Revues et tests

The Madison brings out the best of music. It excels both as a headphone amplifier and as a pre-amplifier DAC

When you listen to it, the sound reproduction of the Madison is immediately very natural. There is none of the tightness that audiophiles complain about in some digital audio sources. The music flows with ease and serenity.

The Wattson Audio team is to be congratulated for their superb product line. The Madison complements it by offering a higher-end sound with the resolution and clarity of a much more expensive network player.
It is impeccably built, easy to use and works perfectly.

The Madison's piano notes are refreshing, without weighing down the timbres too much. The timbre matches the playing technique. In addition, the details of the piano parts are fine and detailed, as if each segment of the sound heard had been finely polished.
This feeling of being particularly delicate and fluid is also accompanied by a transparency wrapped in a sense of space. Perhaps this is what audio enthusiasts call the "Swiss premium taste".

There’s more than a hint of iron fist in velvet glove at work beneath its dappled grey aluminium casework and it’s rewarding with all types of music.
[...] The beautifully designed and built Madison is much closer to an end-game streaming proposition with a stunning on-board DAC section that delivers consistently top-drawer sonics

When listening to music with the Emerson ANALOG, one forgets about file formats and resolutions, or even the fact that the music is played from them. All that matters is the music, presented in a very analogue, smooth and coherent form, encouraging hours of listening to well-known discs, but also discovering new ones thanks to streaming services.

The Madison from the Swiss manufacturer Wattson Audio focuses entirely on the essentials and convinces with its very high sound quality, both for Hi-Res music reproduction and for standard CD resolution. The price for a device developed and manufactured entirely in Switzerland can be considered quite reasonable.

This setup is highly recommended for music lovers. It can be played from the desk to the living room and it is suitable for playing all kinds of music. It is easy to use, space-saving and the sound quality is much higher than the price. So unless you are only keen in big equipment, you will be attracted to it!

A small concentrate of technology at the right price, that's what will reconcile with high fidelity those who gave up a long time ago to devote all their savings to it, and maybe also attract the younger generations towards a type of device in phase with its time and with their concerns.

The midrange is rich and expressive, the bass fascinating, and the high frequencies silky smooth. It is rare to find all these qualities in one device, even among high-end devices. Furthermore, the realistic three-dimensional effect and the total absence of background noise prove the distortion-free sound of the Wattson Audio ANALOG.

For these two products, the manufacturer Wattson preferred to put the money where it counts, i.e. on reliability, ease of use, manufacturing quality and above all on the precision of the synchronisation clocks.

The Madison is a form of Zen reductionism to attain high-class simplicity. Good thing then that Madison is here now, destined to be around and quite the charmer to boot!

The Madison shows the company’s unique view of music, which becomes an uninterrupted sequence, a dense transfer rather than a collection of sounds with the tested device. That's why I used the word "analog" to describe it. There is bass in it, there is density, there is fluidity.

Rigorous in the processing of digital streams, the Madison emphasises above all the emotional side. With its analogy to the world of the vinyl record, the Madison is thus becoming a key player in the world of dematerialised music.

Here it is like being on an old summer pasture, all by yourself, watching the mountain peaks at sunset. It is intriguing how emotional it can get when the sound quality is as good as it is here...

The Madison delivers a true high end sound that brings a fundamental change in the listening to music and credibility to the instruments in the space, be it a triangulum, a guitar or a drum.

It is evident after only a few minutes of listening that the manufacturer has a good understanding of the digital signal flow through the unit, resulting not only in a good and engaging musical experience, but also a superb high-resolution graphic with excellent focus on particular voices and instruments at the front of the soundstage.

The music is played in an open and delicate way, it's almost a bit silky in sound character, but still with impressive detail, nice dynamics and a rhythmic presence that's actually quite impressive.

The Emerson, with its front-facing spatiality and great plasticity, puts the listener right in the middle of the action.

Best value streaming music player of 2021!

A beautiful and musical simplicity.

A subtle, detailed "analog" sound that can be listened to endlessly.

Simplicity done well. In action the Emerson is an unqualified triumph!

At this price, with this stability in operation and ease of set up and, above all, with this audiophile quality, the Emerson is a proposal to be taken very seriously.

The sound quality of both Emerson is elegant and noble, many details and emotion, plus a strong sense of imaging: the entire concert hall is present in front of you.

The Emerson DIGITAL let you enjoy audio streaming on-the-fly while retaining the original sound signature of your music system.

Like the Emerson ANALOG, the Emerson DIGITAL is the easiest network bridge to work with. No settings, no control, it just connects.

Ease of use and audio quality go hand in hand with this network renderer. The Emerson Analog is well engineered, for the sound quality is very balanced over all specs. Judging by the sound it is done very well.

If you want an affordable audio streamer with the simplest functions that bets all the cost on sound performance, the Emerson ANALOG is probably the only choice on the market.

This little gem is a very small revelation and I'm definitely enjoying it tremendously. It has become indispensable to me and it has blended perfectly into my system. It's without a doubt a keeper.

Highly efficient in the processing of digital streams, it offers a rich, analogue-sounding and very natural musical reproduction. The sound stage shows a real depth. Emerson Analog is truly suited to thrill a music-sensitive audience.