However, there is at least one area of setup and tuning in which the Reference DAC is almost modest in its demands and that’s in the realm of cabling. Yes, it requires a pair of matching (type and length) power cords for best results, and another for the transport, but that pales into insignificance compared to the multiple power and clock cables demanded by other flagship, multi-box solutions from dCS, Esoteric or CH Precision. Given the price of a decent power cord, that’s no small consideration.

o where do you start with a product whose residual error mechanisms are below the threshold of conventional measurement? How about with what’s not there? Generally, it’s immediately obvious if a replay system is digitally sourced -- especially if you are inured to the characteristic, mechanically derived "shaping" and distortions of even the best analog systems. Yet the Wadax Reference DAC and transport exhibit none of the normal digital fingerprints, the sonic and musical characteristics that label a source so indelibly as digital. The grain, hesitance, fractured tempi and stripped harmonics that are the thumbprint of digital processing are absent. Instead, colors are rich, harmonics vibrant, pitch and dynamics explicit and, where appropriate, emphatic. The acoustic and the images that inhabit it are coherent and dimensional, the relationship between musicians as natural as the rhythms that weave and flow through their music. So it sounds analog? No. What’s interesting is that it exhibits none of the analog characteristics either. There’s no tilted top end or lumps and bumps at the bottom, no projected midband or enhanced sense of presence and body. Rather than the artificially warmed-up and rounded-out balance that certain DACs adopt to sound more "analog," the Wadax Reference DAC sounds almost preternaturally linear from top to bottom, with an easy clarity and separation that are equally evenly distributed.

That linearity is obvious in the definition, transparency and symmetry of the soundstage and acoustic space, a quality revealed on even run-of-the-mill recordings. Alpha Classics’ recent Sibelius releases, with Santtu-Matias Rouvali and the Gothenburg Symphony, make up in energy and drama what they lack in sonic sophistication. Yet even here the Wadax pairing unearths a natural perspective, scale and orchestral location, with well-defined dimensions, boundaries and volume. The pizzicato bass notes that punctuate the first and open the second movement of the Second Symphony [Alpha 574] have a beautiful sense of pitch, pace, timbre, weight and natural attack, with none of the softness or lack of body that you hear so often. These are big, wooden instruments, with deep bodies and long, thick strings -- not cardboard cutouts arranged like a washing line. Favorite studio pop like Bill Mallonee’s Audible Sigh [Compass Records 7 4295 2] benefits from that natural sense of dimensionality, scale and separation, but what you notice here is the tight and propulsive nature of the bottom end. Like many a three-piece, the band relies heavily on the melodic contributions of the bass guitar, its busy, tuneful lines lock into the bass drum’s rhythm without ever blurring the boundary between the two, bringing an infectious, insistent quality to the tracks -- a quality that’s familiar from many a live performance, irrespective of genre.

But listen to discs with more highly developed dimensional qualities and the results are startlingly impressive. Reine De Coeur is a recent recital recording [PentaTone PTC 5186 810] with young German soprano Hanna-Elisabeth Müller. Despite the small scale of the forces involved -- just voice and piano -- the recording throws a soundstage and acoustic that are remarkable not only for the clearly defined walls, ceiling and the natural scale of the performers, but also for the acoustic character that it brings to and superimposes on the listening room. It is literally like being transported to another place -- an impressive demonstration of just how accurately the Reference DAC preserves the dimensional cues on the recording, accurately enough to fool our primary (and most sensitive) defense mechanism.

Move up in scale to something larger, with more bottom-end energy and extension, and that linearity, clarity and grasp of pattern and placement become even more apparent. The Polskie Radio SACD of Górecki conducting his own Third Symphony [Polskie Radio PR SACD2], a work of three slow, mournful movements that can easily become ponderous on the wrong system, proves the point. From the way the opening applause on this live recording reaches out to envelop the listener, the almost cinematic impression of the orchestra settling, mapped out by their shuffles and incidental noise, the familiar woody timbre of the double-bass opening, to the clarity and intelligibility of the split string parts and their contrapuntal nature: the whole event opens in front of you, the orchestra and acoustic properly deep and narrow, the height of the Holy Cross Church as clear as the risers that separate the bass section from the cellos. It all adds to the sense of performance, the impression of the event and being there. It all adds to the ease with which you can decipher (and enjoy) the music -- whether that music is classical, rock or jazz.

