Wadax Studio•Player launch event at KJ West One
The WADAX team and hi-fi+’s Alan Sircom joined us on October 10th at London’s KJ West One to officially welcome the Studio Player to the UK. Kicking off with a roundtable discussion moderated by the hi-fi+ editor, and ending with a listening session for select KJ West One customers, the big story of the day was the incredible musicality of WADAX’s new pride and joy.
CEO Javier Guadalajara was joined by Brandon Lauer and Cayetano Castellano to discuss the company’s journey, beginning with Javier’s father and today culminating in the Studio Player. While the Studio Player is packed with technology and Javier’s engineering expertise is evident in the performance of all WADAX’s products, the conversation across the afternoon and evening kept coming back to the essentials: music, emotion, family, friends, enjoyment…
Javier’s message was clear: WADAX is not a hi-fi company, but a music and emotion company. The new player is designed to enable listening moments and bring people together, from its ease of use (streaming directly from your favourite apps), to its small footprint and more accessible price tag. This is a product that looks forward to a new era of hi-fi that gets out of the “man cave” and into a family’s living space for everyone to enjoy.
Next came the real reason we’d all come together: to listen. Director of Sales Brandon Lauer treated us to a small workshop showing off just how easy the player is to use, and how powerful a tool it is. Changing output impedance on the display allows the listener to easily tune the sound to his or her taste. As Brandon adjusted the setting, the strumming of the guitar became more pronounced, adjusting it back the other way rounded out and softened the sound. We all agreed on the sweet spot, and nobody needed to crawl behind the rack, mess with cables, and risk throwing out their back to get there.
“This is easily a £1,000,000 system, and the Studio • Player is the least expensive thing here. Even the speaker cables cost more. This system should reveal - and frankly embarrass - the source… but it doesn’t.”
That was the big surprise to many in the room. How is a £37,500 source in such a rich system not being absolutely humiliated? Moreover, why does it sound like it belongs there? There was no place to hide, and yet the Studio Player delivered beautiful musicality and fidelity. Even streaming from Spotify, while we all agreed Tidal sounded better, was nothing to scoff at. Music just sounded good. Even to the analogue aficionados in the room, the WADAX had an admittedly analogue sound. It’s not just a marketing tagline; this really is a revolution in digital.
Brandon took us through a playlist that demonstrated the endless versatility of the player. Instruments in jazz and classical had a living quality. Youn Sun Nah’s quirky vocals dazzled in Momento Magico. On SYML’s Dim, the listening room became St. Mark’s Cathedral, where the track was recorded. Eivør’s Trøllabundin may have awakened trolls in the far-off fjords beyond the arctic circle. Shazam lit up on more than one phone; a testament to just how enjoyable the music was, but also a reminder of what brought us all together in the first place: the joy of sharing music.
As dinner time approached and the prosecco came out, the real magic and purpose of the Studio Player revealed itself. The volume increased and the music continued to play. When the Deep Purple came on, nobody really wanted to turn the system off and leave. This, surely, is the point of any system and every product within a system: to enable such listening enjoyment that you just want to keep going.
“I don’t care about anything else. Do I want to keep sitting there, putting on another song, over and over, for hours? If the answer is ‘no’, then the system isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do. But this does that.”
For all the praise they received and will undoubtedly continue to receive, WADAX remains a humble company. Javier and the team hadn’t come to London boasting about how this is the greatest product ever created, or even how it’s better than one or another. They’d simply come to share what they’d made, why they’d made it, and to listen to opinions so they could make it even better in the future. The opinion was unanimous however: they’d made something truly special with the Studio Player, and for all the right reasons.
The WADAX Studio • Player is on permanent demonstration at KJ West One, so don’t miss the opportunity to hear to this fabulous source as part of a fabulous system. It is also available from Lotus Hifi, Anagram Audio and Audio Therapy.