Woo Announces New DAC/AMP – WA11 Passport

If you’ve ever seen a Woo Audio product in person, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have said “WOW!”. Woo Audio produces some of the most eye-catching, coolest-looking products available. But, recently, they announced a new product which is somewhat unlike anything else they’ve produced thus far. All of their previous DAC/AMP products incorporated vacuum tube circuitry; it has actually become a bit of a signature for them. This new product – the WA11 Passport – is their first portable headphone DAC/AMP product which is all-solid-state.

 

Meet The WA11 Passport

To some extent, one could argue that the WA11 Passport would be Woo Audio’s first truly portable device…well, almost. Whilst their WA8 is arguably the coolest-looking portable DAC/AMP out there, it’s more transportable than portable per se. Whilst it is perfectly capable of operating purely on the built-in battery, the sheer size and weight (1089g) means that you’ve got no chance of slipping it into your pocket. Heck, with a maximum playback time of just 4 hours, it’s a far cry from really being considered a feasible portable solution.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of going for an all-solid-state design this time around is that it allowed Woo Audio to trim the device down dramatically. You see, tube circuitry is horribly inefficient, and so they require a lot of power and various other circuit designs. In terms of portability, this means that a huge battery is required and a large circuit board and enclosure. With solid-state, the board can be made smaller, a smaller battery can be used, and so the entire casing can trimmed down too.
As a result, the WA11 Passport weighs in at 413g, meaning it’s got 62% less heft than the WA8. It’s also 53% smaller than the WA8 in terms of overall dimensions, meaning it’s also nearly 5% smaller than the iFi Micro iDSD Black Label, but still around 33% heavier than the iFi.

Removing that inefficiency of the tube circuitry also means that the WA11 Passport can now obtain a more reasonable maximum playback-time of 7 hours.

Other specs include an ESS Sabre ES9018K2M DAC chip, and 4.4mm balanced Pentaconn connectors for both the input and output of the amplification circuitry.

Pricing

Once made available, the WA11 Passport will have a price-tag of $1399. So, compared to the WA8, along with trimmed dimensions comes a 22% trim in the price too. Nice!