Wadax PRE1, Excellence Made in Spain

"Have you read anything about Wadax, the latest sensation in high end?" The question, put to me over a pleasant dinner by a friend who is an audiophile to the core, struck me as interesting, as it would any enthusiast. But his next sentence gave it a whole new dimension: "It's a Spanish brand with a fantastic product." Naturally, we at CEC moved quickly to introduce Wadax and its products to our readers. Every quality component interests us, but if it is made at home, all the more so.

A PROJECT WITH A STRONG PERSONALITY

The driving force behind the brand is Javier Guadalajara, a telecommunications engineer from Madrid who combines technical mastery with a passion for music reproduction of the highest quality. These two engines of an ambitious project have led him to persevere through a long period of design and extensive testing, which is now beginning to reap its first critical successes as the company takes its first commercial steps. Wadax's philosophy and personality traits are well defined, distinctive and key to understanding what it offers.

A product belonging to exceptional high fidelity needs an aesthetic identity of its own: different and attractive. To that end, Wadax has placed itself in the hands of industrial design professionals, in this case the Ochoa y Díaz Llanos studio. Form and function come together in search of a body that blends effectiveness and beauty in the right proportions. The result is a minimalist-looking component that conveys at a glance the values it embodies: unbeatable build quality and materials chosen to last a lifetime while being ideal for the job they do. The loudspeakers, which we hope to test soon and which face further challenges arising from their particular philosophy of active multi-amplification, would deserve a chapter of their own. Design by designers and engineers versus design by engineers? In my opinion there is only one answer to that question, and Wadax is very clear about it.

Taking a place in exceptional high fidelity demands a product with high build quality. Wadax has been clear on this point. There is no better build quality, at least none that I know of. Just one example: the PRE1 chassis, made by precision-machining a solid block of aluminum. It could pass for a piece of contemporary sculpture. At the same time, its rigidity, solidity and shielding properties are extraordinary.

But gaining access to the most exceptional high fidelity (I'm sorry, I don't understand the term "high end" and therefore don't use it) requires some technological secret, something exclusive that sets the brand apart from "normal" products. Wadax has it. Both its digital-to-analog converters and its DSP chip are of its own design. Made in Spain, what's more. In the case of the DSP, called musIC, the invention allows Wadax to work in the digital domain in a way that eliminates the signal degradation that can occur in the analog domain. This exclusive technology leads to another design decision: the loudspeakers pursue sonic perfection through multiple active amplification. As a result, the Wadax product range is built around these decisions. It begins with a preamplifier with DAC (the PRE1, our guest in this Lab) and a pair of loudspeakers (the SPEAK 1.5), joined at this time by a streaming player/recorder called HERMES and a phono preamplifier that will shortly be added to the commercial lineup. And all of it in the digital domain, even when analog sources are used.

In short, an all-out proposition whose goal is as clear as it is ambitious: to produce the best equipment possible. The process requires exclusive materials, entirely handcrafted and highly specialized manufacturing (in this case in Switzerland and Spain), and a great deal of time and money invested in the design and development phase. The consequence is a necessarily exclusive retail price and only one possible market: the global one.

PRE1: DAC AND PREAMP IN ONE CHASSIS

As our first contact with Wadax products, we had the opportunity to test the PRE1 universal preamplifier. Within a single chassis, in addition to the functions of a preamplifier, it conceals those of a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). It is a "digital" preamp in every sense, designed to avoid the multiple electromagnetic disturbances to which any analog signal may be subjected, both when it travels through a physical medium and inside an analog preamplifier. These are unavoidable physical effects that can only be mitigated, reduced or prevented, but never completely eliminated, unless you work by "digitizing" the incoming analog signal, if that is its nature, and converting it back to analog only at the output. And... if we already have a digital-to-analog converter built into the unit itself, it makes sense to be able to use it to decode digital sources, so a preamplifier with a built-in DAC is the logical product for Wadax.

The physical appearance of our guest could not be more impressive, weighing in at over 20 kg. The chassis is custom-machined from solid 43 kg blocks of a specifically designed aluminum alloy, and it provides unbeatable mechanical and electromagnetic isolation together with incredible rigidity. But this is only the most obvious part of construction techniques so sophisticated and meticulous that specific tightening torques have been defined for each of the screws securing the circuit boards to the chassis, depending on their function and position in the assembly. And, of course, machine tools to measure those torques.

