Rockna Wavedream DAC Balanced

6Moons Review "The Rockna played it weightier, more robust/substantial, more focused and finally had more frontal in-room projection...On good recordings, the Rockna also unraveled more difference between similar instrumental timbres; and more strongly identified various unisono overlaid tone colours meant to create a new complex timbre. This ability to dig a bit deeper into an instrument's self sound, to make an oud still more 'oudy', less 'guitary' - that's what one expects from higher resolution and/or lower distortion. I'd thus accord the Wavedream some factual extra resolution which didn't just factor on paper. It actually mattered in a real-world context; if one cares and listens critically enough. Unlike with the TotalDAC d1-six-tube, I had no complaints about the lower reaches of Nucu's digital volume control... The Wavedream's integration (volume control) of this function really does decommission a separate preamp if one only runs digital sources. Obviously you must like your amp/speaker pairing as is. The Rockna won't inject 'tubular' qualities should you find those MIA. Just so, its class A output stage did exhibit all the telltale signs of active not passive preamplification. There was very obvious drive, gumption and physicality. Nothing about its sound was pale, wimpy or half baked...As this page's first paragraph suggested, measurable digital gains might become more relevant once present choke holds in the hifi chain are lifted. That the Wavedream could already clock a lead plainly visible to the naked eye as it were, not merely by laser gun, impressed me given today's imbalanced circumstances. If you assemble proper digital competition, that happens rarely. With my triangulations squared off, what else should I say about the sound of Rockna's Wavedream?  What Nicolae Jitaru's recipe ended up with was greater physicality or presence than the two solid-state DAC/pres I compared it to. What more could one want? Romania score a very memorable goal!"  Srajan Ebaen, 6Moons
End of the year sale!!  Unit is a demo which carries a full warranty.  

Most recent owner;

"Jesus - I had sort of expected a best of analogue+ sound but nothing like the level of detail retrieval - with both qualities on hand this unit seems to deliver a front row seat with nothing added/subtracted - just sweet sweet sound from a believable event in your room. Incredible and I have only just been listening to Audivarna/itunes or CDs so far - honestly is that turntable you showed me as good as this experience - I might just sell my records!! - although there is that tactile thing!! Anyway - A big thanks for putting up with my frustration along the way it was WELL, WELL worth the wait, Happy Thanksgiving and all the very best, Andrew"

Ask about our demo.

This is a 'you're not in Kansas anymore' product.  Hyperbole aside, welcome to high resolution, natural portrayals and 'life-like' sound stages.  The WaveDream can be ordered in any of four versions.  WaveDream Single Ended, WaveDream Balanced (twice the conversion engines), and the signature versions of each.  Please specify when ordering. 

 

THE SOUND YOU EVER EXPECTED, 
AND BEYOND.

We are proud to present our current flagship in digital audio reproduction. We believe it has the right ingredients to produce a sound that will honour it’s name. In the good tradition established by it’s predecessor, the Wavedream continues to push the limits of performance, design and sound quality. The ingredients, innovations, technology and features of the product are presented below.

SOFTWARE DEFINED ARCHITECTURE

We always thought that high-end audio should be everything about innovation. Playing around with off-the-shelf available chips is fun and certainly a good and economic way to produce good sound. But once you want to design a cutting-edge product, the off-the-shelf approach doesn’t apply. Naturally, a custom solution, freed from the limitation of the available chipsets, come into place, allowing us to design and build from the scratch an entire digital audio system.

All building blocks of the Wavedream DAC concernig digital processing are built entirely on a single piece of programmable silicon – a FPGA . With a FPGA, it’s internal hardware architecture could be described by a piece of software (actually, a very complex one). When upgrading the Wavedream with new firmware, you actually change it’s hardware. This system allows great flexibility, obsolescence protection and let us improve the sound of your dac by changing it’s internal architecture, or add new cool features, or improve the existing ones.

