LOTUS SUGGESTED SYSTEMS #6

Setup, setup, setup … and always finish the system. Just one or two sub-standard components can let the side down, skew the frequency response, harden or brighten the treble. Even a basic system prepared here for customer demo is underpinned by high-quality mains, cabling, network components and noise reducing support systems. These ancillaries don’t have to be ridiculously expensive. They can be the giant-killing entry models, the cheapest power cords, the first rung ethernet cable, the lowest level of isolation footers, but the important thing is, there’s no single noisy or coloured component anywhere in the chain, right down to the mains sockets and the 10mm electrical cables back to the consumer unit.

Even my most rudimentary £30,000 recipe – say a Thrax integrated with integral dac, Hemmingway wires connected to a pair of low cost stand mounts – is an exceptional system which usually surprises customers with its startling clarity and lack of congestion, its black backgrounds, solid and surefooted 3d structure and it’s engrossing sense of flow and rhythm. A system like this will always beat one with a pre/power and separate DAC that has average setup, mediocre components, poor mains or a rudimentary network feed.

What happens though when you have the budget to move this simple but well thought out system up to the middle and upper middle ground, adding a separate preamp with mono amps, a top tier streamer/DAC, a set of ‘endgame’ floorstanders and high level cabling and mains ? The raison d’etre behind suggested system number 6 was partly to answer that very question. Secondly, we have written about it extensively and it has featured heavily on the Lotus Instagram being installed in various customers’s homes, but its time the quite extraordinary Wadax Studio Player is expertly showcased here in an example system here too. The other reason for system number 6 though is to begin talking more about Soulnote, this very special brand that joined us only in Autumn of last year.

Let’s begin at the top. Studio Player needs little introduction especially around this website. It is the long awaited single box of magic, trickled down from the unchallenged greatest digital source in existence, the Wadax Atlantis Reference. A glance around the Munich High End show this year told us the unfolding story in bold, underlined, 24 point caps lock; manufacturers and distributors all across the globe have caught on and proudly chosen Studio Player to best showcase their own equipment publicly and it was the source of choice in no less than 9 different rooms there, assisting such industry giants as Magico, Audio Research, Rockport, Goebel, Engstrom, Avantgaarde. That is a statement about its reliability and robustness as well as its sound quality of course, nobody wants a system to go down at the biggest audiophile show on the planet.

Studio Player sets a new reference benchmark for digital audio at a price sizeably lower than the competition. It also is unique in its functionality offering Streaming, CD and SACD, and file playback all from one sturdy handsome chassis. Roon is due soon, as is headphone connectivity and single ended output. This year the separate Studio PSU and Studio Clock add-on units will also be available, for those customers who wish to take the unit supersonic, closer to the mighty Reference.

If you have not read my dedicated article on Studio then it can be found here. I just want to point out in this article that on the rear panel, it has digital output so you can sample the unit’s ability as a pure streamer and when you do, it is clear that Studio comprises a very advanced streaming unit inside, which would be comparable to something fairly lofty if it could be extracted and sold on its own. So note that for this system, you would part exchange your Melco, your Innuous statement or Antipodes Oladra or whatever other streamer you already own. You can’t improve Studio by splicing in a separate dedicated streamer, it is a fully realised complete digital solution.

The P-3 linestage with the new ‘X’ specification M-3 monaural amplifiers is the flagship amplification setup from Soulnote. We invested in it because it sounds glorious and represents superb value for money. It is also a budget consious key product, a very useful stepping stone after our selection of fine integrated amps. It moves things on considerably from the best single box Integrateds but at a price that is still close to half the cost of the entry point for Tidal Audio amplification and our second ‘soon to be announced’ flagship amplifier brand.

But we also purchased the top Soulnote Pre/Monos and have it on exclusive permanent demonstration here in the UK, to show that we are very serious about this brand from Tokyo, Japan. We’re not dabbling, trying out, or borrowing bits and pieces but we are committing fully to the best that they can build, because we know from our own trials and from customer reactions and sales so far, that it will shine very brightly the future of Lotus.

The £18,500 P-3 linestage will arguably be more commonly mated to the A-3Core stereo power amp in our smaller UK abodes, but the new X monos – with double the current delivery capacity of the original M-3 – offer considerably more performance and power, and their cute “two-thirds” form factor means they can be housed more neatly than you typically expect with monoblocks.