When a product aspires to the very best, it must take care of the smallest details, and the PRE1 does not shy away from this: its remote control is the best I have had the pleasure of using and an example of why an industrial design studio brings undeniable added value. The rear panel is another example of constructional perfection. The quality of the connectors is reference grade and the complement of inputs and outputs is simply splendid. The only omission I can identify is an Ethernet port, which would allow access to a network storage system and make the PRE1 unbeatable even outside the Wadax world.

LISTENING TESTS

For more than seven years, since the very first issue of this magazine, I have considered myself privileged to be an enthusiast able to test all kinds of equipment in exchange for telling you about it in these pages. But there are occasions when that privilege takes on a special significance, and the Wadax PRE1 is undoubtedly one of them. In my listening room, connected to my Rotel RHB05 "Michi" power amplifier and my B&W Nautilus 804s, it proved an unforgettable experience.

The first impression is physical. It is like touching a battleship, yet there is nothing cold to the touch. Just change sources with the manual selector and any other source selector you have touched before will feel like the one on a Green Beret walkie-talkie. Turning the volume up and down (in half-dB steps) gives the same feeling. The connectors on the rear panel and their physical solidity need no comment.

Using a source of infinitely lower quality than our guest, connected via analog and digital at the same time to analyze its performance in both formats, proved enlightening. Either way, the sound quality is simply spectacular. The stereo image, definition and clarity are excellent, but... if I had to choose one, it would be the digital connection. Not because the PRE1 did a poor job with the analog connection, but because when we listened to the same source as a transport, the PRE1's D/A converters exposed all the shortcomings of the player's D/A converters. Besides the difference in output level, the analog input produced a background "whisper" that was absent from the digital one, whose cleanliness was simply unbeatable. Interesting, since by investing in the Wadax PRE1, our digital transport, almost any one, will seem like a giant...

The perfect layout of the orchestra in Rachmaninov's Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3 (Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Owain Arwel Hughes, BIS), the intimacy of Maria João Pires in Chopin's Nocturnes, the overwhelming power of Muse on the album The Resistance... The type of music doesn't matter. The format doesn't matter. The PRE1 will bring out everything the recording contains and reproduce it exactly as it is. And mediocre recordings will be no exception. A perfect soundstage, smooth operation and flawless volume control are the most noticeable qualities of a component whose greatest virtue can be neither seen nor heard: its transparency.

In short, this is an exceptional piece of high-fidelity equipment, of the very highest quality and performance, which unfortunately only the most fortunate will be able to afford, but which they will undoubtedly enjoy as one of the best purchases possible.

WE LIKE

Transparency.

Perfect soundstage.

Smooth operation.

Flawless volume control.

COULD BE IMPROVED

Price not within everyone's reach.

Specialists' rating: 6

Wadax has been developing new technologies for more than five decades. Analyzing the most common inefficiencies in the playback chain, its first conclusion was that, given its complexity, the solution had to be found in the digital world, leading to a first algorithm in 2000. However, with the technology of the time, a very complex set of associated DSP chips was required to process it in real time, so it was not commercially viable. That is why, from 2003 onward, Wadax chose the bravest path: developing a chip capable of processing that algorithm in real time in a precise, dynamic and musical way. And so, in early 2010, the musIC was born, a 480-pin device that moves 6.4 gigabytes per second, some 9,000 times the CD-Audio standard.

Wadax PRE1, Excellence Made in Spain

Specifications

AUDIO INPUTS Digital: 5 electrical (4 S/PDIF and 1 BNC), 1 optical (EIAJ/Toslink). Analog: 2 RCA, 1 USB. AUDIO OUTPUTS Analog: 4 RCA and 4 XLR. POWER CONSUMPTION 20W (standby 1.5W). DIGITAL INPUT SPDIF/BNC/TOSLINK/USB 192/192/96/48 kHz. ANALOG INPUT IMPEDANCE 18 Kohms. ANALOG OUTPUT IMPEDANCE RCA/XLR: 75 ohm/150 ohm. MAXIMUM OUTPUT VOLTAGE 7Vrms, 14Vrms. DIMENSIONS 469 x 341 x 101 mm. WEIGHT 20 kg.

DISTRIBUTOR Wadax (913550217).