DACS & CD PLAYERS

Today, digital sources come in 3 flavours: Spinning physical media, CDs and SACDs. Playing computer files from storage using a dedicated Media Server. And finally, playing music direct from Internet Streaming services (Tidal, Qobuz and Internet Radio). All of these methods require a Digital to Analogue comverter and this is often a separate device in its own chassis., connected to the CD transport or Streamer/Server by a digital interconnect.

We sell CD transports and integrated CD players from Wadax, Kalista and Vitus Audio. At the very top end, a CD/SACD played in the best transport sounds as good or possibly better than the best Server playing a computer file. The problem is it takes a lot of money to get there and at more sensible High End money, a Server/Streamer will easily outperform a similarly priced transport.

Many people also now build systems purely around subscription based music Qobuz and Tidal – it’s become that good if you improve the noise floor in the home network. In the last few years this might actually be the most popular choice. Some customers go to great lengths to lower the noise floor in the home network to the point where the sound is a good as playing a file.

This pages explores our range of Digital to Anaogue Converters, standalone digital Transports and CD players with integral DAC but as explained, a digital front end will likely also comprise a streamer/server, and a digital interconnect and a host of network improvements to lower the noise floor and clean the home network infrastructure. It should be underlined that these elements are just as important as the DAC itself, contributing hugely to the final sound. The digital and Lan interconnect in particular (between streamer or router and DAC) will greatly dictate how much of the DACs performance you are actually unleashing. All of our DAC’s deserve a minimum of a Tara Labs Artist USB.

Despite all the complexities and secret IT and cabling tricks to build a truly great Digital front end, our range of DACs is very straightforward but one we are very proud of. All solutions are completely non-digital and natural sounding but without being soft, warm or bloomy in order to achieve that. High resolution and exceptional transparency and of course, very natural, expressive and musical. Please expand the boxes to explore the range in more detail.

Technologically unique, bursting with personality and cool factor, individual and alluring aesthetics, superb build and a sound to die for, this cutting edge and very present brand from Kanagawa, South Tokyo, have products to delight almost every customer. If you’ve not heard of them before, then you have now and will continue to do so in no uncertain terms. This is a brand that will grow dramatically, you heard it here first.

We love the sound, effortlessly see through and true, a perfect fit for how we typically build our low noise systems that exude naturalness and realism. Timing and dynamics are standout but then the flavour balance is judiciously rich, delicate and with strong tonal colours; it will delight those who want to focus on the beauty and intimacy of the music as well as listeners who are more tuned into structure, attack and transients. Soulnote’s superb neutrality and high performance factor means their units can be very easily employed as staunch and dependable building blocks when creating a superlative setup. System building with Soulnote is a walk in the park.

The Soulnote digital units are as impressive and musically satisfying as their amplification. This newest brand of electronics here at Lotus will be populating many a system in the forthcoming years.

Vitus is a very common option here for digital for over 10 years now. If you were impressed by their amplification, wait to you hear their digital sources. Their standalone range begins with the £11,000 RD-101 which is then improved upon as the SD-025 in the signature range and then their flagship is the MP-D201 Masterpiece DAC.

The RD-101 is a lofty starting point, it regularly floors customers who are used to popular and more expensive flagship digital sources. As you move to the SD and then the MP-D, you get an even more natural sound, more resolution, more life and dynamics and you simply get even closer to the true essence of the music and the files you are playing. Fluid, weighty, rich and beautifully texttured, Vitus Digital strikes a very well judged sonic balance.

Both the RD and SD have an additional ethernet input and a Vitus streaming module built in so they can just be plugged straight into your home network, and using the Vitus Mconnect app or JPLAY on your phone/ipad you can enjoy music streaming services, radio and any files that are on a NAS or storage device also on the network. The latest units are also Roon ready too. Using a dedicated streamer/server will make for a better sound though if playing files.

Vitus also still makes the SCD-025 derivative of the Signature series DAC and this includes a a transport as well instead of the streamer input so is a fully fledged CD player. This is the only one box integrated CD player we sell and a fine one it is too.

Vitus also offers an internal DAC module for both the RI-101 and SIA-030 Integrated amps. These very popular low cost options perform so much higher than their asking prices would suggest. The 030 module is actually on par with the RD-101 and the RI-101 module regularly floors rival DACs in the £4000-£10,000 price range.

