Received my Wadia i170 transport today.

I love mine i had it modded by steve and the guys at great northern sound co. I dont know how i lived with a cd transport. I have all my cds in lossless formate and the sound is really good better than my old transport bel canto cd-2. I have people over and they cant believe thats music from my ipod. The dac iam using is the ensemble hi dac its a great dac however you can you any dac and the sound will blow your mind. I am very happy for now, asi has a mod for the wadia i170 with battery supply and other opt for around 1800. I think i will send a new wadia to them to mod it is alot more money than the gns mod will see which one is better.

Dazzdax - As a matter of fact, I am currently selling OEM USB interface modules to several companies, including Ultra-Fi (the iRoc DAC). The new version iRoc will debut at RMAF in Oct. Larry of Ultra-FI and I are tentatively talking about a collaboration too. Nothing serious yet. He does analog design and tubes really well and I do digital design really well and Larry does not have the usual giant ego that comes with most audio designers so there is potential there. I know Lavry and Peychev pretty well, but never met Keith Johnson, or at least I dont remember. Getting pretty old and the solder fumes are having their effect....

The problem with these types of collaborations is the business end of things. I have seen so many audio companies that have partnerships end-up in ruins or litigation etc. I'm too old to deal with that, and it's really no fun. I already have patent infringement on my cable products....

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Oxia - I believe I can easily hear jitter in the 300psec range and so can you, depending on the spectra. (This is very difficult to measure accurately BTW). Here's why:

I had a mod for the AE some time ago, including power supply improvements, new S/PDIF output circuit and upgraded clock. It was called the Off-Ramp WiFi. The power and S/PDIF output mods improved the sound, but changing from the stock oscillator to a Superclock made the largest improvement. The only thing changing here is the clock and the jitter associated with the clock. The improvement in detail and image focus due to ONLY changing the clock was obvious in my system. Changing only the clock has no other effect than jitter.

Changes to the clock and other things that ONLY affect jitter is what leads me to the conclusion that jitter is the problem with the AE. I ultimately discontinued making the Off-Ramp WiFi because the jitter even with the Superclock, power supply and S/PDIF mods was still worse than even my USB converters. It is obviously audible in comparison.

Besides, with the AE, technically there is nothing else except jitter. With AE Toslink output, there is no RFI, no ground-loops, no other mechanisms. The data is bit-perfect.

The Toslink output from the AE can also be reclocked through a Pace-Car reclocker and this makes an even bigger improvement. One only has to listen for a few seconds to "get it".

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Wanted to add my experience with the iTransport and ask a couple questions.

Have had mine for a month and used it with my 80 Gb iPod. Compared the same music from a Marantz SA11S1 or sometimes a MF A5 CDP, with the iPod/iTransport, and finally with my HP PC (using iTunes) through a HagTech USB/SPDIF converter to a Benchmark DAC-1. Other gear: battery Dodd preamp; Pass Aleph J amp, and Merlin TSM-MMe monitors.

I have to admit...I am not sure I could tell the difference between the music of the Marantz CDP and the iTransport, if I were just casually listening. Switching back and forth with the same music playing, I could detect some difference (I THINK), but it wasn't much. I plan to continue this A/B (as it were) to get a better grasp on what may lack with the iPod.

I had used Apple Lossless when ripping...what do others recommend? I am also suspect about the USB and other cabling used with this source. The battery powered iTransport would be great. Any other comments?

A better compare is using your CDP, either the Marantz or MF, as a transport connected to the DAC-1 and then comparing that to the 170iTransport/DAC-1.

How you chose to rip your files is a personal choice. There is so much debate about it and no single right answer. After researching it for myself, I chose to use Apple Lossless and have error correction on, which I would use error correction no matter what choice I used to rip.

Brian