LOTUS SUGGESTED SYSTEMS #8

We will be moving onto some fantastic budget systems in the sub £50,000 category very soon, that I promise, but for the moment we need to cover an important reference system which marks the culmination of many years hard work and planning . In the ultra high end segment we are obviously known for creating beautiful systems from Tidal Audio. The demand has grown strongly over the last 9 years to the point where now in the UK in customer’s homes, Tidal Audio electronics are probably the most ubiquitous out of all the industries uber brands. But as we are expanding as a company with an ever enlarging audience, we reached the point some time ago where I felt it necessary to offer an alternative in the state of the art category.

First, a little chapter of UK hi-fi history. Many years ago two friends working for Focal loudspeakers were given an opportunity to go their own way and set up a distribution company to go on and import and distribute Focal. This then was how UK importers Kog Audio were born. Subsequently, it was because of Focal’s range of speakers that Kog then added Vitus Audio to their roster of brands they import and wholesale. Why ? Because the sharp, incisive Beryllium tweeter in many of the Focals of that day was suitably tamed by the smooth and refined treble of Vitus electronics. A perfect counterbalance, one predilection fixing another. Together, the two brands were a powerful ying and yang built not from the spreadsheet but from passion and expert knowledge.

We can stay with Focal to continue our tale because years later the French company bought out Naim Audio and so this time, because of commercial forces rather than sound, their speakers and Naim’s electronics were then marketed together. You would be hard pressed to dream up a more unfavourable combination, two forward and aggressive sonic signatures clashing together. Electronics which exacerbated rather than medicated the lurking pitfalls of the Focal presentation. Remaining in the past so as not to offend anyone in the present day, we can cite another popular uneasy pairing from the Naim back catalogue when Shahinian loudspeakers appeared in prominent Naim dealers in the early 1990’s. Shahinian Obelisk, Hawks and Arcs needed big current from amplifiers like Bedini, Plinius and Dynavector to get the bass working properly. Pairing them with bantamweight Naim Nap 250 and 135 amplifiers was another misguided selection but one which was sold extensively and recommended to you, the unknowing customer.

My Focal/Vitus story makes the point that amongst many of the commonly sold hifi pairings extraordinary combinations do exist but the last 2 examples illustrate that it’s not necessarily guaranteed, especially when powerful commercial interests loom large in the background.

The portfolios of Hifi equipment distributors can often dictate what permutations of kit end up on the high street. Many dealers simply copycat these portfolios because it’s the easy lazy path with guaranteed accompanying advertising and consumer awareness and because they are sometimes not knowledgeable or passionate enough to go out and pioneer their own recipes. They are of course also encouraged to represent large chunks of these portfolios rather than cherry pick, and perhaps in the process benefit from better financial terms themselves.

But distribition portfolios are often shaped over many years through relationships, opportunity and timing rather than through some grand unifying sonic vision. Put another way, the best speaker to go with a particular amp in all likelihood might not be found under the roof of the same distributor. With so many manufacturers out there, with so many already locked into existing distribution agreements, and so much equipment not even available in the UK, why would it be ?

To innovate at the outer frontiers of high end, it can pay to be the maverick and refuse the easy mainstream path and go in search of products which have the actual quality of the product as the priority rather than commercial reach and mass appeal. It takes belief, passion and wherewithal to transcend the established mainstream partnerships though and discover your own magical formulas. By having your own ideas, believing strongly in what you think a good sound is, and possessing the courage, independence and financial power to go wherever you need to go, you can make exciting things happen.

The point of all this is not to brag, or to denigrate any corner of the industry because fortuitous combinations in this hobby most certainly do exist and there are some UK dealers out there doing good things in the difficult hobby of High End audio, but I do wish to illustrate very clearly that the unique Wadax/JMF/Rockport alchemy we have created here isn’t something we just randomly assembled together out of convenience or constructed as a result of commercial pressures. In point of fact, none of these brands know each other especially well if at all, or have used each other’s equipment before and they have as far as I know, never been put together at any other dealer worldwide. But my word, what a wonderful combination and one that no doubt will have a very long and fruitful career here at Lotus. I am very proud to represent not just each manufacturer but the beauty they create when expertly melded together.

In 2023 we were approached by Wadax. They liked what I was doing as a retailer and wanted me to borrow their state of the art Reference DAC and Server and consider it as a serious addition to Lotus. I agreed to the long term loan but truth be told it was more out of curiosity. After a couple of months though, so revelatory was it as a digital source that I simply had to invest and bring it here.

As an alternative source to our digital sources from Tidal Audio, this decision then conveniently paved the way for a second state of the art system offering here. Rockport, which we were already successfully selling was the natural speaker choice. The love affair here was already well established. Comfortably in the category of the very best loudspeakers the magnificent hand built creations from Maine held all the answers.

