Introducing the WANDLA GoldenSound Edition!

I'm excited to announce a collaboration product with Ferrum, the WANDLA GoldenSound Edition!

EU: Contact your local dealer

For existing WANDLA owners, a conversion will be available for $600 at a later date.
Conversion means the user will receive a GoldenSound edition firmware, which can be flashed to their WANDLA. This firmware will be specific to their unit and the process of conversion will be reversible

The WANDLA GoldenSound Edition has six key aspects:

- Elevated digital headroom - Many modern musical tracks are produced in a waythat leaves very little headroom in the recording, often referred to as the Loudness Wars, This can cause clipping and additional distortion during playback on most DACs due to the oversampling filter being unable to accurately reconstruct strong transients. The WANDLA has its own digital processing headroom, but GoldenSound Edition has elevated headroom to accommodate it to its additional DSP functions, which are described in below paragraphs. Therefore, WANDLA GoldenSound Edition is highly immune to intersample overs even in bypass mode at full output level, allowing you to play back any music free from additional distortion, and enjoy a higher quality sound. Moreover, due to its DSP functions, now this sound can be even more tailored to your personal taste.

- Spatial Enhancement - The WANDLA GoldenSound Edition features a unique spatial enhancement that utilizes the power of the Ferrum SERCE module to provide an expanded soundstage and improved clarity of separation between musical elements, whilst avoiding the drawbacks commonly found in other approaches. A Headphone Mode and a Speaker Mode are offered to provide an enhancement tailored to each use-case, and this is achieved without any coloration to the frequency response, no additional distortion, and no tricks like added reverb.

- Tube Mode - The WANDLA GoldenSound Edition features a tube mode, which intentionally increases the even-order harmonic distortion produced by the DAC, similar to the distortion added by a tube amplifier. This allows the user to enjoy a warmer, richer sound without directly changing frequency response, and without the other drawbacks commonly found in tube based devices such as increased noise.

- Hardware Voltage Adjustment - - Hardware Voltage Adjustment - The WANDLA GoldenSound Edition benefits from a hardware level output voltage adjustment, allowing the user to swap between just below 10 Vrms output to a just below 4 Vrms output. This is facilitated via a dedicated hardware voltage divider in the output stage of the DAC, allowing the user to select lower output voltage and ensure compatibility with all amplifiers, without a need to use any digital volume control, or to have analog volume control components in the signal path. This hardware voltage divider will be available on the standard edition of WANDLA and WANDLA GoldenSound Edition units starting with board revision v4.0.  
Revisions older than v4.0 will support this functionality but do so in a slightly different way. These revisions will use the existing analog voltage control instead. While we originally intended to achieve this by digital attenuation, new insights brought us another, better solution. By using the analog voltage regulation, we can even get older revisions of the WANDLA board closer to v4.0, where this functionality is achieved by hardware as well, but only by a different part. This solution means all WANDLA users will be able to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

- Impact + - The WANDLA GoldenSound Edition features an Impact + function for those that enjoy a little more low-end in their music listening experience. Though rather than a basic bass-shelf, this feature uses a customized two-band EQ which not only elevates bass but provides additional punch and dynamic impact.

- No MQA - The WANDLA GoldenSound Edition no longer uses any MQA processing, with all content being kept as untouched PCM other than if you choose to enable one of the sound tuning features. All of DSP functions of WANDLA GoldenSound Edition are extensively using processing power of WANDLA’s SERCE module. Therefore, to ensure seamless operation, MQA decoder is not available in GoldenSound Edition.

The GoldenSound youtube channel, and all content is created and owned by GoldenSound LTD

[GoldenSound]

For existing WANDLA owners, a conversion will be available for $600 at a later date. Conversion means the user will receive a GoldenSound edition firmware, which can be flashed to their WANDLA. This firmware will be specific to their unit and the process of conversion will be reversible
I'm hyped for you guys to hear this!

[TcCre]

MQA getting removed is my favourite feature, tbh :D

[looyoo-ui]

I like that the first example of intersample over was sicko mode

[eruilluvitar]

I cannot _wait_ to hear this! I love my WANDLA and am really excited at the idea of everything you've worked on adding!

[PiercingSight]

Do you have an audio demo of the spatial enhancement? I would love to hear what it does!

[bobsykes]

Interesting. Will I be able to hear this thing at CanJam NYC later this month? I would definitely want to try before I buy (or at least be able to return it). I am, honestly, skeptical of baking in specific processing algorithms into DSP, so I'm a little wary about the spacial processing you guys have come up with. Those effects generally don't age well. A couple of side notes. Tubes produce multiple even order harmonics as well as some low order odd harmonics, not just second order harmonic distortion, so the model you're using is not an accurate model of any tube amp. (Tubes also add traces of reverb both through self excitement and though microphonics). Increased digital headroom is an absolute must in certain designs of oversampling DACs, such as the ESS ones, and converters like Benchmarks have provided 3.5 dB of extra headroom since their previous generation many years ago. R2R DACs don't suffer from this problem, possibly one of the reasons people prefer them in many cases despite thier having generally poorer linearity. All that said, I am really interested to hear this DAC. I have no doubt you've done some really good things here, especially for headphone listeners.

[omoveja]

Will it support DSD ? If so, natively so?

[nick_g]

Finally some thoughtful signal processing. Linear, neutral, transparent is all fine and good, but if I’m paying up then I want improvement. I want something to sound even better

[radiofreealbemuth]

The spatial enhancement is what peaks my interest 🤔

[cbmore]

Where does this fit in your DAC ratings? At the price this is being released at it's quite close in price to a Holo Spring 3? If you rate the Spring 3 getting close to the level of the May where does the Wandla GSE fit it?

[evolutionaryfield]

I am patiently waiting for the video about A&K firmwares!

[camerong]

These engineers are true masterminds. They are literally circuit bending features into existence here.

[mw]

Awesome! I want mine updated with this edition so bad.. bought it based on your review. Please bring it to Europe as well! Should be easy as they are based out of Poland.

[AlainSTO]

Getting the Bliss and honestly, I wasn't thinking about a Wandla, until now, as the DAC. Those enhancements won me over and has me wondering if it's the choice now over the Spring 3.

[bomt]

How does this stack up with HOLO Sound Spring 3 KTE w/ preamp? Both seem close in price point

[wadez]

This seems like wallhack tier gaming dac :D

[Nuevo_El_Nagual]

I'm ready to upgrade my Wandla, send me invoice. LOL

[hishamhussein]

Just ordered one to pair with my oor amplifier! Wondering if it is best to bypass volume control on the Wandla and use the Oor volume?

[johnratcliffe]

I guess my immediate questions are:

1. Does WANDLA need Hypsos? Is there a genuine, discernable improvement with it?

2. How does WANDLA GSE compare to May KTE? Which is going to be better?

Congratulations on the collaboration 👏

[xavengarcia]

@GoldenSound Is the usb port galvanically isolated?