Only the other day I had to spend quite a while with a customer, explaining how a £32,000 Class D amplifier could be markedly superior to a set of very well regarded £60,000 mono amps. There are many factors here involved of course, but the golden rule is that price, familiarity, popularity and ubiquitousness are simply not reliable metrics when forecasting how good something might be for the price.

Nowhere is this distinction more pertinent than in the world of loudspeakers simply because they are so difficult to design and imbue with the very desirable properties which would mark them out as “Ultra High End”. This topic is most certainly calling for greater expansion in a dedicated article but in the small pace of this report, let it be said that with speakers this is a very small club indeed especially from what is available here in our constrained UK market. Rockport though, most definitely occupy that highest level, comfortably I would say. Of that I am absolutely certain.

The Avior II also represent a bit of a bargain vis a vis other offerings. The smaller Atria II model in the range will give you a very similar sound quality level, and they are just as fabulous with a very small form factor for UK homes but the Avior are really not that much more money, especially in the context of a full system price, yet they give you so much more weight and scale and go lower too. The sense of drama, of performance is significantly higher and all really for a cabinet that is just a tad wider and deeper. Unless you can stretch to the new Lynx, they are the Rockport of choice for even the most critical and demanding of audiophiles. Like speakers from Tidal Audio, the general performamce level, things like detail levels and transprency, are already almost at the maximum level with the entry models Atria and Piano G3. The drivers and the cabinet technology is the same or similar in all models and as you ascend the range and get into hundreds of thousands of pounds, you mainly pay for a bigger cabinet and just more drivers rather than better.

Connecting up and dressing this system are many of the well known Lotus suspects. I threw the kitchen sink at it with the amazing new Shunyata Everest X mains conditioner and the flagship Melco S1 dataswitch. Both expensive but they add so much and will be very much exploited to the full in a setup of this calibre. Hemingway Z-core Alpha speaker cables and interconnects, mains cables from Tara Labs, HifiStay Absolute point footers underneath the Wadax Studio and the Soulnote M-3X platforms, the new Stillpoints Ultra 1 V2 underneath the Melco switch and a superb Bassocontinuo Revolution X equipment rack. Network wires are from Hemingway and HZ-Project.

Without all of this, or furnished with mediocre alternatives, the system wouldn’t even be half of what it is. This level of purity, resonance and noise control allows the major components to shine very brilliantly indeed. Whilst the products could be lowered by one or two levels in each manufacturer’s range for a tolerable deficit in performance (Melco S1 to S10, Z-core to Indigo II, Everest to Hydra Delta for example), the important rule is as ever to finish every single component. Linearity, neutrality and natural energy levels all the way through.

Special mention must also go to the Hemingway signal wires here which add much to this system and beautifully counterbalance the slightly darker presentation of the Dac and speakers. Lotus customers will already know of this brand’s very potent ability in general transparency levels even in the cheapest models, but in addition, Hemingway lowers the noise floor in a most unique way, a way in which brings about much added magic to any system

First of all, the quality of components throughout means that this system has incredible clarity and an enormous amount of detail. It is an extremely revealing system.

This detail might be textural and timbral information, detail in the different volumes, pressures and intensities of sounds, fine low level artistic expression in instruments and voices, detail about the spaces between sounds, detail about the air and ambience within the recording, the faint decay of notes or information about the position in space and physical size and shape of notes. It’s all there … arrestingly so if you are not familiar with this level of system. For me it is on a level with the best dozen or so rooms I hear at Munich every year. If anything, just more settled with better mains and better Qobuz too.

In presentation, the music here has been fully exhumed from the speakers and exists physically in the room in a potent and well defined corporeal hologram. Dynamically it has enormous grunt and can perform large and rapid swings in energy at high volumes. But it is also very dynamic at the micro level too, where small sounds existing close together have their own shape, power and separate sources of life, relative to each other. This means that it can sound astonishingly delicate and gossamer on more reflective and emotive music. And even at very low volume there is still a large amount of definition and differentiation between sounds, whether that be differences in tone, volume, physical shape, position or indeed anything else. If you are a photographer you could liken it to the high micro contrast that the best camera lenses give you, the dynamic range across changing tones at the pixel level. Leica fans will understand this instinctively.