The final jigsaw piece then was the amplification which was no easy task. This had to be equipment with the very highest degrees of transparency to fully do justice to Wadax Reference and Wadax Studio products. It also needed to be fair in pricing, exactly the same cost in every country and not stratospherically inflated or geared toward more of a status symbol product. When we finally trialled it here at Lotus towers, JMF Audio from Alsace in France hit the bullseye. It’s level of performance actually exceeded our hopes and expectations.

Describing this system must begin with a discussion of the speakers, that part of the system which sets and anchors the entire system presentation. The Lynx are Rockport’s very latest piece of ingenuity and very proud of them they are too. The cabinet technology is something entirely new and means that LYNX are one of the most inert, noiseless, resonance free transducers in existence. They are created from a single piece 84kg aluminium casting, a high mass one piece monocoque contains all the topology needed to build the loudspeaker so that means no joins, connections, fasteners or structural complexities which can compromise the stiffness and absolute absence of resonance and noise. Some 38kg of Rockports proprietary internal composite damping compound – first seen in the bigger Orion model – is then bonded to all internal surfaces of the cabinet to reduce internal resonances to zero. Internal ribs found inside the aluminium cast further increase the bonded surface area. The crossover is also sealed in an acoustically isolated enclosure in the base with the the same compound.

After this quite unique cabinet construction methodology, all of Rockports standout technology applies. In house manufactured carbon fibre sandwich cones, a beryllium tweeter with waveguide, extensive consideration to sound diffraction characteristics and careful fine tuning of each crossover on a speaker by speaker basis over a 3 days period. Yes, every set of Rockports gets carefully measured and listened to by key personnel and is ping ponged from demonstration room to workbench several times over, having its crossover systematically perfected before being packed to leave the factory. I don’t know of any other speaker which goes through that same laborious and labour intense hand finishing. Dedication, unfaltering standards and true love for the craft.

The result of Rockport’s new construction techniques mean LYNX is a full range loudspeaker that in the flesh does not really look that much larger than the diminutive entry Atria II model but the internal volume is a startling 50% greater. Perfect for UK homes then. A speaker with an enormous dynamic range and capable of generating scale, weight and headroom that typically you would expect from a much larger enclosure.

On first acquaintance it is clear that LYNX are a Rockport through and through with the same standout qualities we expect from the brand. High refinement, extreme transparency, ultra black backgrounds, remarkable image stability and rhythmic surefootedness and of course Rockports stunning bass ability. Customers who have experienced a Rockport before will probably understand that they design their speakers from the bass upwards. Rockport believe that the lower frequencies are the foundation of all music and also are well aware that this is the most difficult part of the frequency range to perfect.

So Rockport bass is how the speaker leads. It is a more dense and muscular presentation. This can often come as a surprise to customers because many speakers over promote the mids and the highs and end up lean sounding; it is easy to impress at those frequencies and detail is also what sells speakers in the short confines of a shop demonstration. It is the bass you will probably first notice with the Rockport though. Not any extra bass I hasten to add but the sheer detail of the bass, the extraordinary texturing of lower notes, the precision and complete absence of colouration or extra “cabinet bass” that has been added by resonance and speaker colouration. Rockport bass is always incredibly holographic too, exhumed entirely out of the enclosure and into space in the room. And from that bass of course, you get coherency of musical structure. Music is layed out and unravelled with a feeling of absolute ease.

That being said, none of this means that the Rockport midrange and top end is anything less than spectacular. Refinement, resolution, naturalness, prodigious space and ambience. It is all there in abundance but these frequencies are perhaps not as ostentatious as many speakers tend to be, even very expensive ones. This has certainly been true of the Atria, Avior and Orion models that have lived here at Lotus these past 5 years.

The LYNX though ? I would say that they are ever so slightly different. Not a new voicing as such but just a development of the existing Rockport way of doing things. The mids are definitely a touch more direct and generous in their accessibility. There is an immediacy to this speaker as well as a sense of great speed. The LYNX are laser focused and instantaneous and they communicate all frequencies in a slightly more explicit manner than other models in the range. Director of sales Jon Zimmer likens LYNX more to the flagship Lyra than their bigger brother and obvious optical twin, Orion. Now I have yet to hear Lyra but I would definitely agree with the comparison to Orion which go lower and are weightier again but have a slightly darker, fatter and less forthright personality, although no less musically satisfying I hasten to add.

In this system they are possibly all one could ever ask for from a speaker. As you would expect from any Lotus system, they completely disappear and the music exists all around them in a seamless 3d hologram from top to bottom. There is nothing you feel you wish to add or subtract and there is no manner in which they do anything which you would seek to change or upgrade. Some people want bigger things and more impressive things but like the Tidal Contiva G3, these already do everything you will ever need. You are at the level where if a vast listening room called for it, spending double or triple would only bring you a bigger cabinet, more drivers and so perhaps small diminishing returns in the form of a little extra scale, weight and dynamic slam. The beauty of LYNX though is whilst they have the headroom and sheer muscle to go into very large rooms, they do not look over powering in the medium or small room. The actual quality of the sound though, that is already at the highest level. You are not really going to peer even further into the music by buying an even more expensive speaker. Lynx are only the 3^rd product in Rockport’s range but they have the performance levels to do full justice to the Wadax Reference digital seen here.

