Krell KID vs. Wadia i170.

How could a 350.00 dollar "dock" compare to the krell kid? I suppose you can make the same argument that the wadia's performance is as good as the dac you connect it to. I have heard the kid in a friends system and I can honestly say it makes a huge difference. He is using the quad 12l actives with the krell kid plugged into balanced interconnects. He has downloaded all his cd's onto his imac in apple lossless ( I think that's what you call it) and this little system cranks! It made a huge difference when he plugged the ipod in directly than he connected it with the kid and I was astonished. The build quality is awesome, top notch and after doing some research myself have found out that the ipod has a pretty good dac. I quess my point is that you would have to spend a lot more money on a dac and the wadia to outperform the krell as well as an amp and a preamp. The other thing I might mention is that the wadia is a cheap piece of plastic made in china, so I quess you get what you pay for. I have no ties with krell and I am not affiliated with them in any way but I have to give credit where credit is due. The kid is awesome

I was surprised when I discovered that the Wadia was plastic.

I have the krell kid and the wadia i 170. They are really good however the wadia i 170 is better. MY wadia was sent to steve at GNS co for mods. The wadia bypasses the i pods dac and the krell kid does not. The wadia sound depends on your dac that you are using. I had mine hooked up to ensemble hi dac and the sound is great it blows the krell away as is should. I really dont use a cd transport anymore the future is in ipod transport and music servers. I am now using the MSB ilink transport to my dac. Its cost 2300 however its worth every penny i cant tell the the difference between my ensemble transport which cost 4 times as much as the MSB ilink. I take that back the MSB has better mid and highs to me. I would not spend mega bucks on cd transports you will just be wasting your money.

So neither of these actually contains a DAC?? as in, you still need to spend additional cash on a good DAC to get any real improved sound? bourns to this mide as well buy a DAC/Amp combo and save yourself 400 bux.

Good to hear , I just heard the I170 ran into a Wadia 581 using its DAC. It was good. The music was compressed but still was good. I may look into one !