This all adds up to that all important word “life”, and this system scores literally maximum points for the feeling of being alive, of being in the room with you, able to touch you with intimately, or effortlessly perform huge caveman shifts in velocity and sound pressure. It’s a very very good system, wonderfully synergised and with a clarity of purpose that tells you that all the components are aligned and trying to achieve the same end result.

Life, clarity, holographic. … regular readers here might be thinking that the above two paragraphs could roughly apply to many of the systems I build and there would be some truth in that so what exactly are the more singular characteristics of this particular setup ?

First and foremost the Wadax Studio Player sets the order of play. “Rich” and “bold” might be two words you first use to describe this system. As my deep dive and other professional reviews have pointed out, Studio is a masterclass in timing, in musical structure, in revealing to you the phrasing, temporal relationships, melodies and rhythms which lay the very foundations of music. Tonally it is rich and generously textured with beautiful harmonics and note density. This is especially true when compared to many of the industry’s rival DACs which can sometimes sound a little bright, a touch sterile and tonally bereft. The Wadax will probably surprise you in this respect, it’s fingerprint is against the norm of what many of us have come to learn of as digital yet it achieves this by still sounding true, utterly free from any rounding, softening or warming of the signal.

In its disposition of energy the Wadax feels natural rather than forward or too eager, but the way it enthusiastically casts its 3d magic most definitely marks it out instantly as a confident and bold performer. There is nothing half hearted about the way your favourite albums are conjured into the room.

This richness and adept way with harmonics and real instruments is also mirrored by the Rockports. Avior and Studio Player are kind of cut from the same philosophical cloth and fortify each other beautifully in this setup. What I love so much about a Rockport is that it does the exact opposite of what many other high end speakers do. A decent showboaty midrange is an easy design brief and a detailed backlit treble can impress many a customer in a demonstration room but a Rockport does neither of those things, its too good for that, several steps beyond that sort of ideology. First of all it impresses in the most difficult region of the spectrum – especially for a loudspeaker – the bass. The Avior does bass in a way very few other speakers can match, not just in the generous amount on offer for the size of speaker but in the startling information level it can achieve in this most difficult portion of frequencies. There is no subwoofer effect with Rockports, no low register noise, no cabinet induced low end colouration. You finally get to hear the bottom end exactly as it is on the source material.

The bass transparency then is exemplary, the very solid 3d shape and pitch of bass, tunefulness, the timing and speed of notes, the way it exists completely free of any cabinet, and just the glorious sumptuous Rockport presentation you get percolating into the room. Then you notice the midrange and the highs and the level of refinement and you understand that the midrange and top end are also as good as the best that is possible; it’s all there for you, but in an unforced and unostentatious way. You climb into the midrange instead of having a skeletal version of it thrown at you. There is no forward projection of favoured frequencies, no extra treble energy added, no sparkling or spotlighting of the tweeter, just a natural and seamless perfectly integrated whole, and the most gorgeous muscular delivery and overriding feeling of weight and physical body.

We have been selling Rockport for quite a while now and many people are surprised when they first encounter them because they feel like they are finally hearing a speaker that is the inverse of everything else and what in their heart they were perhaps always looking for. Generous bass instead of leanness, body and density to all notes, smooth refined highs instead of a hot or glinting overly detailed treble, a seamless integrated sound from top to bottom where the speaker completely disappears and the music feels like it is simply there, rather than having been produced by equipment.

Rockport are masters at controlling or limiting cabinet noise and resonance through their advanced and ingenious construction technology. The new Lynx for example are formed from a single piece 185 lb aluminium casting which is bonded to an advanced composite damping layer, and thus completely free from any panels, joinery or fasteners, to achieve the very best results for loudspeaker damping, structural stiffness and out and out mass. Rockports have an inertness to their structure which can even be appreciated upon physical examination. This is obviously a key element to their very high levels of transducer resolution, and also their impressively neutral and linear handling of the signal. The other standout from all this though is their blackness and image stability. So firmly grounded and so stiff and dead is that cabinet and baffle, that the soundstage with the Aviors feels like it is cast for eternity in stone. The ‘Mount Rushmore of speakers’, imperturbable images and shapes pop out of nothing and feel even more holographic and palpable than you thought possible.

