[LoveKnight]

Wow I read on AudioAudigon someone ranked Ideon Dac even higher than Chord Dave + Mscaler but the combo Chord Dave + Mscaler is still a bargain according to what he wrote.

 

[TheR0v3r]

Wow I read on AudioAudigon someone ranked Ideon Dac even higher than Chord Dave + Mscaler but the combo Chord Dave + Mscaler is still a bargain according to what he wrote.

Today I don’t consider the Chord Dave w/ mScaler as competitive at it’s pricepoint, and definitely not a bargain

The DAC-market has come along way since it was introduced. Maybe the bargain in the Chord range today is the Mojo 2?

Looking at the Ferrum Wandla with the choices made in it’s design and implementation it looks fantastic (but I haven’t heard it). I’d seriously question if/how a DAC such as the Chord Dave improves upon that. Just being more expensive isn’t an answer

Imho.

PS. I have used most of the Chord DAC’s with and without the mScaler, but not the Mojo 2.

 

[GiBGUN]

Loving the Wandla/OOR combo. Been a long time since I’ve been excited every day to do some listening. Truly something special.

 

[LoveKnight]

Today I don’t consider the Chord Dave w/ mScaler as competitive at it’s pricepoint, and definitely not a bargain

The DAC-market has come along way since it was introduced. Maybe the bargain in the Chord range today is the Mojo 2?

Looking at the Ferrum Wandla with the choices made in it’s design and implementation it looks fantastic (but I haven’t heard it). I’d seriously question if/how a DAC such as the Chord Dave improves upon that. Just being more expensive isn’t an answer

Imho.

PS. I have used most of the Chord DAC’s with and without the mScaler, but not the Mojo 2.

Yeah I think the writer when he wrote that Chord Dave + Mscaler was a value combo when comparing to other higher end Dacs about the price and sound performance. To get more of percentage one must spend a lot of money to get there. He stated that Chord Dave + Mscaler is about 75% when comparing to a MSB flagship Dac. I think his opinion was true and moreover many modifications can apply to Chord Dave to enhance more in sound quality such as external power supply but certainly cost more money. Well some time a bargain or value equipment is still out of range of someone like me I guess.

 

[TheR0v3r]

Yeah I think the writer when he wrote that Chord Dave + Mscaler was a value combo when comparing to other higher end Dacs about the price and sound performance. To get more of percentage one must spend a lot of money to get there. He stated that Chord Dave + Mscaler is about 75% when comparing to a MSB flagship Dac. I think his opinion was true and moreover many modifications can apply to Chord Dave to enhance more in sound quality such as external power supply but certainly cost more money. Well some time a bargain or value equipment is still out of range of someone like me I guess.

Let’s look at this from another angle:

Now, if the Wandla ends up sounding as good or better than the Holo/Chord/Rockna/etc products at the same price range, I'm going to have a problem because one or both of the following has to be true:

A. The primary digital to analog conversion step is NOT improved by using all the fancy R2R and FPGA technology in lieu of a cheap ESS chip.
…
If (A) is true, then the whole high end DAC game is a farce. I know there are lots of people that believe that, but I'm not one of them. I'm actually not aware of any high-end standalone DAC that uses ESS chips (the Benchmark DAC3 is maybe the highest-end I can think of and still comes in at half the price we're looking at here?), but I'll take your word for it that they're out there.

The IDEON Absolute Epsilon proves that A) is true. They have created a true state-of-the-art DAC based on a ”cheap ESS chip” and that chip is the same that is used in the Ferrum WANDLA. Having heard all current MSB DAC’s, except the flagship Select II, I’m guessing that the IDEON is at least on par with the Select II. But even if it is ”just” at 90% of performance in comparison it’s still a value pick (the MSB is at €125k and IDEON at around €40k).

Let’s make the assumption that HEM, based on their experience with Mytek, actually knows what they are doing with the Ferrum WANDLA. And remember that Mytek made the Manhattan II so HEM already knows how an implementation of the ES9038Pro is done really well. Like REALLY well.

Maybe it’s the WANDLA + Hypsos that is the value combo in comparison with the IDEON? In turn that would make it a bargain in comparison with the Chord DAVE with mScaler (not to mention the MSB Select II)

 

[LoveKnight]

Back to Wandla I think it will be a hit on Dacs market. At the end of the road just enjoy what equipments that we can afford and forget about other higher end audio gears which charge so much. I sometimes talk to myself "Walk up man. Remember just spending enough for your hobby and saving for others things" ha ha.

Happy to see that many Dacs released over recently years can keep up somehow to other high end Dacs and I believe Wandla will be one of them.

 

[GiBGUN]

Back to Wandla I think it will be a hit on Dacs market. At the end of the road just enjoy what equipments that we can afford and forget about other higher end audio gears which charge so much. I sometimes talk to myself "Walk up man. Remember just spending enough for your hobby and saving for others things" ha ha.

Happy to see that many Dacs released over recently years can keep up somehow to other high end Dacs and I believe Wandla will be one of them.

Yeah Wandla definitely delivers above its price point and they intentionally aimed to do that. Bit of a market disruption. Personally while I do like the Chord house sound (although I can find it a bit hollow depending on amp), I think the market has become a lot more competitive since their flagship designs. Also they had the most shocking driver support for Windows I had ever seen on a DAC.

Wandla on the other hand, much like the ERCO has fantastic driver support and is on par with the RME DACs which is no easy feat - both companies have a fantastic software team.

Fanboy comment but Wandla is a keeper. I’m super excited to see what updates they push on the software side of things using SERCE. Crossfeed was heavily hinted at.

