wadia ipod dock-- anyone find faults?

Kmelancon asked:

"Dave,
...

Have you tried the comparison between lossless and wav yourself?"

No, I only compared the original CD to lossless, using the iPod G160 as the transport and my Playback Designs MPS-5 as the DAC. For CD I used the Playback Designs. I couldn't distinguish between the original CD and the lossless files.

In your tests, did you use the same DAC? Which DAC did you use?

Dave

hey guys, I had to chime in , I was there for the a-b-a
shoot out at kmelancons and with the gear on hand it was not even close ! I know how people like to exaggerate for effect when discribing what they hear, but the cd had more space , air and presence compared to the wadia, the wadia
seemed to round everything off , this effect was real and very apparent to us, it was not subtle ! maybe with lesser gear it would not be an issue. the idea that the wadia is better than cd sound is a joke. chrissain

Chrissain, which DAC was the Wadia going through and which DAC was the CDP going through?

Thanks,

Dave

Dave,

11-12-08: Kmelancon writes:

I paired the Wadia with the bel canto dac 3 and then compared it against the bel canto cd 2.

Regards,

So you used the DAC3 for both? If so, which digital input did you use on the DAC3 and was the same IC used on both sources?

How does the CD 2 by itself compare to the CD2/DAC3 combo?

I'm not trying to bust your chops. It's just that my experience with the MPS-5's DAC is totally different from yours with the DAC3. Both DACs reclock and focus a lot on jitter reduction, but perhaps there's a difference there. It's easy to understand that the Wadia's ultimate performance is DAC-dependent. Still, I would have expected better performance with a DAC3. I've received excellent reports with the Benchmark and Emm DACs.

Dave