So what of the Soulnotes ? Well for the most part they simply do a superb job at amplifying and getting the hell out the way. Soulnote equipment in general has a very neutral presentation and is so easy to build great systems with; just the merest hint of low end warmth and an ever so slight sweetness in the upper registers but the treble is still extended and vibrant and there is no rolling off or softening and no bloom or extra fat anywhere. Not red top milk but semi-skimmed green you could say. In fact the presentation is quite similar to Tidal, more neutral than Vitus and not quite as sprightly as Thrax.

This is generally the ideal for an amplifier and in the context of this system, they accurately feed and power the signal downstream and simply let the Wadax and the Rockports characterise proceedings and perform their magic into the room. I would say the P-3 linestage has an enormous amount of resolve. It is highly revealing and much like the similarly priced Thrax Dionysus pre, it’s performance level very much belies its more modest price. In the world of high end audio, £18,900 is distinctly middle of the road as far as preamps go.

Neutrality and not drawing attention to itself is a big strength in a system such as this and these strengths certainly continue with the Soulnote’s impressive 3d ability. These amps have oodles of dimensionality – another Soulnote trademark – allowing the Wadax and the Avior to really showcase their imaging ability and their propensity to render the music as physically believable. On the very first listen this system is immediately alluring primarily because of its richness and organic personality and some of this is also down to the Soulnotes too. The M-3X monos have a certain weight to their sound which lends the system a fullness and a tube like density which extends from the bottom end up through the midband. Overall these amps are impressively matched into the system. They faithfully preserve the high level feed from the Wadax and also have the dynamic headroom, control and grip to really energise and bring the Aviors to life.

I set this system up initially with assistance from UK Soulnote importers Kog Audio. We marvelled at its instant elegant appeal, its wide open weighty opulence and succulent textures and timbres. It is a fortunate combination which is delightfully physical in its delivery of the music, muscular and fleshy with much shape and solidity. It sounds incredibly quiet, as though it has been Entreq grounded several times over, like its been vacuum cleaned extensively for your personal enjoyment. Zero background noise, no faint wavering in the position or shape of notes, free from thinness, not a gram of haze or fuzz around any edges.

Dynamically this system is glorious when playing loud or quiet, delectably intimate on a gentle ballad but then a hard-hitting authoritarian powerhouse on say a dynamic film score, some propulsive German techno or something symphonic. It feels valve like in its sweetness and realism. Rich and cavernous, it swallows you up in its fluidity but then can bite and play staccato when required. It’s energy state is also beautifully natural; bold and exuberant, thrusting and piercing when it is supposed to be, but never forward, highlighted or forced. It will mesmerise with hours and hours of focused listening without fatigue.

Like all the very best systems, it delivers an astonishing abundance of information and detail into the room but always presents as a mellifluous satisfying whole. In many ways it reminds me of the Rockport system assembled at the Munich show back in May which saw the new Rockport Lynx mated with a Studio Player using Absolare amps. This setup was a big hit with its effortless musicality and its ability to absorb and enchant, and many who put pen to paper or opined on social media, had that room down as their favourite of the whole show or certainly in the top handful. I feel like this one, with a speaker one lower in the range but in a better environment, more than compensates for that defecit, primarily with generous use of Hemingway cables which always work their magic alchemy of increased poise, definition and harmonics.

FULL SYSTEM PRICE

Wadax Studio Player, £38,500
Soulnote P-3, £18,900
Soulnote M-3X, £35,800
Rockport Avior II, £53,500
Hemingway Z-core Alpha cables, £8,800
Hemingway Z-core Alpha XLR x2, £11,000
Tara Labs Muse mains cable x2, £8,400
Tara Labs ONE mains cable x2, £3,990
Melco S1 dataswitch, £12,499
Hemingway Z-core etherne,t £3,000
HZ Project Lan Isolator, £520
HifiStay Absolute Point x4, £3,000
HifiStay Stella 80T x6, £2,800
Shunyata Everest X, £15,750
Stillpoints Ultra 1E V2 x3, £720

£217,179