Although not a budget-priced component, the Wadax Studio Player is, nonetheless, a bargain that delivers fabulous sound, sophisticated technology, upgradability, and ease of use in a single chassis. I think of it as The One-Box Wonder.

As great as the Studio Player sounds, it is unsurprisingly not at the same level as the Reference system. That $465k package has deeper and more precise bass, greater dimensionality, and even smoother textures. But I’ll share with you an experience I had on more than one occasion that puts the difference into perspective. Many times, I was in a listening session at night for pleasure (not critical listening) and would completely forget that I was listening to the Studio Player and not to the usual Reference System. That’s how musically involving it is. When reviewing a “lesser” component in place of your reference component, there’s the tendency to feel something is missing and to want to finish the evaluation so that you can go back to hearing the system at its maximum performance level. The greatest testament to the Studio Player’s fundamental musical rightness is that I spent many evenings completely immersed in the music and didn’t give a second thought to the Reference system sitting in my rack unused. And remember that this comparison was made within the context of an ultra-high-resolution system of the Wilson Chronosonic XVX driven by state-of-the-art CH Precision amplification.

The Studio Player’s great achievement is delivering this smoothness and ease without sacrificing resolution. The resolution is presented not as sonic detail, but as musical expression. It’s not resolution that’s thrust at you and calls attention to itself. Rather, the resolution is in subtle details that reveal the inner character of an instrument’s timbre, the low-level decay of a cymbal, a vocalist’s unique turn of a phrase that adds poignancy to a lyric.

Finally, we come to a quality that distinguishes Wadax from other digital products—dimensionality. The first time I heard the Reference DAC I was taken aback by the soundstage’s depth and three-dimensionality. The Studio Player continues that legacy, not just with depth and layering but also with a tangible sense of air between images. Images appear in the soundstage spatially distinct from other images, as separate entities rather than fused into the soundstage fabric. A recording with an amazing sense of space is The Astounding Eyes of Rita by the Tunisian oud master Anouar Brahem. The unusual instrumentation combines this ancient Middle Eastern instrument with bass, percussion (the darbuka and bendir), and bass clarinet. This ECM recording is spectacular in its dimensionality, with tangible air and the instruments lighting up the surrounding acoustic. Through the Studio Player, the playback system completely disappears, with images detached from the speakers and precisely located in space. The fabulous bass clarinet solo on the nine-minute title track also exemplifies the Studio Player’s richness and density of tone color in the lower registers, conveying the delicious deep woody character of this instrument. This recording also revealed how the Studio Player makes images suddenly appear in the soundstage in a way that is sometime startling—the entrance of the percussion, for example. I attribute this to the Studio Player’s transient speed as well as the utterly silent background.

Link do recenzji: Wadax Studio Player – The Absolute Sound

What is that sound quality? The WADAX Studio Player is very engaging and extremely musical in its presentation. It’s the antidote to those who find most digital audio too ‘edgy’ or ‘harsh’ sounding, and yet it doesn’t produce this sound by masking the output or blurring leading edges. It sails close to warm waters but doesn’t try to emulate the sound of vinyl or valves. Instead, it just brings out the intrinsic sonorous nature of many recordings.

For example, my go-to Joyce Di Donato recording is at once about detail, dynamics and excellent imaging. Her voice needs to be reproduced in an extremely articulate manner, all the while being conscious that ‘she has a great set of pipes’ and challenges the dynamic range of even the best systems. Beyond this, she’s backed by a small but extraordinarily talented orchestra recorded to rise out of the darkness and fade back into it over a few minutes. WADAX aces all these elements extremely well, and you walk away even more impressed by her breath control, her ability to raise the vocal power to Def Con I levels in an eyeblink, and the orchestra’s – and in particular the French horn player’s – ability to follow her lead perfectly are all beautifully rendered.

This is a player for people who know their music. It’s for someone who understands why the best conductors and orchestras for playing Russian music are, themselves, Russian, for example, or why American orchestras and conductors excel in playing Adams or Copland. It’s for someone who understands the connection between Bach and Kraftwerk and likes them both. It’s for someone who can talk for five days straight about John Coltrane… without mansplaining.

We have come far enough with digital to have distinct high-end ‘flavours’ and this one is rich and dark, like a really good chocolate. Others are more minty-fresh and invigorating, or even powerful like an Islay malt. I think that’s a good thing; we need more diversity in the high-end.

Link do recenzji: Wadax Studio Player – hi-fi+

But be warned before reading any further. This is a complex machine whose status demands serious discussion of complicated issues. Placing it in context is far from easy and, as a result this is a long and convoluted review, even by Gy8 standards! I’ve tried as much as possible to divide it into bite-sized chunks. But make no mistake, the length of this piece itself reflects on the quality and significance of this product.

The Studio Player is so clearly the class of the field and sets the bar so high, that it’s also clearly beyond the immediate reach of the competition. If you are shopping for a digital solution in this price range, you’d actually need a pretty compelling reason NOT to choose the Wadax. It does disc replay as well or better than equivalently priced, dedicated players. It plays locally stored files with considerable musical aplomb and streaming services better than anything I’ve heard anywhere near this price.

Which only leaves one question: how much of the Reference rig has Wadax managed to build into the Studio Player?

