the SHM-SACD version [Deutsche Grammophon UCGG-90440] displayed not only Giulini’s masterful control of orchestral balance, level and tempo, but his soloist’s quicksilver brilliance and expressive range. Here was note weight and tonal density, dynamic shading and dynamic impact, to swoon over. One practiced pianist, bowled over by the orchestral opening, sat in slack-jawed wonder at the fluid articulation and subtle weighting of Benedetti Michelangeli’s playing, the depth of the conversation between soloist and orchestra, and the fluency of the performance as a whole.

Familiar performances as varied as the Du Pré/Elgar Cello Concerto SACD [EMI 50999 9 55905 2] and Eleanor McEvoy’s Yola SACD [Mosco EMSACD1] didn’t so much reveal new nuance as simply throw off the shackles of reproduction, the music and performances standing bold and separate from the system reproducing them. Nor was the effect limited solely to SACD -- with CD, UHQCD and even Glass CD all getting their turn. In each and every case, demonstration disc or visitor’s request, listeners simply forgot the system, bowled over by the sheer natural accessibility of the music being produced.

Perhaps the last word should go to an industry insider and analog diehard who asked that fateful question. We sat beside him as he listened to familiar track after familiar track, and he turned to us and opined, “So, it doesn’t have to be vinyl!” Who knew that the road to Damascus ran through Munich's MOC?