Wattson Audio Emerson Digital

Description

The Emerson Digital is a network bridge. It reads music from your network and passes it to a DAC over a digital cable, which turns a DAC with no network input into a streaming DAC. Wattson also describes it as a way to improve the streaming of most DACs that already stream. It has two digital outputs: AES/EBU on XLR and S/PDIF on RCA, each with its own isolation transformer.

Inside it uses the same Wattson streaming engine as the Analog, on a Texas Instruments Sitara processor, with a bit-perfect path from the Ethernet input to the outputs and two low-noise oscillators for the 44.1kHz and 48kHz sample-rate families. It is Roon Ready, supports Qobuz Connect, TIDAL Connect, AirPlay and UPnP/DLNA, and plays with Audirvana. PCM is supported up to 192kHz/24-bit.

Compared with the Emerson Analog, the Digital contains no DAC. You choose the DAC and the cable, and the Emerson’s job is to deliver a clean digital signal to it. If you already own a DAC you like, this keeps it and adds streaming. If you do not have one, look at the Analog or the Madison Streamer instead.