For whom?
Contents
The Wattson Audio fills a fairly empty price area with a solid product. Especially with the Analog it is a clever price point. The Digital gets close to the Ambre and can match the quality (or even surpass it, with the Sbooster power supply and a decent ethernet-connection. But with the Sbooster it is also 1800 euros. So it has to be better. But it is still impressive, because the Ambre is a beautiful product. We use it as a reference. The fact that Emerson can match and surpass it with such a small box is impressive.
The Analog eventually manages to convince with a colourful and musical palette. We hear a lot of resolution, space and openness. But… again: provided we use the Sbooster and a high quality ethernet-connection.
The pain
And that’s where the pain lies, especially with the Analog: in our opinion, the included power supply is not good enough. The difference in sound is clearly audible. It goes from ‘yeah, it’s fine’, to ‘very good!’. In our view, it would be appropriate if Wattson Audio provides a better power supply. The product benefits from it and it would also be better in terms of price. 1500 euros is quite hefty for this product. Native Roon support is on its way – or is already there – so that’s all right.
Then the question: who is this for? It’s for the – quite large – target group that wants more than a Node2i but doesn’t want to go crazy with a 2500 euro streamer. The Emerson Digital and Analog sound good enough to deliver in that class. Spacious, detailed and refined. With Roon there is a nice platform and there are numerous apps that can control the streamer via UPnP. There is also an own app on iOS.
It is also an interesting product for Custom Install, given its compactness. Although there are also rackmount solutions, the question is whether they deliver the same quality.
Conclusion
This conclusion cannot be drawn without splitting the products. The Digital is basically a more interesting product than the Analog. This is because the Digital out of the box performs comparatively better. Yes: this one also certainly benefits from a better power supply. But with the Emerson Analog, the difference is a lot bigger. This is also because that competition is a lot more fierce in that category. The Node2 is just very good. That makes competing more difficult.But what can we learn from all this? Because honestly: this has been a difficult test and we are struggling a bit too. Basically, the Wattson Audio Emerson is a solid product. Pricey? Yeah. A little bit. But that happens more often with products from Switzerland. What we've learned here is that a power supply is all-important. The Achilles' heel with these products - also others than the Emerson - is in the too cheap PSU's. If we change them, we get a totally different picture. In short: fix that, optimize the network and enjoy. Until then, a somewhat reserved attitude from Alpha... Despite our enormous love for the attention to details of the Swiss...!