Wattson Audio Madison and Madison LE

Review sample supplied by HVP Audio

Retail prices in the BeNeLux, incl. VAT:
Madison: 3.550 Euro
Madison LE: 4.995 Euro

About Wattson Audio

Wattson Audio established their credentials and gained years of invaluable experience as a design consultant for some of the audio world’s biggest and highest-profile brands. After years spent consulting, designing, and engineering digital and audio electronics for other brands, the team behind the Wattson Audio products decided to leverage their accumulated experience and expertise to produce a series of forward-looking, high-performance, and high-value components.

Designed, Engineered, and Built in Switzerland, the first Wattson Audio products to appear were the Emerson converters and, subsequently, the more advanced and versatile Madison streamers. These products feature state-of-the-art hardware and software solutions fitted within compact, affordable, and elegantly distinctive designs.

Don’t underestimate their small size: every Wattson product embodies sophisticated thinking and engineering, refined into its most compact, concentrated, and performance-driven version. The hardware and circuit design enables software upgrades to keep digital products up-to-date while allowing analog products to evolve with your system. The operational algorithms and analog designs safeguard owners against built-in obsolescence, ensuring a long and highly musical lifespan.

Wattson Engineering

It’s the ultimate value-engineering exercise: allocating budget wisely while eliminating unnecessary costs. Wattson Audio products employ advanced software, without which products like Emerson and Madison could not exist or perform as they do. Sophisticated DSP volume control can outperform a basic analog potentiometer at no extra cost. Smaller casings offer mechanical benefits, use fewer resources, and cost less. Local suppliers, lightweight products, and low-volume packaging minimize the carbon footprint. By embracing alternative perspectives, Wattson Audio can create a new realm of high-end musical performance with unprecedented access and capabilities, avoiding the costs and impracticalities of traditional high-end systems.

Each Wattson Audio product tackles a specific audio challenge, streamlined into essential circuit blocks designed for optimal performance. These blocks are assembled onto meticulously crafted PCBs built into milled-from-solid casework, resulting in the simplest and most efficient route from problem to solution.

Many high-end brands rely on the same engineers and experience that underpin the Wattson products. Specifically, Wattson has an intimate connection with a high-end brand that is very familiar to me: CH Precision! Indeed, CH Precision has combined forces with Wattson Audio for the streaming sections of their digital audio components.

As it turns out, I have unknowingly been listening (in part) to Wattson technology when streaming to the CH C1.2 DAC. Now, this technology is available in a tiny form factor and a very different price range.

Madison

The Madison DAC/Controller accepts S/PDIF digital signals via TOSlink and Coaxial, as well as a wide range of streaming sources via RJ45 network, such as UPnP, Roon, Qobuz Connect, and Tidal Connect. It also contains a sophisticated DSP-driven DAC with clever, lossless LEEDH digital volume control and balanced and single-ended outputs. A specially selected energy-efficient external Switch-Mode power supply provides power.

The Madison’s network interface uses Wattson Audio’s acclaimed streaming engine, a proprietary solution based on the Texas Instruments Sitara processor with updatable software. It manages various network communication protocols and has been continuously updated since its launch.

Signal handling has been optimized to ensure audio data integrity, transmission reliability, and support for Hi-Res file formats (PCM and DSD) without transcoding, all while delivering a seamless and responsive user experience.

Wattson Audio’s own clock controls all digital circuitry using twin oscillators for 44.1kHz and 48kHz, each independently filtered to minimize noise and jitter. A Shark DSP chip applies a proprietary up-sampling and spline-filtering algorithm. The short-tail filter ensures excellent time-domain performance, while separate left and right channel DACs maintain channel separation and spatial information.

A pair of op-amps per channel provides a robust, space-efficient, cost-effective analog output stage equipped with balanced XLR and single-ended RCA connections. Every stage or circuit block benefits from the substantial onboard power supply filtering and reservoir capacitance.

Additional versatility is provided by the Wattson Audio Remote for Android and Wattson Music for iOS apps, which allow control of Madison parameters and access to streaming sources from a phone or tablet.

The Madison merges advanced, upgradable digital technology with thoughtfully planned circuitry, specifically crafted to offer exceptional musical performance in an elegant, compact, and surprisingly affordable design, delivering all you need without unnecessary extras.

Madison LE

The Madison LE is a Madison on steroids. To improve the Madison, Wattson Audio examined the analog output stage, the power supply, and the filtering. This further improved its digital performance while increasing the analog circuitry’s musical capabilities and output characteristics.

The Madison LE still uses an external energy-efficient switch-mode power supply, but Wattson Audio engineered it for lower noise levels and enhanced stability by adding an AC input filter and linear regulation. This extra circuitry required a larger box, but rather than using expensive machined casework, Wattson opted for a cost-effective generic case to allow placing the power supply remotely to maximize performance while minimizing cost.

Higher-quality power supply capacitors with double capacitance are used. An all-new analog output stage was developed, featuring a fully balanced differential circuit with two op-amps per channel, optimizing the DAC chip interface and enhancing the LE’s capability to drive a power amp. Additionally, coupling capacitors between the DAC chips and the analog output stage were upgraded.

The Madison LE may cost more than the regular Madison, but it still extends the Wattson Audio concept of value engineering. Budgeting additional engineering and material resources where they matter most provides a better working environment for its digital circuitry and an even more capable output stage – with very real musical benefits.

These images show that the Madison and Madison LE have precisely the same connections. Case color aside, the most significant differences are inside.

Volume Control and Headphone Connection

Both Madison versions provide a 6.35mm headphone Jack connector on the front panel. The Headphone amplifier provides 2x 150mW into 32Ω, 2x 50mW into 150Ω, and 2x 10mW into 600Ω.

Wattson Audio’s Swiss roots become abundantly clear when using headphones while actively using the volume dial. The Madison’s enclosure is not just pretty; its volume dial is a beautiful piece of engineering! Solid and wobbly-free, yet ever so smoothly, it provides the ideal tactile feedback, while the LED indicators lend a visual representation of the chosen volume setting.

Next: Supported formats and resolutions, iOS and Android Apps, and Listening Round 1

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