 Ferrum is a relatively young Polish brand that I learned to appreciate through their Hipsis Hybrid power supply that now powers my mighty Brooklyn DAC in my setup 1B. Last year they introduced the Aura Headphones amp and now the 2,795 euro costing Wandelard DAC with analog preamp. It is reviewed here using the Woolward power supply that came with the unit but also with the Hipsis power supply. Ferrum has a remarkable name in convention. Hipsis stems from Greek and means high in a philosophical way. Or is the Dutch word for ear and wandler is the phonetic version of the German word wandler which means convertible. What's in the name? Time to look at where the wandler is to be used. Using it as a DAC it is to be connected to an amplifier over either RCA or XLR cables, depending on the inputs on the amp. The amp is to be connected to either a set of headphones or a pair of loudspeakers. The wandler itself doesn't have a headphone output. A source you could use a network bridge or streamer that is digitally connected to the wandler over either AES-EBU, I2S, SPDIF, TOSLINK or USB. That bridge or streamer has to be connected to your router over either a network cable or Wi-Fi to have access to the streaming surface on the internet and to music on your computer or NAS. Instead of connecting your CD player over analog to your amp, you can connect it digitally to the wandler over SPDIF or TOSLINK. The same goes for the digital output of your TV, Blu-ray player, DVD player or game console when they are set to stereo PCM output and not to Dolby surround. You can alternatively connect your TV or any other analog source over analog to the wandler. The included remote control lets you select the input from your chair. Instead of an integrated amplifier, you can connect the wandler directly to a power amplifier or active speakers. The output voltage is high enough to do that and it even has a provision to switch on the amp by the wandler or vice versa. To further upgrade the sound quality you can replace the Woolworth power supply by a higher grade one like the Hipsus power supply. The old metal cabinet adheres to the Ferrum house tile with the cork-like square on the left that has the eliminated Ferrum logo and functions as a power indicator. It measures 217 x 206 x 50 mm and weighs 1.8 kilos. It's the same measures as the Hipsus power supply as can be seen here. On the front right the large volume control that can be bypassed in the setup menu. Next to it the infrared sensor. Centrally placed is the color touch screen where you can select the input, open the settings menu and mute the output while the center shows the volume setting and file properties. Sample rate, bit depth and MQA status. Under where there are two DC power inputs, one standard 5.5 x 2.5 barrel connector for the supplied brick power supply and one 4 pole connector for when you use the Hipsus power supply. There is a trigger input or output depending on a setting in the menu. Then the digital inputs, an I2S input on HDMI connector, a USB-C input for connection to a computer. The HDMI ARC input is for connecting to your TV and 3 AES 3 inputs. Toslink, Spidive and AES-EBU. A stereo analog input accepts line level so for a turntable a pre-preamp is needed. The analog outputs are available as single ended on RCA and balanced on XLR. The true HDMI input is to be connected to the HDMI ARC connector on your TV if you want your TV sound over your stereo. It also supports CAC meaning that when you switch on your TV, the wandler is also switched on and set to HDMI input. If you use the wandler as a pre-amp directly connected to a power amp or active speakers, you can control the audio over your stereo fully with a TV remote, if your power amp or active speakers have input sensing or a trigger input. Inside we see the power supply part that cleans up and stabilizes the incoming DC voltage further. The heart of the wandler is this piggyback mounted circuit board that holds the Burr-Brown digital interface chip that translates the digital inputs to the internal digital format. The most important part is the microprocessor that does the upsampling and digital filters not done by the ESS DAC chip, on which later on more. From there the digital signal goes to the ESS 9038 PRO DAC chip. From there the now analog current is converted into voltage here and sent to the output buffering. Next to it the analog line level input circuit that is routed to the volume control and output buffering when selected. So analog signals remain analog. The three AES3 inputs and HDMI input are limited to 192 kHz, 24 bit and DSD64 over DOP. USB and I2S do 768 kHz, 32 bit and DSD256. First you connect the sources you want to use and connect either the RCA or XLR outputs to your amp that best is switched off during connecting. Then the power supply is connected and the display shows the power icon. Just touch it to start a wandler. To select the input you tap left in the display where the HDMI connector is shown with below it I2S which stands for I2S. After tapping the inputs are shown and can be selected. Alternatively you can use the input button on the remote to step through the inputs. Right in the display and on the remote you will find the mute button with below it the menu button. There you find the standby button, the audio menu, the visuals menu and the control menu. In the audio menu you can choose for analog or digital volume control, the upsampling and reconstruction filter, volume bypass, theater bypass, minus 3 dB trim, analog input gain and two settings for I2S input. I think some of these need some clarification. Theater bypass is handy when you also have a surround setup and want to use the wandler for stereo reproduction since the quality is higher and you don't want a double set of front loudspeakers. Just connect the left and right pre outputs of your surround receiver on the analog inputs on the wandler. Since in this mode volume control is disabled you can set the channel trim on the receiver and use your main left and right speakers for surround tune. I use a comparable setup in my living room where the air amp has a theater input function and it works great. At 4.64 volts RMS single ended and 9.3 volts RMS balanced the output voltage of the wandler is perfect for those that connect the power amp directly to the wandler. For those that use an integrated amp, this might be too high since it is 7.3 dB above red book specs. Using the digital input trim function the output voltage can be lowered to even as low as 1.2 volts RMS single ended and 2.4 volts RMS balanced. For analog sources the gain can be varied between minus 12 and plus 12 dB. You can use these trim functions also to compensate for level differences between sources. In May I published a video called improve the sound quality of your DAC for free. This was done by, in the digital source, lowering the digital signal by 3 dB. This prevents the digital filtering to overshoot and so cause clipping in the trenches. The result is a cleaner, openness sound when