While it risks being reductive, it is also not difficult to trace a direct path from the Reference DAC and Transport’s electrical and mechanical attributes to their musical performance: the vanishingly low jitter, the exceedingly low phase and timing error, and the low noise floor that is, for all intents and purposes, silent. By getting more information in the right place at the right time, with unrestricted dynamic range and resolution, the Wadax Reference units are reducing error and signal gating right where it does the most good -- at the source. The result is that there are no stripped harmonics or pockets of energy added or subtracted, and there’s no etching to add space or subtle impetus to add purpose to the music. Instead, the lower registers carry their natural weight, position and perspective, a clearly defined dimensional and musical foundation for the rest of the performance, one that sets the pace and placement for the recording as a whole. You hear that in the clarity of a track like "Hard Luck & Heart Attack" from Bill Mallonee as clearly as you hear it with the Górecki or Hanna-Elisabeth Müller. This front-end really does establish the stage on which the music stands alone -- and crucially, in doing so, it removes itself from the audible equation.

In one sense, as musically and artistically shocking as first exposure to the Reference DAC is, its performance should not have been unexpected. The whole raison d’être of the musIC process is to eliminate residual error, and it is something that all Wadax DACs have done with increasing success. What I wasn’t ready for was the virtual elimination of such an audible error. But then I’m guessing that it’s no coincidence that this is the first dual-differential implementation of the technology. The result is an optical-disc replay and digital decoding capability that don’t sound "digital," don’t sound "analog," and frankly, are hard to pin down at all. So apparent are the qualities and characteristics of different discs and different recordings that they tend to swamp the characteristics of the DAC itself. That doesn’t make the Wadax components devoid of character, but it makes that character harder to define and far less apparent in use.

Too many digital replay systems force you to make a choice, an artistic decision between what is being played and how it’s being played, its overall musical coherence or its inner structure and detail. The Reference DAC transcends that choice, fastening neither on what is being played nor how, but on who is playing it. This is the first CD replay system that consistently preserves the presence and personality of the players. It’s a trick the stock Atlantis could pull off on certain recordings, but with the Reference it’s a facet of performance that’s central to what it does.

I’ve always held that one of the key qualitative indicators for audio systems is their ability to differentiate between various recordings of the same work, to separate not just the facts -- the acoustics, the overall balance or perspective, orchestration or layout -- but the sense of one reading or performance from another. No sooner had I settled down to serious listening with the Atlantis Reference DAC than it made that point with a vengeance. I’ve always loved (and relied on) the Benedetti Michelangeli performance of the Beethoven 1st Piano Concerto (with Giulini and the Wiener Symphoniker). I have so many different versions of it, vinyl, CD and SACD, and they’ve been played so often on so many different systems that I feel like I know every note. It’s a mixed blessing -- especially when it comes to listening to other pianist’s performances. But when the Berliner Philharmoniker released the complete Beethoven Piano Concertos on their own label [Berliner Philharmoniker BPHR 180243], recorded with Mitsuko Uchida, it was too good a proposition to pass up. The three-SACD set duly arrived and was quickly shoe-horned into my listening plans. I wasn’t disappointed -- and you won’t be either. While I was listening to the 1st Piano Concerto, it was obvious that Rattle is no Giulini, his tempi and the weighting of his dynamic contrasts altogether too Mozartian to stand toe to toe with the Wiener, but Uchida is sensational -- and in many ways the perfect foil for Rattle’s slightly stilted constraint. She can’t match the sheer drama and dynamic contrasts conjured by Benedetti Michelangeli -- or, for that matter, Jan Lisiecki -- but the absolute confidence and poised precision of her performance, its graceful fluidity, her grasp of the arc of each movement and the piece as a whole, the sheer sensitivity and delicacy in her playing and phrasing are simply captivating.

