Yesterday I took a picture of the electronics I used, along with Sonner Audio’s Legato Duo speakers, to entertain folks coming through our weekly open house. I then posted it on Instagram with the heading ‘Elevate your Listening.’ Since IG doesn’t lend itself to long form exposition, I though I’d expand on it here.
First, let’s move beyond the brand names and identify the individual components:
- Wattson Audio Emerson Digital streamer
- Merason Frérot DAC + Pow1 LPS
- Sugden Audio A21SE integrated amplifier
- Luna Cables’ AC, Ethernet, digital and analog ICs & speaker cables
Wattson Audio, as a brand name, is only a few year’s old but the Swiss company behind it has been doing R&D and manufacturing custom circuit boards for high end brands for 20 years. They currently have three products: Emerson Digital, (used here), which is a streamer only, Emerson Analog, which is a streamer/DAC and Madison, a streamer/DAC adding a headphone amplifier and volume control. All three use the manufacturer’s proprietary streaming approach and their patented LEEDH digital signal attenuation. They are ROON-ready, but can also be controlled via Wattson’s own app or the recently released Play, an Apple IOS-only UpNp control app.
All three have been widely reviewed and have garnered very high marks for great detail without brightness or hardness, a marvelous sense of space—a wide, deep soundstage with specific placement as well as a relaxed organic feel and compelling sense of musical flow. Wattson maintains a page of reviews here: https://en.wattson.audio/reviews
This will be expanded very shortly. I’m only publishing at this pint to create a link to reference in the brief Instagram and FB posts.