wadia ipod dock-- anyone find faults?

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

Dave, either I am confused or you are, maybe both! :)

But (to me) the sound card has nothing to do with ripping CD's, it is just for sound playback on a PC; you can rip all you want without a sound card.

Furthermore, as I already stated as about as clearly as I can, which may not be saying much, when making copies of your CD's, the only reason they wouldn't be bit-for-bit copies would be because of defects (scratches) in the CD, and if that is the case, your transport will also have the same (error) issue.

When a CD is read on a CD transport it is read one time and sent to the DAC. The benefit of using error correction when making the copy is it reads many times to get the best accuracy, meaning the "copy" being read can have the potential of being read better than the CD copied from.

Stereophile had a very good article months back on digital and talked about it staying the same as long as it stayed in the digital domain, as it should, it is when brought into analog where the issues can ocur.

Your issues of having the re-rip some CD's is rather odd to me as well; I have not had to do this at all. I also ripped many CD's prior to turning on EC and I have no issues with them nor do I hear any diferences with those.

maybe the cd2 is just a very synergistic match with the dac 3, they were made for use with each other.

I don't see why this would matter. Like I say, I haven't a clue of why you guys had the results you did, all I can say is this differs from others, for what it is worth.

Thanks for the clarification on the exaggeration comment; I wasn't clear on the intent. I am aware of the exageration(s) we 'philes can make, but for me there was none. Like in your case, I brought over another set of ears who agreed that he could no way tell a difference in our comparisons. (In some intances, like comparing the CD to the iPod combo, I could switch inputs with a touch of the remote, with the inputs being level matched; neither of us could accurately pick a source.)