Waxwing vs full analog for living room setup

[AudioJester]

Ahh, yes, of course! I kept thinking like it was a purely analog device, I forgot to mention the rest of my setup lol. For digital I have a Schiit Mimir that also routes into the Lokius via XLR then to the Nobsound amp. So it's reasonable I could plug the Waxwing into the Mimir via optical to make use of the DAC. Although that seems secondary; I'm just checking reviews now and the Waxwing's feature-set is pretty wild. Now I can understand why people rave about the DSP on this thing.

If pops, noise etc. from vinyl bother you, there is no competition for the magic feature in the Waxwing

 

[interrofang]

I use a Waxwing and its dsp settings are excellent. Even if you didn’t use the settings (not sure why you wouldn’t) it still sounds fantastic on its own.

I will check Parks Audio's documentation and watch some reviews, but I think I'm going to pull the trigger on the Waxwing. I was debating between the Schiit Skoll F or a EAR834p clone, and the Waxwing looks to outshine both in terms of features. It's only modestly more expensive than either of those options but the feature set is much deeper by orders of magnitude. And god knows I love to twist knobs and tinker.

 

[somebodyelse]

And god knows I love to twist knobs and tinker.

So long as you don't mind the knobs being on a phone app rather than physical. Although I suppose you could use the API and an ESP32 or Pico-W to control it with physical knobs...

 

[interrofang]

So long as you don't mind the knobs being on a phone app rather than physical. Although I suppose you could use the API and an ESP32 or Pico-W to control it with physical knobs...

Haha, of course, I gathered that That is a cool idea, actually. With that in mind it does call into question future supportability from the developer since it appears to be a one-man show. But they're at least active on forums and social media which is great to see.

Someone posted the PCB on reddit and I noticed there are some service USB ports which may allow some configuration. I'm not interested enough to whip out the BusPirate and reverse engineer the thing, but that could be an option too.

 

[somebodyelse]

Most of the BLE API is documented which is what makes the diy physical knobs possible, as well as meaning we're not stuck if the app ever disappears or stops working on some future phone OS version. The docs are in archive.org just in case too.