The Studio Player has all of the fundamental hallmarks that have separated the Wadax equipment from the digital field since the brand first appeared. It’s a performance built on temporal integrity, musical balance and rhythmic articulation. It brings shape and intelligibility to performances. It’s not about overt detail and information – although that information is all there: What it’s about is what you do with that information – making the recording make sense. It’s a quality that has, until recently, been utterly unique – and remains so at or near this price. It’s about expressive range, musical fluidity, progress and purpose. The Studio Player delivers on all counts. But compare it to the Reference components and although the structure is all there, the big rig delivers it with greater clarity, sophistication and less apparent effort. The Studio Player never sounds like it’s working, until you compare it to the Reference components. They deliver intra-instrumental space, dimensionality, dynamic discrimination and the space between notes with such natural and effortless poise that the Player starts to sound congested and muddy in comparison: remarkable given how musically graceful, lucid and literate it sounds compared to the competition. But the thing to remember is that the basics are all there. The music is the right shape and happens at the right time. You just hear that, that much more clearly on the Reference system. Which should come as no surprise given the effort that has been expended on reducing the reference components’ noise floor and ensuring accurate clocking of data and data transfer. So it is as well to remember that the Studio Player is upgradable, begging the question, just how much of that ‘filler’ can be stripped away with an external power supply (which will presumably deliver a lower noise floor) and a Master Clock (that will improve the clocking accuracy of the data and reduce the amount of work demanded of the MusIC process). The Studio Player is already great. The Reference products point the way to it being better still.

It’s been fashionable amongst the competition and their customers to scoff at the Wadax Reference components, dismissing them as irrelevant on grounds of price. Well guys, it’s time for a serious wake-up call. Is that your bell tolling your alarm clock or the impending crack of doom? Contrary to their competition’s perception, I’ve always approached each new generation of Wadax products with a healthy scepticism. When you know what the current products do, it’s easy to assume that claims for transformative performance are hopeful as much as realistic. Yet the brand continues to confound expectations, consistently over-delivering on its promises. The Studio Player really does take a healthy slice of what makes the Reference components so musically special and presents it at a price and in a package that’s hard to ignore. If you must shuffle a never-ending stream of mis-matched boxes in search of digital nirvana: if your entertainment comes in the form of constantly choosing your next component, rather than listening to the one(s) you have: if you simply believe that bigger numbers must be better, then don’t waste your time on the Wadax.

If, on the other hand, you are a digital devotee simply looking for the best available musical performance, or an analogue aficionado who simply wants a fuss-free, one-box digital do-it-all solution that will play an existing CD/SACD collection and actually deliver on the promise of streaming, the Wadax Studio Player will likely tick all your boxes, and do it in bold. Maybe you just want to know what all the fuss is about? Be careful what you wish for: the longer you listen to the Studio Player the more apparent it becomes that the Wadax approach, their engineering and the MusIC process really does represent a fundamentally different and more musically engaging approach to digital replay. Once experienced, it’s a difficult lesson to ignore and one that in many ways renders price comparisons redundant – there are simply so few digital products that can do, in musical terms, what this one does, regardless of price. In many ways this machine crystalises the high-end dilemma: which side of the digital divide do you stand? Is it about the kit and sonic minutiae, or is it about the (musical) performance? If there’s a better, more communicative, more engaging way of accessing digitally stored music at anywhere near this price, I’ve yet to hear it. You should hear it too…

Link do recenzji: Wadax Studio Player – Gy8

The Studio Player provides tons of resolution, no matter whether in its streaming or its disc playback mode. The sound is organized, pristinely clean, smooth, and effortless.  It is like your ears are unpressurized when the Wadax is playing, the sound is not forced through, it is just there. Still, the presentation is powerful and dynamic. Rabaud´s Mârouf opera suite (Eiji Oue, Reference Recordings) is a good example. The delicate oboes and flutes feel like real instruments playing in a real venue, the sound is firm, textured, and dynamic. Through lesser players this recording often sounds too airy, as if mouthpieces of the winds were connected to an oxygen tank. Short-term it seemingly provides better ´detail´, after while it induces headache. The Studio Player is far from that, the colors are just right, and all instruments are enjoying strong tonal fundament and true harmonics.

The well-balanced sound helps vocals shine and seduce. Like the caressing baritone of Nat King Cole, that remains deep and relaxed through the Wadax. So is the soulful mezzo-soprano of Adele. There is no audible ´equalization´, the voices rare totally honest and free of colourations, but rich in colors. It is true that the Studio Player adds a very subtle touch of warmth and liquidity, which may not be a result of the player tinting the music and adding anything actually - rather it is lack of digital grain.

The bass, when well recorded like the one in Wishing Well (Michael Ruff, Sheffield Labs), is warm, round, punchy, and energetic. Or take The Wall of Pink Floyd, where the bass can be truly grand if nothing is closing the tap of energy. Or the way the Studio Player renders a guitar combo in the front right corner of the room when Nazareth’ Telegram kicks in. Then you can see the combo’s thick speaker grille cloth moving with each lick. Also Get Over It (Eagles) through the Wadax is one of the best playbacks of this song I’ve ever heard. The Studio Player does not discriminate any music genre, be it rock, jazz, or chamber music. It is an important feature if your taste is not limited. It is also the reason why I would pick up the Wadax rather than the aforementioned Accuphase DP-770, that perhaps outperformed the Studio Player with extra layers of smoothness in classical music, but was missing the bite and rawness in rock.

Now I will drop a bomb: for my ears, the Studio Player conquered the combination of the Taiko Olympus XDMI system with the Aries Cerat Kassandra DAC that I had in the exact same system. The latter is 2.5-times more expensive combo than the integrated Studio Player. I think that the integration provides unique advantages that are unachievable with split components. It is why I don’t buy the idea of Wadax to expand the Studio Player into more devices.

Link do recenzji: Wadax Studio Player – Audiodrom

Link: Wadax Studio Player – hi-fi+ – 2025 Award Digital Disc Player