Brinkmann from south Germany are extremely well known for their turntables but they make one DAC, the Nyquist which is slightly more expensive than the Vitus RD-101. It is extremely functional with native support for Roon, MQA and streaming services. Although it has valves in it, it feels a touch more neutral and linear than the Vitus DACs. It’s treble is very extended and detailed sounding vis a vis the Vitus’s smoother and more obviously analogue and ever so slightly bloomy presentation. It has that German sonic precision but without every straying into an analytical or digital world. It has very good dynamic pressure and sounds keen and alive. It’s a fine addition to our range and with its beautiful German build, exhaustive functionality and connectivity, and built in headphone amplifier, it has won many fans.

Thrax Audio from Bulgaria is our newest primary electronics brand to join Tidal, Vitus and Allnic. Their Maximinus DAC at £28,000 stands somewhere in between the Vitus Masterpiece and Tidal Camira DACs. Like the Camira it is a ladder DAC but one originally in 2013 based around the MSB diamond DAC motherboard but of course reworked and improved extensively and now in Mk 3 guise as of 2022. With a host of inputs and outputs, a streamer board and a generous array of user selectable filters, it is an extremely accomplished and feature laden product. The sound it produces, its natural tonality, exceptional 3d, master level of dynamics and transparency levels, put it in the very top category as far as digital front ends are concerned. We would happily toe to toe it with almost any other DAC out there. Being a Thrax it also is imbued with an enthusiasm and a hook of musicality which will reach out and enrapture you from the very first notes.

Like the Vitus Integrated Amplifiers, the Thrax Ares and Enyo Integrateds can be viewed as modular one box audiophile systems. The optional inbuilt DAC available for these units punches so far above its weight at £2800. With inbuilt streamer, Roon ready, a plethora of digital inputs, they are the heart of many a Lotus system despite the lower cost. Because you save on the cost of a separate chassis, power supply, front and rear panel, these DAC modules behave more like an £8000 or beyond separate chassis DAC. Because they can only ever be heard through the high performing amplifier, they are often preferable to DAC’s from the likes of Linn and Naim which are well into 5 figures in price. A bold claim but one that has been proven time and time again the Lotus showroom.

A few decades ago were told that vinyl was dead. More recently with the development of excellent sounding digital servers from the likes of Melco, Innuos, Aurender and Taiko, we were told that CD was dead. Just a brief exposure to the product range from Kallista though will firmly put paid to that particular axiom. Say a big welcome then to the Kallista Dreamplay, a small series of products all essentially revolving around the world’s most advanced and ambitious CD+SACD player.

Some of us are still emotionally connected to the process of selecting and installing a silver disc in the same way as cherishing a piece of Vinyl. The slower, ritualistic pace of music selection and handling of physical media and its associated increase in human effort, arguably primes the listener with a more attentive and focused frame of awareness, augmenting the final amount of listening enjoyment extracted. For these people, Kallista has all the answers. There is no need to compromise on performance and you can still spin discs yet enjoy a source that is every bit the equal as the best present day hard disk based sources or indeed vinyl front ends. With optional digital inputs, optional Leedh Volume control, and optional streamer unit Dreamplay can also mirror other types of digital source alongside CD play if so desired. No need then to compromise on modernity and current expected functionality.

In the case of the beautiful Dreamplay XC why not simply feature it as the statement Hifi system in its entirety, hide a stereo power amplifier out of the way and just connect to the very best loudspeakers you can acquire. These days the best audio systems needn’t overpower the whole room with a myriad of boxes and wires.

Kalista is available exclusively in the UK at Lotus and it sits very comfortably inside the walls of our demonstration room. Customers familiar with our incessant pursuit of naturalness and emotional conviction within the music will understand this product immediately. Its singular presentation builds upon the bold, beguiling and fleshy fingerprint of the best of the latter day CD laser transports which many of us grew to love but have now lost. It staunchly avoids assualting you with an overwhelming, clumsy cipher of detail and instead, brings you pure organic joy. Enveloping, fluid and implausibily delectable on the senses. This isn’t the correct sequence of numbers processed through the world’s faster processor but something very human at its core, poignant passion from a burning heart. It will linger, it will mood enhance, it will move you to a higher state.

In 2024 Kalista released the separate Mantax DAC. This builds further on their portfolio, it represents the very best digital source the company can build.

Tidal Audio only make one standalone DAC, the £38,000 Camira. Its performance level puts it in a very small club indeed. It has a purity which is almost uncanny. It is so completely natural and free from artifice or colouration yet also offers the very best levels of musical insight and resolving power. In mk1 form it was our flagship DAC by some margin but now in 2020 mk2 form, it has moved deeper still into its own domain of performance. Being a Tidal, it is best enjoyed in a very open system that is pure and neutral at all junctures. Then its naturalness and invisibility can be fully appreciated. We have many customers mixing it with all sorts of makes and as such it is a great cross pollinator to introduce people to the brand.

