dCS Scarlatti vs Wadia 931+921

Kamil,

I would say that the Wadia 9 stack presented the attack and decay of treble transients in a dark background, where the edges are clearly delineated. The shimmering notes rung like a cymbal in the night. I have never heard anything like it; I would say the sound was clean. No other DAC I've owned was like it. This includes the ones I mentioned as well as Sonic Frontiers, Levinson, Audio Synthesis, Audio Logic etc. Because the 9 series is so different and having tried other pieces, if I had two to own, I would have the Wadia and one other. In this respect, I regret selling it. Also, the bass when the unit drove the amp directly, was foundationally impressive. Deep and wide.

I would not say the sound was mechanical at all; in fact there is something to be said for the clarity. I find units that upsample PCM to DSD to diffuse the sound, some more than others.

@Classicjazz: I currently own Wadia S7i (great device) and I´m thinking in the same direction as Karajan. Have you ever tried the Boulder 2020 together with the Metronome Kalista ? Have you any experience with the big Esoterics (0-series) or the late EmmLabs seperates ?

Hi Frankpiet.

No experience with any EMM Labs gear or the Metronome gear. I can't see myself buying a super expensive CD2 based transport. I did consider the P01 transport but the mechanism is the same as the UX1 I have. I also considered the XDS1 but went with a Spectral 4000S Pro CD player instead. I was reluctant to spend so much on a unit with a switching power supply. Also, for redbook CD, from an analytic standpoint I was also hesitant to upsample everything to DSD, which the XDS1 does (using probably an ASRC).

As for the 2020, it remains excellent and with the Trinnov ST2 Pro room correction, offers the best sonics yet. I am a big believer in a DAC that offers the following: proprietary digital filter, multibit conversion, proprietary I-V converter and discrete analog output stages. The units that I've owned that do this all have really impressed me (I realize this only ex post). The list that comes to mind are: Wadia 900 series, Boulder, Spectral CDP, Naim DCA, possibly dCS and Lavry. Other units may use op-amps somewhere or an off the shelf DF. MSB would be the other one - although they don't have an I-V and drive the output directly, if I recall their design overview correctly.

The XDS1 does not have a switching power supply, you are probably thinking of the CDSA.

Hi Bar81,

A resonant mode power supply is a switching supply.