Of course, the Reference DAC’s astonishing temporal security gave full range to her placement and spacing of notes and phrases, its incredibly natural dynamic discrimination effortlessly unraveling the weight of those notes, their accent and expressive intent. It also revealed the complex layers and astonishing tonality she generates from what is a percussion instrument, the subtlety of her shadings and contrast every bit as impressive and affecting as Benedetti Michelangeli’s more dramatic shifts. There was no need for close comparison here. The quality of the playing was as obvious as it was beautiful, the immediacy of the communication as immediate as the musical insight. The fact that the discs in question were SACDs, a format with which the Wadax equipment excels, was certainly a contributing factor. The fact that this too is a live performance certainly helped, but the sheer clarity with which the Reference DAC revealed those qualities was simply breathtaking -- and if the 1st is good, wait until you hear the 4th. There aren’t many audio experiences that stop me in my tracks, rooting me to my listening seat, expunging all thoughts of my intended playlist, but this was one. Yet what was most impressive was that the arresting quality here had nothing to do with audio attributes or the sonically spectacular. It was all about the music. That’s what was doing the talking and making me listen.

Somewhere in the middle of the third Uchida disc it occurred to me that I was supposed to be working. Was this irresistible, immersive experience a function of format or recording, the performance or the replay equipment itself? Time to ring the changes, using, in this case, the Shostakovich Violin Concerto and another chance to compare and contrast format and artist. First up was Eldbjørg Hemsing with Olari Elts conducting the Wiener Symphoniker [BIS-2366 SACD] while for comparison I opted for Lisa Batiashvili with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Symphonieorchester Bayerischen Rundfunks (Echoes Of Time CD [Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft UCCG-1524 477 9299]). That might seem a little unkind, pitching the emerging Norwegian against the established brilliance of Batiashvili, but at least she’d have SACD on her side. As it turned out, that wasn’t enough. Hemsing’s performance is certainly technically impressive and sonically, the BIS SACD is typically excellent, but her cool, purposeful and controlled presentation remains measured and contained. In contrast, Salonen delivers a more dramatic and brooding orchestral backdrop to the Passacaglia, against which the solo instrument takes on a poised, fragile quality, with Batiashvili’s beautifully etched lines evoking the almost wistful sense of loss and desolation so central to this movement. Her bowing is more articulate and directed, delivering her part with a riveting power and intensity that grows and swells into the explosive release of the last movement. The result of this comparison was unequivocal: When it comes to relative quality, format matters -- but it’s not even close to the importance of the performer and their musical performance itself. In this case, the who is trumping the what or the how -- and in no uncertain terms.

Of course, you can always argue that the who is a combination of both the what and the how -- but it’s also more, much more than that. By capturing personality with such effortless insight, the Reference DAC is also embodying the sense of human agency that pervades the making of the music, revealing the pattern of energy and expression that imbues the notes with shape and sense. It’s this innately human quality that makes the Reference DAC so engaging, so musically compelling and so easy to forget. Forget? Sure. The music takes so much of your attention and happens so naturally, that its source and the system reproducing it are absent from the process. The music is -- and that’s all that matters. In this single (but vital) regard, and in my experience, the Reference DAC knows no peer, from either the digital or analog domains. It simply seems to get more of the signal right and in the right place, more of the time, a reflection of the inherent linearity of a well-engineered digital system and the time and phase coherence of the proprietary Wadax decoding technology. That unforced sense of clarity and order has always set the company’s products apart from the digital herd, but combined with the Reference DAC’s astonishingly quiet noise floor and the transparency, focus and dynamic authority it supports, this is a game-changer in terms of bringing the performance to you and placing you closer to it.

Years ago, Linn proposed the Front End First philosophy, a mantra that held that an LP12 feeding a NAD integrated and budget speakers would outperform any other (for which read “lesser”) turntable feeding the most exotic amp and speakers. Shorn of the self-serving marketing spin, the proposition is apposite, highlighting as it does the critical role (and destructive potential) of the transducer that inhabits the front-end of your system. The speaker might be equally critical to overall performance, especially given that it has to grapple with the room, but what Linn nailed was the simple truth that once the signal leaves the source component, qualitatively speaking, it’s downhill all the way. Or to flip that on its head, whatever damage the source component does is already beyond repair by the time the signal leaves its chassis. All of which makes it especially ironic that the ultimate proof of Linn’s proposition should be embodied in a pair of digital components. Through a combination of planning and happenstance, I’ve heard the Wadax Reference Transport and DAC in several locations and multiple systems -- and in each and every case, its special quality is immediately apparent. You simply cannot miss how much more natural and credible familiar recordings are when you play them through this front-end -- irrespective of the rest of the system.

