WaxwingPhono DSP Preamp from Parks Audio with Magic, Optical Out & Full App Control

First off, I ordered a Waxwing for delivery to the UK and paid the extra £10 for the speedier delivery service and it was here in 3 days! That’s impressive!What’s even more impressive is when you connect this little box of delights up to your hifi and it opens up a world of audio wonderments. I’m sure there are ‘purists’ out there who would baulk at the idea of inserting anything remotely digital smelling i to the path of their analogue signal, but honestly, such narrow minded thinking is depriving them of one of the greatest sounding bits of kit I’ve heard in my 56 years.Unassuming in its size and appearance, the Waxwing is a tinkerer’s delight. Connect to your smartphone, open the app and once you’ve made as many or few adjustments as it takes to find that sweet spot for your system the rewards are vast.The Waxwing has the most accurate, immersive and detailed of soundstages. There’s an awesome clarity to the presentation at all frequencies and the ‘Magic’ function does its wizardry inconspicuously. One worry was that the removal of noise and clicks might add an element of digital artificialness, but rest assured it doesn’t. Like everything that the Waxwing does, it does it with grace and heart.I’m a convert!As a little extra info, the cost is quite a bit more to buy here in the UK with the anticipated import duties. I did, however, receive a refund of over £160 when the actual charges were calculated after delivery. YMMV

The media could not be loaded. This phono stage has transformed my vinyl listening. It gets rid of all the annoying things about vinyl -the pops, clicks and surface noise- while preserving all the good things -the organic, warm "analog" sound.It also, via the app, gives complete control over most aspects of vinyl listening. I love it. Suspend your analog or bust mindset and give it a try.

First, this an amazing phono pre-amp before considering all the clever digital stuff it does. I'm upgrading from a fairly modest but capable ART DJ Pre II. The Waxwing has a deliciously smooth but punchy sound. It's making me play all my old records again with newfound enjoyment at all the detail it's finding in them. Unlike any other preamps though, this is built for the future. You can dial in gain and load settings for different carts, MM and MC, and make all sorts of tone and level adjustments for different records (mono, 78s, alternatives to RIAA equalisation, etc.). Cart sounds a bit clinical? Dial in some warmth, or add a bit of valve distortion. Vinyl sounds dark and muddy? Add air and treble. And then there's the Magic button, whuch subtly removes crackle and pop, but so discreetly and without a hint of artificiality. It's fun and it's wonderful. It might seem pricey for such a diminutive object, but it's cheaper than replacing your entire hi fi and record collection, and that's the level of improvement it produces!

If you have only heard op-amp based phonostages, or if your collection consists of records derived from digital masters, then you will probably think the Waxwing is fantastic.If you are used to a really good discrete transistor or valve phonostage, and you have vintage original or all-analogue audiophile pressings, then the Waxwing may not satisfy you.In many respects this is the best phono preamp I’ve ever used. Stereo separation, detail, and dynamics are really good. Clicks and pops pass causing little distraction (whether ‘magic’ noise reduction is on or off), what makes these noises worse is when they overload the preamplifier and that doesn’t seem to happen with the waxwing. On the other hand, the sound is so clean and clear that some small imperfections that are normally obscured are more exposed.The unit is small and neat. It’s easy to place, but the sockets are awkwardly cramped, I would have preferred it to be a little bigger for this reason. The supplied power supply was for US power outlets, I used a linear power supply but any 5 volt USB charger will do.The DSP functions are pretty straightforward and easy to use, everything can be adjusted on the fly with no rebooting. The parametric EQ is just a single band, so you can’t create a ‘curve’, but you can tilt the overall frequency response with the ‘warmth’ control and there are other tone controls. Everything is explained clearly on the Parks Audio website.When I compare the Waxwing to my Timestep T-01MC phonostage, despite the sound qualities mentioned above and tighter bass, the Waxwing fails to reproduce the sound of instruments and voices as convincingly. There is a hollowness to the sound, and no adjustment to EQ (or adding the ‘tube’ effect) could bring back the full timbre of the instruments. This was most obvious with audiophile Jazz reissues from the Speakers Corner and Blue Note Tone Poet labels. When listening to modern digitally produced music, this didn’t seem to matter so much, and with techno and electronic music I think I prefer the Waxwing to the Timestep. The Timestep is more expensive than the Waxwing, but I did most of my listening in conjunction with a DAC which brought the price up to be considerably higher than the Timestep alone, so I think the comparison is fair. I have used op-amp chip phonostages in the past that sounded thinner and more ‘etched’ than the Timestep, I expect the Waxwing would have compared more favourably to those.I have deducted one star because the Waxwing doesn’t extract all the sound that makes vinyl so enjoyable. Another star is lost because the Bluetooth connectivity isn’t good, it’s often not on the list of available devices, and when it is, my phone has told me it needs an app to connect despite the app being already open. When you just want to play a record, having to fuss about for ten minutes trying to get your phone to connect is very annoying. Maybe a lot of buyers will set this thing up for their systems and leave it alone, but if you (like me) want to tweak it for playing mono records, setting a late night EQ, etc., you might need to adjust the settings before you start your next listening session.

This would have been excellent in a budget or even medium quality system but it's not transparent enough in a higher end system where it is a little to polite and congested. Bass is also an issue. Despite all the tweaks available it couldn't out perform a traditional albeit more expensive phono stage. Perhaps a better version with an improved power supply could be developed in the future. If you have a budget system this is worth investigating.