wadia ipod dock-- anyone find faults?

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

I would like to add:

When I first received my Wadia, I plugged in and connected it to my Playback Designs MPS-5's DAC and started listening. Generally everything was very good, BUT some recordings sounded tonally off, to the extent that vocal character was distorted. Diane Hubka, for instance, sounded a little throatier than usual.

This is despite having ripped all my archive with lossless and error correction turned. Still, I re-ripped several of the offending CDs and the coloration went away.

I having a feeling that, since Mr. Jobs doesn't give a crap about high fidelity, lossless may not be 100% reliable, even with error correction. All were ripped from a crappy computer transport. I have occasionally had to abort a rip because the error correction was slowing things down slower than real-time. When I re-ripped, then the transfer speeded up, but still showed some delay due to error correction.

So, I'm here trying to review the Wadia and I'll say without reservation that it's an excellent performer when fed accurate files and played through an excellent DAC. However, as this thread shows, YMMV.

In my system, third generation files played back through the iPod/Wadia/MPS-5 combination sound superior to the original CDs played through either my Oppo or Pioneer Elite DV-58AV. The same third generation files can't be distinguished from the original CD played through the PD MPS-5 CDP.

Dave

Chrissain, I am not sure if your exaggeration comment was meant for you or others, mainly Dave and I. I have no reason to exaggerate, I had kept my CDP on hand until I fully compared everything; if the Wadia combo wouldn't have performed well I would have sold it and posted my experience as so.

Nonetheless, my results basically mirror Daves, which also mirror three published reports I have read. I do not doubt your results just question why. Dave has posted his questions trying to determine if the compare was done as apples-to-apples as possible.

There are so many ways to compare, not only are there the formats, there is...the iPod/Wadia/output types/DAC vs. CDP or iPod/Wadia/using your CDP as a DAC, which is the closest to comparing against your CDP. I tried them all.

Lastly, if anyone feels there is any major difference between Apple Lossless and .wav, it is my opinion you are deceived.

These are just my opinions, people can do with them as they like.

Brian

hi brian, the comment was for all of us, you know how it is , we put cable x in the system and the sound was totally transformed!!!!!! audiophiles like to discribe small diffences as huge, myself included. this ws not the case however with the wadia, it was very real and apparent that the wadia was not as good as the cd transport on hand, why is another story. we used the bel canto cd2 fed by stereovox bnc cable . switching cables from the wadia to the cd2 . maybe the cd2 is just a very synergistic match with the dac 3, they were made for use with each other. chris

One last step I'd suggest, if you interested, re-rip some of the lossless files with error correction into iTunes and resync the iPod. As I noted earlier, I found some faulty files on my iPod even though all had been recorded in lossless with error correction. The faults that I heard were obvious and required no "golden ear" to hear, but when I re-ripped the files I couldn't tell the iPod files apart from the original CD.

My computer's soundcard is nothing extra special, just a mid+ level Nvidia. Still, I wonder how the card quality might impact ripping transfers. I KNOW that not using error correction yields some horrid results. Since we all used EC that's not necessarily the fault, EXCEPT that I have had some bad transfers even with EC. I don't know what gives.

There was a guy here on A'gon trying to get bit-perfect rips and actually tested after the fact with some program and was able to achieve it with lossless. I can find a bunch of "bit perfect" threads but not the one I'm thinking of.

Dave