Wolf Audio Systems is constantly looking for ways to improve our products to deliver a better server. Over the years, we have grown close with several companies whose products we use and who use our servers in turn. The Alpha 3 SX is a product born from those friendships and the drive for better listening.  Wolf, Stillpoints and eXemplar Audio worked together to create a server that features the best of what each of our companies have to offer when it comes to managing vibration, noise, RF and EMI. We use Stillpoints standoff products to support our components inside the chassis, the Portal for grounding and conditioning the power, plus some materials and technologies we’ll be talking more about in the coming months.

Here at Wolf, we prefer Stillpoints products for all of our components, and place loose Ultra SS feet under our servers for the big improvement in sound they offer. And when it comes to digital, Stillpoints uses our servers at home and at shows. So when Paul or Bruce call with suggestions to improve our products, we listen. By incorporating their CBI isolation technology into the power supply and other critical components of the Alpha 3 SX, we significantly reduce the micro-vibrations that any electrical device will create – or pick up. The resulting drop in the noise floor and increases in clarity and naturalness ensurs the only connections between are by design, and not incidental and unwanted transmissions.

Wolf and Stillpoints teamed up with eXemplar Audio to develop a new type of grounding and conditioning product to manage internal and external power noise. We call them Portals, and they operate in the mega and gigahertz spectrum, isolating and removing noise from the system. That noisy power can be transmitted via the positive, negative and neutral power lines.  Using the Portal to siphon that noise out of the server helped the Alpha 3 SX reach a level of  clarity and resolution that we typically associate with the Red Wolf 2 server.

At audio shows, every component needs to perform at its highest level. At the Florida Audio Expo 2020, seven rooms were driven by an Alpha 3 SX server, including the Modwright, Bob Carver, Paradigm, and House of Stereo rooms, the latter of which won Best Sound from AVShowrooms. While there, Wolf upgraded Mark Conti’s Alpha 3 for the MC AudioTech room, and heard immediate improvements in sound from the first to the second day. Whether Florida or D.C., Denver or Hong Kong, the SX upgrade brings the Alpha 3 to a new level, and ensures that every room it occupies has the best possible sound, right from the source.

We use Stillpoints in all of our stereo rooms. Every Wolf in our shop and listening areas sit atop Stillpoints, some loose, some integrated into the rack. The improvement is so dramatic that we decided that it was high time to incorporate Stillpoints Ultra SS feet into all of our Alpha and Red Wolf chassis. Available as an option, Stillpoints Ultra SS footers can be ordered in either Silver or Black at build-time.

The Luna takes everything that we loved about the Cub but brings the performance much closer to Alpha levels. Fully silent, the Luna features all the big system capabilities with room to expand as your collection does. Recently, we have updated the Luna to include many of the components that make the Alpha 3 and Red Wolf 2 so great, just shrunk down into a smaller case. This is the perfect server for an audiophile whose space is at a premium.

Normally, with a server in this form factor, cooling is a concern, often requiring noisy fans or water pumps. The Luna cools the system entirely passively, so there are no fans to create noise. On top of this, all Wolf Audio Systems servers use solid state storage and completely silent power supplies. When you put all of this together, you end up with a very small form factor server, without any of the compromises of others. When you’re listening to a Wolf server, the only sound you should hear is your music.

Many streamers, especially in this form factor, play music and nothing else. They simply don’t have the power to handle anything else. The Luna utilizes high performance 9th Generation Intel Core i5 processors with 6 cores, ensuring that the system has ample power to not only play your music, but to browse the web, watch movies, and do anything else you could use a computer for. Furthermore, the additional performance allows the system to keep your music completely isolated from everything else running in the background. This eliminates any noise or interference from being introduced into the signal. Combine this with our Flux Capacitor USB Clock Card, and the result is one of the cleanest, most balanced servers we’ve heard.

Technical Specifications

Starting at $5,895

Featuring a big jump in sonics and power over its predecessor, the Alpha 3 is the system capturing attention and making even vinyl lovers take notice. Missed out on Oppo? We didn’t mind… our 105 is collecting dust in the backup stereo because the Alpha 3 handles everything it could do, and more.

The Alpha 3 is still the perfect system for the audiophile wanting to integrate their existing media collection – whether from CD or hard drive – into the next step of audio evolution. The Alpha 3 takes all the best of digital media storage, playback and delivery components and consolidates all of these disciplines into one system with a ton of built-in capabilities and future-proof hardware that will keep the music playing for years to come. As the audio world evolves, the Alpha 3 evolves with it, expanding its feature sets and growing with you.

The Alpha 3 comes with an internal, 240W power supply that is compact but very powerful and completely silent. This supply deserves an award! It is an order of magnitude better sounding than regular computer power supplies, and we have made a few changes that underscore its ability to handle HiFi audio duties..

Simply put, a Wolf is capable of just about anything. Our current preferred build is Windows 10 Pro, though Server 2016 and even a Linux variant are running in our lab.

What does that mean for the listener? A few things: a full-blown web browsing experience in the stereo room using either a big screen TV or a monitor beside you. The ability to purchase your music where you play it. The ability to send music or videos to other places in your home while also doing critical listening. The ability to stream, rip, tag, arrange, compare, burn, buy, share, room correct, transcode, upsample, downsample, convert and even create – all with the same system.

We are typing this paragraph on a Wolf. We send our emails from a Wolf.  And when we want to, we turn out the lights and turn off the screens and just listen to our music with an app on our phone or tablet. With a Wolf, you have options… to take it as far, or use it as simply as you’d like.  The only thing we ask is that you enjoy the music.

Technical Specifications