msb Ilink vs. wadia 170i ipd docks

Kana813

Full Mods at the time, dont get me wrong it is a nice playback, but it is not better than a very good transport and DAC. Personally I found that the battery used limited dynamics in a critical way. I dont remember what was done (I have the emails somewhere) but yes regulation at a certain point but with batteries remember than is not so important, some changes to the clock but not a new clock....

Nrosotv

Nice playback you have, a couple of friends have the same speakers but with Chord electronics and Halcro, we listened to them with a Hovland tube amp (2 el34 about 40 watts) but it didnt have the power to move them properly, I did like tubes with those speakers but there was an Accuphase integrated amp that almost made me cry... the blend was that good!

The Forsell has a certain magic that blends wonderfully with my Non-upsampling DAC, I traded a CEC TL1 for it. I guess my curiosity with CD playback stops here. I am putting together a TT, right now I am waiting for the final protoypes of a very special tonearm!

I have just bought the upgrade to the ilink. The upgrade makes the ilink upsample to 176.4 Khz. Now the ilink is a complete different monster to the wadia. Now the gap between the 2 docks are obvious. All the good stuff associated with upsampling is true about this ilink upgrade. I wasn't expecting this, but I'm hearing instruments in familiar recordings that I never heard before. I thought you may like to know. MSB made a good decision to widen the gap with the wadia. The only complaint would be that MSB could have thought of this without an upgrade now. But the difference is no longer subtle

Sonusdude nice i have both wadia i170 gns mods and msb ilink and i have always said the msb ilink is better. I will have to send mine in for the upgrade. I have a question what if you dac upsamples already?

To all forum members who have vigourously participated in this thread:

I got tired waiting for Justin to provide some feedback re. the 170i Transport jitter which he was supposed to get from Wadia. I was surfing the 'net & I found this info re. the Wadia 170i Transport which was posted by J. Gordon Rankin. I'm surprised that nobody else discovered this info (which seems to be available since Summer 2008. OR, if you did you been mighty quiet about it) given that most of the participants here *appear* to be avid computer audio enthusiasts.

*** cut & paste from 'computeraudiophile.com' *******

FYI it appears the jitter (Prism dScope III, Nirvana T2 cable, BNC input to Prism, RCA->BNC adapater on the Wadia side) is actually pretty good for the SPDIF port at better than 4ns and deviation of only 63ppm with a differential data stream of about 850mv (correct).

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you can read all of the tear-down info & the flurry of posts thereafter here:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Teardown-Wadia-iTransport#comment-7413

Bombaywalla, I had come accross this information and it was actually Gordon Rankin's figures which were in my mind when I stated earlier in this thread that some online sources had jitter in the Wadia at aound 3000ps. It doesn't change the fact that Hi-Fi News published a figure of 115ps! Nevertheless, I go back to my earlier point that if your DAC has good jitter reduction processing, this could be largely irrelevant.

Personally, I've never heard the MSB, nor would I ever look at modifying my iPod for that sort of cost. For me, the Wadia is now the equal of my (admittedly not high-end) Musical Fidelity A5 plus all the convenience that the CD player doesn't provide. That's good enough for me. But for those that are enjoying their MSB IMods, I say good luck to them - this hobby is all about enjoying our music and our systems and their's more than one way to skin a cat!