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Where I missed out a bit was with the corpus of the piano. With my North Star Design Supremo and Musical Fidelity AMS 35i combo—ca. €11’000 to 12’000—I perceive the resonant sound body with each hammer fall as a kind of low vibration that accompanies each tone. And the Wadia didn’t work out this earthy or wooden note to the same extent. Whilst it did paint low undertones beneath the action, those remained less specific. Where it retaliated was with more information on the ring-out of the same strings. I thought it fascinating how gear operating at such a high level could still place different accents on the experience.
The following cut "Just a Minute" repeated that impression. Here I usually find the bass to propel the number whilst the piano feathers out its melodies above the driving rhythm of the upright. With the Wadia the piano took the lead and the double bass seemed to follow its play with foundation accents.
I thought the low bass to suit the general voicing of the Wadia quite well. The lower midrange showed good presence and injected a shot of warmth into the proceedings without obscuring anything essential. The somewhat leaner reading of my reference combo feels more dynamic in certain situations but the Intuition 01 prompted the occasional thought of hearing a bit more raw data. This was particularly so for voices. Dee Dee Bridgewater certainly was in rare form on Live at Yoshi's. I impulsively reached for the remote to prime the pump and hear more of her voice.
But the Wadia loved voices in general, be it Bridgewater, be it more fragile female vocals like Feist’s on The Reminder or a solid male organ like Gregory Porter’s Liquid Spirit. It clarified that "the midrange is where we live". Paul W. Klipsch as the quote's author had it right.
Which begs the question as to treble. That was exceptionally controlled and precise. On Eva Cassidy’s Live at Blues Alley, I found myself counting individual wires on the cymbal’s brush of "Cheek to cheek". I was fascinated how intelligible this was without getting nervy. I felt likewise about seeing the mini cymbals in Dee Dee Bridgewater’s tambourine. A further advantage of this slightly mild but very informative voicing was that high voices tending to get hissy avoided all risks to become trying.
As wonderful as the Wadia presented the voice and tambourine of Bridgewater in full nuance, I missed a bit of the recording’s phenomenal live vibe. Enter soundstaging. Here the Wadia focused the musical action into a more intimate scenery. This didn’t mean shrinkage. Individual actors still showed proper dimensions and proportions. They simply seemed to clump closer together. Image focus and size were clearly sorted but revealed less data on their surroundings.
To give digital a break, I wanted to see how this deck would handle analog sources. Enter my Thorens TD 160HD turntable with Al Di Meola’s All Your Life, his reflections on the Beatles and Abbey Road Studios. Here the Wadia was fully in its element to show wonderfully defined guitar runs. I was instantly ready to get lost in the densely woven musical tapestry. The intimate stage perspective underscored the whole’s intensity for a nearly magical effect. I thought it nearly paradox how well this digital machine got on with analogue. Those inputs clearly were no afterthought or convenience feature.