Moving backwards up the system we come to the JMF amplifiers. The history of JMF is founded in many of the world’s top recording studios. This is outside the scope of this report but I would encourage you to read up on their interesting heritage. What we have today is a company very much like many of the others we work with. They are not interested in sales volume, an excess of product, new upgrades and versions every 6 months or a mountain of dealers in each country. They just want to produce the best possible. They only make one preamplifier and only ever have. It’s currently on version G and customers can have it continually upgraded for life. The stereo power amplifier you see here is the same, born in 2007 it too is now on version G; if you have a specification B onwards, you can have it upgraded internally to current spec.

Like the Atlantis Reference, JMF units are built for life and offered to you for life. Continual development is guaranteed and one does not need to sell the old and buy the new when products take another technological leap. How many times does the phrase “end game” get used in our industry ? And every time it is used, how often – if ever at all – does it actually signify that the customer will never need to replace the model with a new one at some point, and that he will always be able to simply internally modify what he owns and invested in all those years ago ? This is the comforting way with JMF and with this type of lofty performance, there will never an itch to migrate to anything different either.

What you won’t read about so much and what can’t be garnered from online reports and pictures, is just how impressive JMF is in the flesh. The metalwork is beautiful and this would include the remote control unit too. Centimetres thick, stunningly finished, purposeful high quality buttons and impressive engraving too. I personally have not seen better. One review in particular refrained from using the expression built like a tank because “tanks aren’t as well-built as JMF Audio amplifiers”.

The Wadax Atlantis Server and Dac will be no stranger to you if we have crossed paths before. Since we first added it to our shop other companies have produced new top of the range digital products but to be fair to the Luminary organisation from Mardid, the Reference is still well out on its own competing only with itself. Even in lowly “level 2” specification in this system (devoid of the additional server power supply, Akasa DC Dac power cables or indeed the Transport) it is doing things with the digital signal which put a ton of clean air between it and everything else out there. The Reference is another F1 race car, an unfixed product which will be cared for by Wadax for an eternity. I absolutely adore my demo unit, it is one of my very favourite things and I love building systems with it. If you would like to explore it more in depth I would encourage you to read my full report on this here.

Some people may not fully get this system at first for the simple reason that it is not designed to impress. They will be waiting for or wanting some sonic razzamatazz, for spectacle, something audibly impressive and newfangled, something enormous or something sharp, something acrobatic to dance around their ears but the truth is it never really arrives in that sort of way. The defining experience of this system is one of disappearance, the system honouring the job in hand of selflessly recreating the recordings that move you the most. It is a music lover’s system, a wonderful machine which compels you to explore more music, talk about music and understand it and appreciate it in ways you did not before. It compels you to stop shifting from track to track and to settle back and listen to whole albums at a time and for a long time. It is a combination which is just so see through, so neutral and truthful that one quickly becomes lost in the passion, expertise and virtuosity of your chosen artists. In this respect, it very much reminds me of the Tidal Bugatti setup. It is the very last stop on the trainline and you simply disembark, for good.

In a sense this is a system beyond analysis. It prompts one to avert from dissection and conscious examination but let us try to describe the various elements to some degree. The Wadax really has no sound or fingerprint but it does tell us that there is more fine information, more texture, more richness, more life, more soundstage and more physicality in digital music than we ever thought possible. Brightness, sterility, mechanicalness and a slightly muted dynamic have become the expected ills of digital music at all financial levels, but the Wadax shows us that when you are able to fully reverse out all the digital noise, the life in the music and the warmth and richness of digital can surpass even the world’s best record decks.

Nearly all amplification ultimately makes itself present in the final result in the amplitude of each sonic property which strays from perfect neutral, either inadvertently or by design. The tightness of the musical structure – either over tight or loose and blurred, the degree of harmonic saturation – bleached or romantic, the energy state – tipping forward over on its toes or slightly stepped back in the shadows, the linearity of the frequency response – piercing highs, a pushed midrange or bloom and warmth in the upper bass. The JMF does none of these things. In fact it must be the most neutral and invisible equipment I have ever heard and certainly, I have not heard anything more transparent, it occludes nothing and lets through everything and like the LYNX, is the most perfect befitting host for the kaleidoscopic signal fed to it by the Atlantis Reference.