Let’s revisit the Uchida Beethoven cycle -- this time the second movement of that stunning Concerto No.4, the Andante Con Moto. At 71 bars, this short piece packs a massive emotional punch, with commentators arguing that it encapsulates Beethoven’s despair at his looming deafness and resulting inability to perform (Concerto No.5 was the first of his piano concertos that he felt unable to premier). Murray Perahia, with Haitink and the Concertgebouw [Sony B000P7VOXU] play it in a little over five minutes, while the young tyro Jan Lisiecki (leading the ASMF [Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft B07TMRRBXL}) rattles through those 71 bars in four minutes and 43 seconds -- one of the few occasions where his delicacy apparently deserts him and his explosive dynamics, power and confidence, so impressive on Concertos 1, 3 and 5, leave him sounding hurried and exposed. In contrast, Uchida takes five minutes and 28 seconds to navigate this desolate musical landscape, most of those extra 45 seconds (or 16% of Lisiecki’s total playing time) taking the form of space between the notes.

In playing these three, very different renditions, the system’s ability to capture not just the notes, their amplitude and pitch, attack and sustain, but also the gaps the player leaves between them, is paramount. Such is the temporal precision of the Wadax Reference, the clarity with which it places and spaces notes, that the yawning chasm in the expressive range that separates Uchida’s sensitive, exquisitely weighted and deeply emotive performance, from the smooth color-scape of Perahia or Lisiecki’s fireworks displays, matches the artistic separation you experience hearing these performers live, reflecting both personal preference and who you’d choose -- or pay good money -- to see and hear in concert. Do we really need another set of Beethoven Piano Concertos? When the performance delivers such depth of musical and emotional insight -- and when we have replay systems capable of revealing that insight -- then the answer is definitely "Yes." Hearing Uchida playing these familiar pieces through the Wadax Atlantis Reference Transport and Reference DAC is an experience that not only shows them in a new light, but engages you with the full power and emotional range of those original performances. The overall temporal, dynamic and musical coherence of the musIC process has always brought impressive communicative qualities to the Wadax products. But combine it with the black silence, dynamic potential, tonal range and absolute stability of the Reference DAC’s operating environment and you have the basis for natural musical reproduction that is, in audio terms, unprecedented -- something that moves us demonstrably closer to the original event.

Nor is this quality confined to classical pieces. Listening to a disc as familiar as Eleanor McEvoy’s Yola [Mosco EMSACD1] is, if not revelatory -- it’s still the same excellent recording and engaging performance -- then certainly startling, the vocal a living, breathing, dimensional entity, with realistic body and shape, suspended in space, right in front of you. The diction and inflection are utterly natural, the height, scale and accent unmistakable -- and consistent across the whole disc. If the exposed vocal on "Last Seen October 9th" is unsurprisingly lifelike, its natural quality is matched in the busier mix of "Leaves Me Wondering." Other familiar voices and studio recordings are just as well served, from the presence, intensity and energy of the early Elvis Costello albums to the naturalistic delicacy of Janis Ian, the drive and purpose of Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road [MCA MCD03426] to the layered complexity of Nils Petter Molvae’s Khmer [ECM 1560].

Meanwhile, the easy chemistry and unforced tempi of the Coltrane Quartet on Ballads [Impulse! UHQCD-UCCU-40111] is augmented not just by the explicit space between notes on Tyner’s piano, or the clarity of the pitch steps in Coltrane’s sinuous lines, but by the increased sense of a coherent space that surrounds and links the players. Coltrane is still positioned hard left, but now it seems like -- and sounds like -- a band in a single space and, more importantly, a space that reaches forward to include you. This immediacy and presence are something else that spread across genres and recordings, as apparent on the Uchida as they are with Eleanor McEvoy or a host of large-scale orchestral works. They make major contributions to the convincing musical presentation, heightening the impression of real people in the same space as you. With the best and most expressive recordings -- and the Uchida is a case in point -- close your eyes and you are rewarded with a spookily convincing and familiar sense of being there.

