Wadax Atlantis Reference Server

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When we designed and built the Atlantis Reference DAC, our goal was to redefine the musical possibilities of digital media. We succeeded! A combination of solid, sound engineering and breakthrough technology, the Reference DAC has been universally recognised by the world’s most exacting reviewers as not just better than competing products, but better by a considerable margin. Setting a completely new benchmark for performance, it has quickly become THE Reference, the product against which all others are measured.

Now, using the same rigorous design approach, WADAX has turned its attention to server technology. We have questioned accepted wisdom – whether it is to do with operational protocols or circuit topology: We have applied the same exhaustive attention to engineering detail – whether it’s the chassis design or the future-proof, card-cage construction: Where conventional hardware, thinking and solutions have proved inadequate or a gate on performance, we have redesigned or reinvented. The result is the – a server like no other. It uses unique, breakthrough technologies to deliver musical performance that other servers can’t hope to match. But more than that, our goal was to match unrivalled musical performance with the unprecedented reach and access of streamed music and high-res file replay. Once again, Reference has to mean Reference. Once again, we have succeeded.

Isolate, Isolate, Isolate…
Digital signals are vulnerable: They can be impacted by microphonic interference and RFI/EMI induced noise, degraded by poorly executed transfer standards and badly engineered connectors. Preserving their integrity means first protecting them from external influences…

Isolation from spurious noise and power supply artefacts

Research into the fundamental engineering parameters limiting the performance of existing streamers quickly established power supply quality and related noise as critical factors in undermining the quality and integrity of stored and streamed music files. Predominantly based on computer hardware, many servers rely on stock power supplies and regulation, even if they are fed from an audio grade transformer.

The Reference Server is driven by a heavily regulated, multi-stage power supply derived directly from the supplies developed for the Reference DAC. It is so sophisticated and so quiet that the noise-floor of the DC reaching the unit’s active devices is almost impossible to measure. It’s so quiet, that during development we needed to rely on virtual modelling and to develop entirely new measurement protocols to assess advances in performance.

Isolation from mechanical and electrical breakthrough
The Reference Server’s precision machined chassis is a complex and ultra-rigid construction that doesn’t just isolate vulnerable data from the outside world, it isolates the individual sections within the server itself, mechanically and electrically grounding each critical section, preventing the transfer of mechanical or radiated energy from one to another. Safe from external noise sources, the massive outer housings and precise card slots for each separate circuit block ensure that your fragile digital data is safe from self noise generated within the replay chain too.

- Machined from 150 kg of high-spec aluminium alloy.
- The chassis assembly is constructed from more than 50 individual, precision-machined parts.
- Parts are classified and assembled according to their mechanical and vibratory behaviour, to create a sophisticated mechanical cascade, designed specifically to transport and dissipate structural energy.

Isolation from the network
At first, this might seem counter-intuitive. After all, high-res files stored on your server and files streamed by it all pass across your domestic network. That’s unavoidable. But the network – even the most carefully constructed network, using audiophile switches and cables – is still an incredibly noisy environment, based largely on computer industry hardware and protocols that have almost no audiophile sensibilities. Storing and rendering a file with extreme care is pointless if you then use a noisy network to transfer it to your DAC!

Rather than relying on the Ethernet to carry your fragile data from the Reference Server to your DAC, at Wadax we prefer a direct link using USB. But no ordinary USB. Rather than off-the-shelf components, we build our own USB physical layer driver to ensure accurate data transfer. We provide a mechanical support for the cable, to deal with the issue of incompatibility between the USB connector and heavy, audiophile grade USB cables, so that the weig