Coherent's blog: It's just not cricket old bean

Well day 3 of the siege of audio completeness and its shaping up to be the shortest campaing in history ( maybe a touch exaggerated  ) Big W15 deux is really kicking some sonic ass at the moment the sheer three dimensionality that this thing delivers is quite stunning coupled with total and utter disappearance of the speakers. It's going to be a really good week I feel.

Well time waits for no man or tides, though in 1225 they had more pressing engagements to attend to rather that is my next delivery due shortly?
Unbelievably its been five weeks since I last updated the Coherent blog, where the hell does time goes these days? One moment its Sunday evening the next its Thursday afternoon

Well a lot has happened in those 'short 5 weeks'

New audio designs have been benchmarked and tested to within an inch of their lives and ours with earth bond and isolation testing lol.
Several Coherent Cable reviews have appeared in Hifi World over the last few months and we are pleased to announce that all of them have been awarded Five globes which we are more than pleased with. More on that with later updates.

Currently working on a new dac, headphone amplifier and rather neat smaller box version of our Liquid Music pre amplifier as well.
For some explicatable reason I have been collecting older Wadia pieces and for my sins have around 38 on them now (insert comments relating to bonkers/mad/needs help here)

The Wadia 15i has been undergoing some 'internal restructuring' on a fairly epic scale, have removed, replaced, added and inserted around 240 components over three seprate sessions, only have to remove the mains circuit board once thank to the absolutely first class JBC soldering suits we have in the lab. Once you use these tools, you sudden realise that you really needed them some 20 years ago! (Hindsight being a very wonderful thing!) It also gave me a chance to try out the new micro hot air station and vacuum pump removal tools one of those great but simpe ideas that just make life so much easier.

Well after dodging the the sprout mountain (Devils spawn), the traffic into central London yesterday and waves of hung over dog walkers shuffling past the house with forlorn & never again expressions on their faces being dragged by a rampant poddles in search of Suitable watering post today I can finally catch up the blog section as time has slowed sufficient to enable some quality insights.

In the last months its been exceptionally busy and personal project time has been limited, however I have spent a good thirty hours with the 15i in the last week.

It has undergone some pretty major surgery and new additions to its original factory condition, while all of these were performed in stages and been have to time and bed in. Around 500 hours of solid playing time has been clocked up by Wadia 15i

Also during this time two new digital streaming transports have also seen action while being  bench tested along with a new reference power cable.

However this week the system was placed back to its usual reference components and allowed to get reacquainted with each other.

So why do I make such a big song and dance about the Wadia's?

It's a very fair question after all it's 'Vintage technology' compared to the latest crop of super dacs right? So why bother at all, considering the current selection of desirable digital to analogue converter specifications are far superior in every aspect of measurable properties.

Just give up lad you know you are on a hiding to nothing right? 

All this effort must be nostalgia nothing more , harking back to when having big black heavy boxes was a sign of willy waving and naim like freemason one upmanship 

After all you can purchase a quality dac with pre recquiste SINAD of 127dB+ for a very modest price these days compared to these pre cambrian carbon dated behemoths!

Why waste my own time and money on such past masters , I must be slightly skewed due to the number of Wadias in the collection right?


Well strangely No lol.

I know I have mentioned this phrase before butI I am sticking to it, when you hear something that is intrinsically 'correct' then pretty much all the other presentations seem manufactured all be it in some cases exceptionally well. 

So what do I mean by this? Is a pretty bold yet ambiguous statement I suspect many will feel.

I can sit here and listen to any genre of music (even jazz lol) and it entices me to explore my music collection deeply even though a lot of the recordings are not that appealing. All of a sudden four plus hours have passed and it's 3am. 
The system doesn't present any sort if sonic signature. It just merely removes itself from the replay chain leaving music.

Whether you listen at ultra quiet levels it still presents a very natural fluid sound that has layered rich detail BUT doesn't pull you towards that specific aspect. Conversely if you are listening at more classical concert realistic volume levels it's not forward, or grainy in all way. The headroom is genuinely effortless

Then we come to the sense musical timing it is peerless, not even the ultra dacs come this close to an engaging, involving anf all encompassing sound. This is where the sense of correctness comes from I firmly believe.

Tonally it's bang on the money with acres of textural layering and stage depth, speakers utterly disappear leaving you with the single speaker you can't see, but can hear!

Unlike a lot of its more illustrious counterparts it doesn't deliver an artifical 38 foot sound stage, non matter how open or sweet it's been designed that way. Hifi guys will juice their silkies over this, I fully understand its those things you hold critical for you

Now the Wadias roll off at 18Khz by a not insignificant figure of 3dB (logarithmic scale) so it must have a mach darker sound, in stock form yes it does but saying this I looked at three dacs recently (all new models) and some of their selectable filters offered a more significant roll off.

Anyway, my point being I now have one of the  most complete sounds I have ever had the pleasure of listening to and it does just that, makes me listen to music totally unhindered by the system

Let's be honest, -3db at 18khz won't even register on the hearing of any of the regular posters here, myself included.

Very pleased you're enjoying the Wadia, you've certainly put the hours in updating and modifying. With all that you have said, it is the player I'd most like to hear at the moment, more so than Taiko Extreme.

Speakers look superb. How do they sound?

Dave, I use both the CR-1 and R-1's at home, here at work its bit tight but the CR-1's do actually work well in the 14' x 24' room. The Tad E-1Tx's are proving to be a real dark horse, they are starting to really open up today and cohesiveness is absolutely there in spades. They have the speed of the ME-1's and the rather silly bass reproduction given the modest cabinet size and its razor sharpe tight and delicious decay on the tom's, piano, Vilolins, Cello's and Strats. Another week and they will be on point I feel.

The black bar is a Creaktiv speaker stop and it makes qute a positive difference to the sound, have used them for many years even at shows

Well we've looked on your site and Creaktiv's and can't find any mention of a 'speaker stop', have they stopped making them?

Well done in making Simon (sq225917) drool with photo's of power supplies and blue belts, my page was still wet.