playing albums that are modulated to the max as many recordings are today. The wandler makes this easy for you, just activate the minus 3 dB function in the audio menu. See the video for more information, links at the usable places. The i2S input uses an HDMI connector but it is not an HDMI input and not suited to connect the TV to. The wandler has a real HDMI input for that, as we have seen when we show the rear. i2S is for digital audio only and is a protocol that was developed for digital connections inside a device. Hence the name, inter-integrated circuit sound, abbreviated to IIS and technicians write that as I²S. It was never intended for use in between devices so there is no connection standard. There are solutions with 3B and C cables, with RJ45 network cable, with 9 pin D connectors and HDMI. Since there is no standard also the pinout can vary. Luckily the PS audio pinout on HDMI is a kind of default standard lately. And this is what the standard settings on the wandler is. But two other variants can be set in the i²S setup menu. The ES9038 Pro, that top of the range DAC chip that is used in the wandler, has standard oversampling on board with several reconstruction filters. Three of them are used in the wandler and can be set by the user. Linear phase, minimum phase and apple-dising. This firm has added two filters that were created by Jesse Lako, or signalist, the maker of HQ player. The first is called HQGOS and is an apple-dising filter with, according to the maker, optimal time-frequency response. The second one, called HQAPOD, is another apple-dising filter that according to the documentation is especially for modern recordings made in real acoustics or otherwise having notable space. Which you like most is hard to say. I have learned that tastes vary among people. I myself like the HQAPOD filter best. Firm has planned to further develop or have developed and make them available through updates. In the control menu you can setup the trigger signal to either input the wandler switches on when other device applies a trigger signal or output where the wandler can switch on for instance a power input file. Roster is a setting for HDMI whether it will react to CEC remote signals. CEC lets you control the wandler with the TV remote. The wandler was connected to the Air Acoustics AX520 amplifier of Grim Audio SQMXLR cables. The PMC FAC12 signature loudspeakers have stack audio over isolators and were connected over AudioQuest Robinhood Zero loudspeaker cable. The Magna Mano Ultra MK-Through Farad network player was connected to the wandler over a short network acoustic AES-EBU cable and to the Zistel GS1910 HP switch over the network acoustic MuM Pro system. The Intel NUC10i7FNH runs Roonrock on an internal M.2 SSD and has the music stored on the 10TB Western Digital USB drive. The Woolward switch mode power supply that came with the wandler provided the power. The equipment was placed in the Creative Trend 3 rack. As said I like the HQ Epidising filter best so I used it mostly for this review. Differences are not big and mainly have to do with where you focus on. The wandler handles siblings remarkably well, better than other DAX in this price range. There is sufficient resolution in the low, mid-range is quite open and the highs are nicely in the middle between too silky soft and aggressive. The stereo image is fairly wide and deep, with good focus. All compared to other DAX in this price range of course. Using a higher quality power supply with DAX improved the sound quality. That can be a well designed linear power supply, a well designed switch mode power supply or for instance a power supply based on super capacitors. The way it works says a little about how clean the power supply is. That depends on how well it is designed and built. The wandler needs a voltage between 22V and 30V DC. I have only one external power supply that offers this higher voltage and amperage and that happens to be the Ferrum Hipset. It uses a mix of switch mode and linear power supply and has a menu with presets for a large number of audio equipment. It ranges from 5V to 30V DC and up to 6A. The output on the Hipset is a 4 pole connector and the matching cable has 4 cores. When used with a barrel DC connector, two cores are used to measure the voltage in the barrel connector. This way influences of the cable can be compensated for. When the Hipset is used with the wandler the power cable will have a locking 4 pole connector on both sides. This way the voltage on the circuit board is measured. Other audiophile power supplies of the right voltage and amperage can be used to the barrel connector. Switching from a simple power brick to a sophisticated power supply always leads to sound quality improvements. That's no difference here. A nice metaphor is to compare a DAC to an automatic beer tab where the digital control defines pressure and volume when the beer is tapped. Of course the tap mechanism must work precise but regardless whether that works fine, when the beer is off you'll end up with a poor beer. It's the same with the DAC. It regulates the current that flows according to the digital level information of the audiophile. If you start off with a poor power supply the sound quality will be accordingly. In this case the Goptik power brick costed 35 dollars while the Hipset cost 1195 euros. So there better be an improvement in sound quality. And there is. It all sounds more relaxed and more open, lows have more texture, micro-dynamics are improved, the stereo image is more stable and emerging, more relaxing, more flowing but more dynamic if it needs to be. Although the standard power supply makes the Wandler perform very good for the money, adding the Hipses is worth every cent. It raises the Wandler one step above my current reference in set of 1B while using the same Hipses power supply. The Wandler is an up-to-date design using a very good DAC chip in a very good way. Especially the upsampling and reconstruction filters in a separate processor instead of in a DAC chip is a good bonus. It has very good sounding signalist algorithms and the promise of more filters in updates make the product potentially future proof. Since the Hipses has received updates I think it is in the DNA of the company. 2795 euros for the Wandler and 3990 euros for the Wandler and Hipses combo might be a lot of money, but it is a very good value. Which brings us to the end of this video. There will be a new video every Friday at 5pm central european time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to my channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed on new videos around. Help me reach even more people by giving this video a thumb up or link to this video on the social media. It is much appreciated. One way of supporting the channel is to watch it on Patreon. Today you see videos one week earlier for just a small fee. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and lets me improve the channel further. 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