Wolf Audio music servers

Hey guys, this is Joe Parvey from Wolf… What a great surprise to find this! I knew that @lwin had started a thread, but it’s been busy here, and I just found it again… This is really gratifying, and to be honest I am humbled by what I’m reading, if someone had told me 4 years ago that my products were being discussed on Audiogon, I might not have believed it. However, a little less than four years ago, my father wanted something pretty cool and very expensive (and a huge lack of features, by our judgement), and I said, ‘a computer is a computer, we’ll build you something at a fraction of the cost.’ I couldn’t have been more wrong - that audition of our first system was an eye opener. It was our sixth system – after several pilgrimages and many phone calls to industry heavyweights, combined with an insane amount of research – that our efforts began to bear fruit. It was a further 3 more system builds before we sold our first Wolf. The fact of the matter is, EVERYTHING matters... there is no silver bullet to achieving Hi-Fi results, the hardware, the software, the case, the vibration dampening, RFI/EMI, etc. all matter. And after that, it must be intuitive and easy to use, and you must be ready to support people from all walks of life, some with no computer experience at all, but desirous of a machine that helps you do whatever you want. Our mission, our team, take all of these must have matters into account, and we are really lucky to have such a smart group of people working towards the same goal.

I didn’t mean to write a book, but I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself and our company to you. Please ask any questions you’d like here in the thread, and I’ll check in every few days. Please also go to the footer of our site to sign up for our newsletter, we are working on our newest one this week.

Thanks!

• joe

Well, one of the first things I would point out is cost. I was shocked at some of the price points where certain features became available, and I found that highly detrimental to the consumer. When I started the project that would become Wolf, I too was simply a consumer, though with a pretty big tech budget at my day-job. So, I understood Hifi markups, but also the costs and markups in the larger technology field, and thought that the two should meet somewhere in the middle. That is how Wolf has been going up against competitors twice our cost - and winning.
Another difference is the R&D we do before releasing a feature. I really want to include AES & BNC output to our Wolf's - I have two customers waiting to pull the trigger for those outputs - but as it stands, the implementations currently out there in the world today are not consistent, and wont work exactly the same across the various DACs out there. Once we can get them to behave, they'll become available on new systems and as an upgrade to existing Wolfs.
Another benefit of coming from the tech industry is the knowledge and ability to do Wolf IT. Our music backup service is launching this month, allowing customers (and civilians too) to store their music, in the cloud, by the TB. We are working on the pricing structure, wanting to be competitive with the big guys, but without the headaches they give you in what you can and can't do with your own music.
I'll stop here, because I can think of ten other things but don't want to put you guys to sleep. @lwin you know and can speak to the support we offer, our willingness to teach and generally spend time helping our customers understand just what they've got in their Wolf. 

I am putting the forum together on www.wolfaudiosystems.com (and working to speed the site up, please be patient!) where the 'trivial' questions you've asked can be quickly located and answered with screenshots and video. Likewise, I expect my wife to become a bit happier with me, especially at night. But your questions aren't trivial, all directly correlate with your happiness with our product.
All Wolf servers go through a 48Hr burn in period here before shipping, where we push the systems to see if something will break. Still, there is going to be a break in period at your home as well.    Our AXPONA systems are in rotation right now, because we want them as settled as possible, and then a full 24 hour cycle in the rooms for the power supplies to adjust to the flavor of power at the hotel. 

Thank you @la45 -  we spent a long Thursday setting the room up and figuring out how to make those massive speakers work in such a small room. Despite the challenges, we were really surprised at how good the room sounded, thanks to the BAT gear,  (my favorite DAC yet!), the Stillpoints Aperture panels and of course the Sadurni's. This system was sensitive, and that could be disastrous to some computer based systems, but our experiences using ZOTL Amps and Sadurni horns helped us identify noise that might never have been heard otherwise. We took those lessons and that experience from NYAS 2016 and tuned and tweaked, from November '16 till now, to create the Red Wolf 2 (RW2). Wolf Audio had been urged to release the RW2 back before Christmas, but we wanted to wait for a more special occasion and AXPONA 2018 was it... a massive show, great room partners, great reception from within the industry, magazine guys, and the public. Also, our presence in other rooms running a Wolf system really created a lot of buzz and awareness for Wolf: the Stillpoints (room 743)  received an Audio Oasis award from Positive Feedback, and this endorsement from Frank Malitz of the Bob Carver Corp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFhBlPwAfxg&t=116s really underscored how far Wolf Audio Systems has come as a company with dependable products and a team ready to help other rooms be successful. Nothing is more stressful than getting to a show and being dead in the water.