Digital Processor Reviews

After it was delivered, I weighed the box containing Wattson Audio's DAC-equipped Madison LE Streamer on my bathroom scale. It was hardly bigger than a shoebox. It weighed 8.3lb.

When I opened the main box, I found two smaller boxes. The little brown one contained a fist-sized power supply in a chassis of extruded aluminum, with a label attached that said "AC/DC Hybrid Adaptor" next to a circle containing a sun cross symbol and the words "Designed, Engineered and Built in Switzerland" in capital letters circling its top edge. Below the circle was more writing: "Wattson Audio—a CH Precision company."

The Wattson Madison LE's 2.3lb chassis was inside a larger white box with black block letters saying "Madison." Under that, written in cursive, were the words "Lounge Edition." The L in LE is for Lounge, not Limited as you might expect.

I've reviewed a few DACs but never one this small, light, and elegantly formed.

Not knowing much about Wattson Audio, I asked the patient, personable Kevin Wolff, head of Wattson's and CH Precision's international sales, to tell me the company's origin story.

"Our journey began as design consultants for some of the most prestigious and well-known brands in the audio world—the kind of brands whose owners might spend more on a single component than the cost of a European sports sedan. This experience honed our expertise and gave us a front-row seat to how established engineering and manufacturing practices were being applied to emerging technologies, formats, and musical media. Over time, our continued advancements in digital and streaming technologies revealed a deeper opportunity—a way to fully express our innovations through a product line of our own. Thus, Wattson Audio was born.

"CH Precision's acquisition of Wattson Audio marks the union of two innovative forces in high-end audio, combining CH Precision's expertise in ultrahigh-performance systems with Wattson's commitment to accessible, efficient, and forward-thinking audio solutions."

Before I started writing this report, I thought of CH Precision as a suave Euro-company with engineers in nice suits peddling expertise and sophisticated manufacturing practices with an emphasis on leading-edge mixtures of digital and analog technology. I knew that Michael Trei uses their P1 phono stage, and that the late Andy Singer used a CH Precision DAC in his home system.

As they should at their price points, CH Precision products come in thick, CNC-crafted chassis with simple, attractive faceplates and an army of features packed inside. I've never much cared for extensive feature lists that come with touchscreens and menus. So naturally, I appreciated the modest "accessible, efficient, forward-thinking" position Wattson Audio is taking in the marketplace. I've been angling for purist-quality plug'n'play digital since streaming began to upstage CDs. And now, here it was, at a reasonable price.

Description
The Wattson Madison LE streamer-DAC costs $4995. It has three inputs: 100Mb/s Ethernet, S/PDIF on RCA, and TosLink—no USB, no I²S, no AES3, no external clock sync. There are no analog inputs, but there is a volume control. So, with digital music, the Madison can make music with just a streaming connection and a pair of headphones, or a pair of speakers and a power amplifier (footnote 1). Those who want to add a turntable or tuner to the system will need a separate preamp.

The Madison LE has two kinds of analog line outputs: single-ended RCA (2.0V RMS max output) and balanced XLR (4.0V). The volume control incorporates "lossless" LEEDH Processing (footnote 2). Nevertheless, the volume control can and should be disabled when using a separate preamplifier. I used it some with my HoloAudio Serene preamp, but I enjoyed it most by itself, driving one or the other of my three power amplifiers.

The output of the Madison's headphone amplifier is specified as 150mW into 32 ohms, 50mW into 150 ohms, or 10mW into 600 ohms.

The LE version of the Madison is upgraded from the regular Madison streamer, with a redesigned output stage and a "much-improved, in-house–manufactured power supply"—the quote is from Kevin Wolff. The Wattson website adds, "The Madison LE uses an external, energy-efficient, switch-mode power-supply, but we were able to engineer it for reduced noise levels with the addition of an AC input filter, and greater stability by adding linear regulation." The Madison LE has twice the capacitance of the standard Madison and higher-quality capacitors. The power supply attaches to the LE with a 36" umbilical cord, allowing it to be placed out of sight, leaving the plucky, 2.3lb, 6.9" wide, 7.3" deep, 1.9" high Madison to rest in plain sight, to be admired for its unique, touchscreen-free industrial-chic design.

The Madison LE is a streaming D/A processor. Its DAC shares DNA with D/A processors from CH Precision (footnote 3). From the website: "A Sharc DSP chip is employed to implement our sophisticated upsampling and spline-filtering algorithm. The short-tail filter profile ensures superb time-domain performance, while independent left and right channel WM8742 DACs preserve channel separation and spatial information."

The Wattson iOS app, called Wattson Music, is bare bones but functional. The app allowed me to wrangle UPnP/DLNA, Tidal, and Qobuz. Airplay, Roon, Tidal Connect, and Audirvãna are accessed by their native apps, which integrate seamlessly with the Madison LE. The Wattson Music app allows you to change inputs, control volume, adjust the brightness of the front-panel lights, and perform some DSP equalization for "acoustic correction of speaker placement."

Setup
Barely containing my DAC-installation anxiety, I followed the directions in the Madison's online owner's manual. Getting it running was a 10-minute operation, including time spent downloading and installing the "Wattson Music" iOS app on my iPad. The Android alternative is called "Wattson Remote."

At first, I was vexed by the Madison's lack of a USB input. All my downloaded files are on USB drives, and I just wanted to push one in and start listening. Why no USB? At the core of the Madison is a streaming interface developed for OEM applications in the pre-Wattson days. In assembling the Madison, Wattson added what it considered the necessities: a TosLink input for TV connectivity and a coax S/PDIF input for transports. Those who wish to play local music files can connect from a computer using, eg, Roon or Audirvãna, or turn their computer into a UPnP server with a program like AssetUPnP (footnote 4).

I connected the Madison to my router via LAN and to the TEAC VRDS 701T CD transport with Kimber's D60 S/PDIF cable, and it fired right up. I haven't turned it off or listened to an LP in four weeks.

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Footnote 1: Wattson will soon launch a companion power amplifier, the Madison LE.

Footnote 2: See processing-leedh.com.

Footnote 3: It's not that the Madison draws on CH Precision designs. It's that the two companies share DNA, going back years—study the two companies' histories and the same names pop up again and again—and this common DNA manifests in similar design philosophies.—Jim Austin

Footnote 4: Running a UPnP server on a networked computer will allow you to access locally stored files via the Wattson Music app or any other UPnP client. An Asset UPnP license costs $37 and allows you to run the program on up to five devices including Apple, Windows, Debian Linux, and Raspberry Pie computers and NAS devices from Synology and QNap. Asset UPnP is from the folks behind the powerful dBpoweramp suite of products. See dbpoweramp.com.