FEMTOVOX CLOCK SYSTEM

 

The clock is the heart of a digital reproduction system. It’s accuracy and jitter levels are critical in regard of sound quality. Only a very good clock system can make the way to the analog sound on the output of your DAC. If the clock is flawed, digital harshness will occur and the analog feeling of the music will be severely altered. Apart from the performance of the clock itself, equally critical is the construction of the clock tree (the clock distribution architecture) inside the DAC. The jitter amount that really counts it’s not only the performance of the clock itself – but the clock which actually enters the dac and is used for conversion – let’s call it the conversion clock. The conversion clock that enters the dac section relies on the clock tree, which is usually not just routing, but in most cases conditioning, altering it’s quality. A poorly designed clock tree can degrade significantly the clock quality entering the d/a section, even if the source clock has great performance.

With these facts in mind, we designed for the Wavedream an advanced clock system called the femtovox. With femtovox in place, one is assured that only extremely small amounts of jitter are present at the dac conversion clock input. It’s unique architecture employs that conversion clock is directly synthesised at the dac input, without any conditioning, giving constant jitter performance at any sample rate. The conversion clock is controlled with 1 ppb precision, while exhibiting about 300 fS of jitter. The smallest jitter figure in the world? No. The smallest jitter figure where actually matters? Probably.

EXTRA MENU FEATURES

On the dac menu can be found a series of useful features. Let’s take a short walkthrough.

• 
  The preamp feature - The Wavedream has a 256 steps volume control which allows direct connection of a power amplifier. The volume control has 0.5 dB steps for a fine resolution setting.


• 
  The phase select feature – the user can change the absolute phase of the output signal.


• 
  The filter select feature – discussed above. The filters can be switched off for NOS operation.

• 
  The clock setting – there are 2 modes of the digital PLL response, stream and local. Please reffer to the clock technical document under the technology section for more information.


• 
  Dither – to improve R2R ladder linearity, ultrasonic dither is applied on the last 4 bits from the digital 24-bit word.

CONSTRUCTION DETAILS AND INTERNAL LAYOUT

The Wavedream benefits internally from a carefully studied, full symmetrical layout. Shortest signal paths and proper design of the clock tree were our main guidelines. All off-board connections are made with LVDS standard for lowest intereference, high speed and minimal jitter.

The transformer section is internally shielded to prevent internal EMI leakage. The chassis is entirely made of black anodized aluminium with a maximum fronplate thickness of 20 mm. Switches are black ruthenium finish.

DIGITAL INPUTSCoaxial S/PDIF24 bit, 192 KHzAES/EBU24 bit, 192 KHzUSB32 bit-384KHz PCM, DSD 1bit, 11.28 MHzHD-Link1 (LVDS)32 bit-384KHz PCM, DSD 1bit, 11.28 MHzHD-Link2 (LVDS)32 bit-384KHz PCM, DSD 1bit, 11.28 MHz OUTPUTSSE/BALANCED (version dependent)THD+N, 0 dB:0.006%DYNAMIC RANGE (A-weighted):125 dBS/N ratio (A-weighted):140 dBIMPEDANCE:5 ohmsMAX. VOLTAGE:10 Vpp Digital processing:High-frequency asynchronous capture digital inputs:560MHz sampling



Memory-based PLL, digital domain only:300 fS jitter16x custom digital filters:linear, minimum and hybrid phase, 705.6/768KHzFilter type: (advanced convolution)Parks-McClellan/Raised Cosine, 2000 tapsMathematical precision:68 bit INTEGERStopband attenuation:130 - 148 dBPassband ripple:0,0001 dBDither:4 bit, Gaussian ultrasonicVolume control:custom multiplier array, 256 steps, 0.5 dB step Miscellaneous:128x64 yellow oled display, dimmable in 8 steps4 control switchesIR remote control
Firmware upgrade via usbDimensions: 440 x 360 x 90 mmWeight (net): 7.8 Kg