New for 2021 was the Tidal Arkas streamer. Finally the Taiko SGM Exteme has some competition. One should note though they are very different products. The Arkas has no internal storage and has been optimised for streaming services, although it is very very easy to have it play stored files and can be as simple as plugging in a cheap USB stick into the rear panel. The Tidal Arkas also sports it’s very own proprietary TidalLink connection based around the i2S interface cand this moves it way beyond the best that USB or AES has to offer so in an all Tidal System using the TidalLink input of the Camira DAC, it surely is the only choice.

In 2022 Tidal made available the Contros. This is essentially the control unit from the flagship Tidal For Bugatti system reworked as a regular Tidal product. In short, an Arkas streamer with Camira DAC and volume control, all for far less than the cost of the 3 separate Tidal boxes plus mains cables and interconnects. At it’s price point it has revolutionised system building here at Lotus and if the most popular choice. The highest level of system electronics for £56,000 instead of £150,000; simply add a power amplifier and speakers and your home internet.

Up until we engaged personally with the Wadax in late 2023, we felt that all the best digital products – a fairly small club if truth be told – were all operating at a similar level of performance, all nibbling at the similar areas of technology. Flavourings change from one product to another, from the smooth and warm to the detailed and incisive but this isn’t like hypercars where the latest electric Rimac is so intergalactically faster than its next nearest competitor the Bugatti Chiron which in turn is indescribably faster than the top level Mclarens, Ferraris and Lamborghinis. All the world’s very best DACs are more or less equals (albeit not in asking price mind) and anyone who claims that their machine is a large percentage more resolving or higher performing than another probably has vested interest or is looking for emotional reinforcement for the large amount of money he or she may just have spent.

That view altered slightly though when we had an in depth encounter with the Wadax Reference suite of products at the end of 2023. The experience utterly ruined us for good and after the misery of seeing it leave the Lotus showroom to go to the UK’s Audio Deluxe show, we knew deep in our hearts that it had to come back !

Before one even arrives at a long and elaborate conversation about its shocking performance ability and the way it sounds, you are compelled to speak initially of the manner in which the Wadax so completely alters your belief system of the medium of digital music itself. Rather than leaping into an awkward quagmire of subjective listening jargon, it’s this fact perhaps which better and more neatly illustrates, just how powerful and high reaching the Wadax truly is. Consider that here is a product which has the power to completely rewrite your knowledge base of what you thought possible from a particular audio storage medium, all inside even just a fairly brief listening session.

That it is so far ahead, nay divorced, from any other product in the marketplace is a given and any professional review in existence has concluded the same; the Wadax Reference is only competing with itself, there really is no other product out there even remotely like it. What is perhaps not so obvious, is the important ownership notion of the Wadax system as a Formula 1 car, a secure investment for life which is not only conveniently scalable from the outset, but is sold with the gilt edged pledge from the factory that it will never be closed product, but one in perpetual evolution, that will be continuously developed, monitored and upgraded as knowledge, research and development permits; an “Ark of the Covenant” for life. Wadax themselves have hinted that further Levels are already some way through R&D, ready to be unleashed if the competition ever makes any reasonable headway. That of course, isn’t meant to trivialise other digital source products in the marketplace of which there are many highlights and from which one can build remarkable systems. But if one is to have the very best, that is digital which is truly equivalent to the very best Record decks, then this here is it.

The high cost of the full Level 4 system, with either Sever or Transport or both, is undoubtedly unprecedented, but then the best of anything, and what it has taken to scale that mountain, is never inexpensive. However, Atlantis Reference ownership is scalable in a tiered structure and can begin or even exist for good at Level 1, with standard power cables, inbuilt power supplies and a regular digital interconnect. The standalone DAC is really not so much more expensive than a number of other marketplace competitors and in the case of the Server, it is already lower than the highest cost seen in the industry.

The good news for mere mortals is that much of the Reference exists in the exciting new Studio Player which was released Autumn 2024. In similar fashion to the Tidal Contros, this new single box Streamer/CD/SACD/Dac sets a whole new for the industry. Studio Player has been very keenly priced, garnering attention and market position for Wadax who are steadily building their heritage. Studio massively over delivers at its retail price and happily sits in the very top level of digital replay that we alluded to in the opening paragraph; for the lucky few that have large budgets, there is the Reference but for everyone else, there is the Studio. It is a digital source for life and is good enough to represent the heart of any state of the art reference system, no matter how lofty. In 2025 it will also be available as a standalone Dac without transport and will also be joined by a separate power supply and Dac