Hi There,
I have owned the Wavelight for a little over a month, and I think Terry’s review is spot on. Only item I would differ on opinion is that in my system, this DAC sounds dead neutral, not sure I would call it warm sounding. I also would not call it cold (it is goldylocks - just right!). Worldwidewholesales has been great to deal with, and I wanted to provide my input after using this DAC for roughly a month.
In my system it has bettered a PS Audio Direct Stream DAC and Denafrips Pontis, all being fed from an SOTM 200Ultra --> Matrix Audio X-SPDIF2 --> I2S. There is a compatibility issue with the Wavelight and Matrix Audio that Rockna is aware of and are working on a firmware update that will resolve. With the Rockna connected to the Matrix XSDIF2 I can only send DSD data. No biggy, since I am using Roon, so I set everything to up-sample to 4X DSD. Then set the Rockna filter to NOS. I have tried, USB direct from the SOTM, and SPDIF out of the Matrix, all of the Wavelights inputs sound great, but even with up- sampling everything to DSD I feel I2S has the edge.
Unfortunately, I was not able to directly compare to my PS Direct Stream because I sold it prior to taking ownership of the Wavelight. What I can say is that the Wavelight presents music in a most natural way, Music has separated itself from the speakers. The two most noticeable improvements in my system were the following:
1) Soundstage width and depth.
2) Top end extension without any sense of nervousness or anxiety
The streamer is important, I work in the tech industry and my Roon server is a custom built beast, that sits in another part of my home, and is connected via a Ubiquity commercial switch. The network into my audio room is via both single-mode fiber and multi-mode fiber (yes they both sound a little different). The Fiber connects into an Ether-Regen (on a linear power supply) which then sends copper Ethernet to the SOTM 200 Ultra. The SOTM is on a linear power supply, and so is the Matrix.
I also have everything connected into the Inakoustic power conditioner, on a dedicated 20 amp 10 ga, cryo-treated AC.
With the Wavelight, I can listen to music for hours, and recently, have been brought to tears with certain music, female vocals have a realism to them that I have not heard with either PS or Denafrips DACs. This DAC is also refined, in my system. As mentioned above, this DAC is neutral in my room as it balances out the Von Schweikert VR5 Anniversary MK2 very well.
I did several tests using various inputs on the DAC, as I mention, I think they are all very good, but I keep going back to the I2S input, which in my system provides just a bit more space and separation between notes / instruments. Not a night & day difference, but it is noticeable.
I am anxiously waiting for the firmware upgrade to see what the Wavelight sounds like without using Roon’s up-sampling engine (probably even better), then, will look to possibly adding a wavelight streamer (once they are available), so that I can remove all the little boxes and outboard power supplies).
I also play LPs in my system and have a very capable analog front end. I am not going to proclaim that I will be dumping my analog front-end any time soon, but I will say that in the past month that I have had the Wavelight in my system, I have listened to an LP only once or twice... This DAC portrays music with a sense of tangibility and presence not unlike a good MC cart on a well optimized analog front end.
Put a good after-market power cord on the DAC, and performance notches up even more. This DAC with a Lessloss CMARC and Firewall 64, gets even better. Instruments play far out past each speaker, with some recordings it can sound spooky. I do think this dac is more correct, in that if you play a less than stellar recording, you will know so, but it still presents the content in a very enjoyable way, so not analytical by any means.
I am happy to answer any additional questions for potential buyers. For me, this DAC is a keeper! With its FPGA software defined platform, it will get even better over time.
Lou