n some ways this has been a far more personal review than most. Audio preferences, just like musical tastes, are individual and never more so than when confronting digital -- whether we are talking recording, replay, formats or hardware. Digital advocates point to the low levels of inherent error and impressive linearity of the technology. Skeptics respond that those errors are more noticeable and intrusive than the more benign, albeit higher levels of, distortion encountered with analog replay. It’s this that makes the digital landscape harder to navigate, the choices more critical and more dependent on personal preference and tolerance levels. There is, demonstrably, more than one way to skin the digital cat -- and that makes consensus even less likely than in most other areas of audio. But therein lies the conundrum. With wider exposure than most listeners ever enjoy, I can balance the virtues of different approaches and products, see and hear their pluses and minuses. But in a world and a listening room that contain top-flight record replay, they are -- and always remain -- digital. Even the Atlantis DAC, as good as it is and better than the rest, still carries some vestige of those indelible digital fingerprints -- a slight hesitance in the musical phrase, an oh-so-subtle loss of color and dimensionality, presence and personality that make the return to vinyl such an immediate and almost physically impressive experience.

Yes, digital and analog replay are different, each with its own virtues (and more or less intrusive flaws), but to date digital has always been just that -- identifiably digital. With the arrival of the Wadax Atlantis Reference DAC, that’s no longer the case. This DAC doesn’t sound digital. But as I’ve also pointed out, that’s not to say it sounds analog (it certainly doesn’t). This is something else entirely -- something that transcends the traditional limitations of digital replay, points to the problems with analog, and yet, to my ears at least, remains unfailingly musical, expressive and engaging. This is a product that talks directly to me -- or at least, allows the musicians to talk directly to me -- in a way that places the best digital discs on a musical par with their analog counterparts, assuming they have them. And there, right there, is what makes the Reference DAC so special. In a word, access: access to all those digital performances and recordings that don’t have analog or even vinyl equivalents: access to all those brilliant new bands or soloists whose music is only available on optical disc or download; access to all those rare, older recordings it’s almost impossible to find on original vinyl, but which exist, readily available on CD. Encountering the Wadax Reference replay chain for the first time is a little like visiting your familiar local library and suddenly discovering a whole new hall, full of books -- real books, printed on gorgeous paper, with richly vivid illustrations, titles that previously were only available on the hooded, monochrome display of the microfiche screen.

What we have here is a product that, by eliminating the characteristic failings of digital replay, renders basic technology redundant as a classifier of performance. Instead, we need to understand it in terms of the audio ideal, not performance as such, but fidelity to the performance. In that regard, the music produced by the Wadax Reference components has a quality that is more akin to the clarity and communication of live music than anything else I’ve heard. It’s not indistinguishable from the live event, but it captures much of the emotional and expressive range that makes the best analog systems so engaging, but combined with a presentation that is unquestionably more accurate and ultimately, potentially more convincing. If the goal of high-end audio is to re-create a facsimile of the original performance, then the Wadax Reference DAC has advanced the state of that art significantly. I say “if” because an equally valid argument supposes that it is the sense and human intent of that original performance that we should concentrate on -- a realm in which analog replay has always and still excels. The beauty of the Reference DAC is that it sets new standards for one school while significantly narrowing the gap to the other.

If its uncanny ability to conjure the presence and input of the musicians behind a performance can be summed up in audio shorthand as the who, then the Reference DAC also allows those musicians to speak to me more directly, affectingly and intimately than any other digital replay system I’ve used. That’s because it does those things that I value, and does them better. I can’t say that it will grab you in the same way that it has grabbed me; your musical priorities might differ sufficiently to favor another solution. But what I can say is that anybody seeking the best available digital replay should definitely hear the Wadax Atlantis Reference DAC (and matching Transport). It might be just what you’ve always been seeking. Or maybe it just might demagnetize your musical compass, realign your sensibilities, shuffle your priorities and put you back on the road to musical nirvana.

One thing’s for sure: if you turn up expecting digital -- even very, very good digital -- you are in for a shock. Me? I’m way past trying to categorize it. I’m just glad to enjoy the benefits.