 

[cglin222]

So I might get the wandla, I’ve already own oor/hypsos just wondering how would I power two units with hypsos, what setting voltage, or devices I select? Thanks

 

[GoldenSound]

I've been REALLY enjoying the WANDLA thus far, most definitely the best ESS DAC I've heard by a comfortable margin and an incredible product all round.
It's also really neat to finally have a way to actually have an easy 'on the fly' AB option for high quality reconstruction filtering vs 'standard' filtering.

 

[WhiskiedGinger]

I've been REALLY enjoying the WANDLA thus far, most definitely the best ESS DAC I've heard by a comfortable margin and an incredible product all round.
It's also really neat to finally have a way to actually have an easy 'on the fly' AB option for high quality reconstruction filtering vs 'standard' filtering.

Goddammit, Cam, of course, you'd feel this way. Now my wallet is trembling.

My Bifrost 2/64 is getting nervous.

 

[piaseczek]

I've been REALLY enjoying the WANDLA thus far, most definitely the best ESS DAC I've heard by a comfortable margin and an incredible product all round.

It would be great if you measure analogue volume control vs digital

 

[TomKorn]

I hope I don't get banned but here are some videos I recorded at the Ferrum booth during High-End Munich 2023:

Ferrum Wandla at High-End Munich 2023

In one video, Ferrum developer Kamil talks about what they did with the audio section and why they think it competes with some of the very best DACs in the market.
Hope you enjoy! (If I am not allowed to post that video, please tell me and I will remove it.)

Cheers

 

[taipan254]

Hi Cameron / @GoldenOne -

It's great that you're listening to the Wandla - I hope you review it. If you do, I think there's a bit of controversy (over on AS) that could be best mediated by you.

• What are your subjective impressions of external PCM vs. DSD upsampling? Obviously this comparison would include HQPlayer (DSD and PCM with like-for-like filters, and maybe across your favorite modulators for DSD content and TPDF for PCM content) and PGGB. How do you "force rank" these limited permutations based purely on your subjective listening preferences? How do these external upsampling permutations stack up against the Wandla's internal filters?
• Does the ESS DAC "prefer" to be fed PCM or DSD content? This is more of a technical question. Jussi has said more than once that the ESS DACs "prefer" DSD content because they go through less filtering than a 768 khz PCM signal. However, all data - DSD and PCM - gets modulated to some multi-bit stream (I think 6 bits at a very fast speed in the mhz range) before conversion. Is there a "preferred way" to feed an ESS DAC if you plan on bypassing internal filters? If so, what format would you choose? How does the answer to this objective question line up with your subjective preferences in the above bullet point?

Thank you for your patience in reading this, @GoldenOne - I think you have the chops to really dissect the above points and present your subjective and objective perspectives. No one else in the reveiwer community seems to be giving external upsampling the discussion IMHO it deserves!

 

[GoldenSound]

It's great that you're listening to the Wandla - I hope you review it. If you do, I think there's a bit of controversy (over on AS) that could be best mediated by you.

• What are your subjective impressions of external PCM vs. DSD upsampling? Obviously this comparison would include HQPlayer (DSD and PCM with like-for-like filters, and maybe across your favorite modulators for DSD content and TPDF for PCM content) and PGGB. How do you "force rank" these limited permutations based purely on your subjective listening preferences? How do these external upsampling permutations stack up against the Wandla's internal filters?

For me PCM vs DSD upsampling has typically been dependent on the particular DAC architecture. With AKM DACs I tend to find that best results are obtained with DSD upsampling using a high performance modulator (and they can indeed convert DSD natively), whereas with ESS DACs I've always preferred PCM (I imagine because ESS DACs cannot convert DSD natively so a lot of the modulator benefit is effectively 'undone' by further processing within the DAC).

The WANDLA HQ filters are excellent and much better than stock AKM or ESS filters and better than many other DACs custom filters I've tried, BUT, are not quite as good as 'top tier' reconstruction such as the higher tier HQPlayer Desktop configurations or Chord's filter in stuff like the DAVE/MScaler.

Does the ESS DAC "prefer" to be fed PCM or DSD content? This is more of a technical question. Jussi has said more than once that the ESS DACs "prefer" DSD content because they go through less filtering than a 768 khz PCM signal. However, all data - DSD and PCM - gets modulated to some multi-bit stream (I think 6 bits at a very fast speed in the mhz range) before conversion. Is there a "preferred way" to feed an ESS DAC if you plan on bypassing internal filters? If so, what format would you choose? How does the answer to this objective question line up with your subjective preferences in the above bullet point?

Subjectively, I've always preferred PCM with ESS DACs, but given as they do a fair bit of additional processing no matter what you feed them it's probably gonna be subjectively upto the listener. I've not been able to measure a demonstrable difference in objective performance between the two methods so long as the file itself was not a limitation, and we can't evaluate true noise shaper performance at the analog output of the DAC as it cannot be separated from random analog noise, so we can't be sure which of the two methods is technically more ideal unless ESS were to provide some simulations.
Generally speaking ESS is unfortunately not the most ideal DAC for really high performance external oversampling anyway just because of the fact that you can't avoid further digital processing entirely, whereas with other DACs such as AKM, Burr Brown, various proprietary designs etc you can.

You do still get a benefit from the filter though, as is evidenced by trying an ESS DAC with HQPlayer/PGGB (or trying the WANDLA). You just can't really take advantage of really excellent noise shapers to the same degree as other DACs.

 

[taipan254]

You do still get a benefit from the filter though, as is evidenced by trying an ESS DAC with HQPlayer/PGGB (or trying the WANDLA). You just can't really take advantage of really excellent noise shapers to the same degree as other DACs.

This is very helpful! Thanks!