This system then is capable of everything. Breathtaking intimacy and realism, mesmeric levels of detail and expression, vast densely layered crescendos delivered with ample reserves of 100 octane fuel, expansive musical vistas anchored immovably in space, fast thumping rhythms and the precise telegraphing of finely nuanced temporal interrelationships. Its ability in all areas is such that it is never found out, it never creaks or strains or feels even faintly depleted in any way. By never exhibiting any shortfall or appearing vaguely burdened, it never calls attention to its existence. And like all the very best systems, it exudes a feeling of total structural infallibility. Calmess, simplification and measured expert handling of every single note you can throw at it. Control, confidence and magisterial composure to spare.

Ultimately the Wadax/JMF/Rockport elixir just seduces you with the beauty and energy of your own music and not by any sonic means. There is nothing in its manner of reproducing that is brought into the sphere of your awareness. It does not try to impress you with any facet to do with the sound. It just connects you to the highest possible truth. It is my suggested system number 8 and lower down models in the Wadax and Rockport product ranges will spawn more affordable, but no less desireable versions of this system in the near future.

The boxes here are so neutral and transparent that it’s the cables and mains that are the key to altering the sound of this system if you so wish. With Tara Labs cables as featured here, the presentation is organic, grandiose with an enormous soundstage. With Hemingway there is a little more definition and microshaping to the musical structure, even greater speed and a pleasing backlight to the entire spectrum.

With Tara Labs mains the boxes are as neutral as they ever will be. You simply can’t hear Tara Mains cables. With a host of Shunyata Sigma or Omega everything is a degree more cosy and the feeling of volume inside the music slightly larger. I would champion both options and be led by the customer’s own taste.

For mains control this system ideally wants the very best available. It will respond in kind. We used the brand new Everest X for everything bar the two Wadax reference DAC power supplies which were fed by a lone Shunyata T30.

With Qobuz primarily as our source, the incoming network feed is crucial and the best dataswitch possible is the correct answer for this level of source. The Melco S1 fed with a Hemingway Z-core Lan cable and Hz Project Lan isolator.

There isn’t an awful lot to upgrade in this setup. Certainly as far as the boxes are concerned you are limited. The Wadax server would benefit from the dedicated Reference power supply to give more authority, macrodynamic power and image stability. The Akasa DC cables to the DAC would also give more fine microdetail. These are wonderful treats for the future though. The JMF preamp is the only one they make and the best they can make but a move to the HQS 7001 Mono amplifiers would bring about more control, bottom end and sheer grunt and scale. More transparency ? Probably not. Like Tidal electronics, JMF already starts at the highest level.

The mains conditioning is already at a very high level. The mains cords could be extended out to Omega or Grand master EVO in the case of Tara Labs. Probably the single biggest upgrade would be to go to the top signal cables of your chosen brand. Grand Master Evo in the case of tara Labs and OMEGA in the case of Hemingway. These would both represent the biggest upgrades. We have run Omega before and it is astonishing what it brings to a system like this. We also ran Grand Master EVO recently in a very similar test system, both the speaker cables and the XLR. Hugely expensive but again, unprecedented levels of calmness, detail and coherency.

Downgrades is where it maybe gets more interesting. This basic recipe of Wadax/JMF/Rockport  will work beautifully no matter what the level. Right at the entry point one could select the basic single box Wadax Studio player into the JMF pre/power then the entry Rockport Atria II loudspeakers. This would be almost £300,000 cheaper but would still sound comparable and very similar in presentation. The system would still be magical and engage with fabulous levels of immersion and emotion. The humble single box Studio Player is still higher performing than what most people have ever heard let alone owned, and in future years one could add the separate clock and PSU if funds allow and come out of the Atria for a bigger Rockport or indeed LYNX. I will be writing about this system very soon.

That brings this suggested system to a close. It’s been quite a bit of work and investment getting us to this finished product but we are very proud of the results and this recipe is already being actually sold and going into customers’ homes. With new products on the way from Rockport, the imminent arrival of Studio PSU and Studio Clock, it is formula with a fabulous future ahead of it and we would implore you to come for a listen.

FULL SYSTEM PRICE

Wadax Atlantis Reference Server £69,000
Wadax Atlantis Reference DAC £170,000
Wadax Atlantis Reference Akas Glass Optical £21,000
Wadax Atlantis Reference DC cables £2,800
JMF PRS 1.5 £36,500
JMF HQS 6002 £42,500
ROCKPORT LYNX £83,000
TARA LABS MUSE XLR x2 £17,000
TARA LABS MUSE Speaker Cables 2.5m £15,500
Shunyata Everest X + Sigma X XC £19,750
Shuntata Typhon T30 £9,500
Shunyata Sigma X NR x2 £8,000
Tara Labs Muse PC x3 £12,600
Melco S1 dataswitch £12,500
HifiStay Mythology Transform 3 level £12,900
Bassocontinuo Revolution-x 4 level £13,340

£545,890