When will Wadia 581 be available

Your patience will be well rewarded. It's a great player and the production units are just beginning to ship now. I'm a little surprised someone took a deposit from you on a unit that wasn't even shipping yet, but if you want to get one of the first of anything I guess you have to be willing to accept that delays can occur in the roll out of product. I for one am just glad Wadia spent the time necessary to get it right and build something the truly breaks new ground.

Sprbggr,
Could you clarify? When you say that Krell is more reliable than Wadia, do you mean the company or the product or both?

Well let's say that the Wadia sounds a little bit better than the Krell (but not much). However my old KPS28C always works without any problem and reads all CD's. If I need service I can just bring it to the Teac repair center which costs me about 20% of what the Krell distributors calculate.

In the last years I had about 5 Wadia CD players of which 3 had problems (new players). So I guess their reliability is not that great. But all problems were solved quickly and after that they functioned well without problems. So in the end they are still good and reliable.

GNSC is right. I wanted to have the first 581 available and to make sure I got it I did already a payment. Knowing Wadia for their great CD players I have no doubt about it that the sound will be great. I prefer to have a unit that is tested and reliable and if it then takes a little longer for Wadia to produce it that is no problem to me.

Sound wise there is Wadia and the rest. No other player is as musical and still has great dynamics and bass as the Wadia. The Krell is better in the bass but the overall performance of the Wadia is better.

I am curious about the SACD also. So far I never heard an SACD player that with SACD can beat my Krell KPS28C on CD. I had the Sony SACD1, SACD777 and Marantz SA11 and SA17 and Teac DV50S. All sounded worse on SACD than the Krell on CD. I guess if you want to beat a 10.000 $ CD player on SACD you need also a 10.000 $ SACD player.

I had 4 Krell CD players of which only one had a problem.

I ordered a Wadia 581 about three weeks ago. I was told the unit would be shipped at the end of August. It has not been shipped. I will post here when the 581 arrives.

581 is available. I´ll very soon get my GNSC modded 581 - looking foreward to that as the standard 581 is already beyond expectation (betters the 861 SE in all areas).