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
msb Ilink vs. wadia 170i ipd docks
I have finally gotten a weeks worth of critical listening of the msb ilink and the wadia ipod docks and I must say that the msb is truely better in every way and it's not subtle. I am running them both directly to the benchmark dac/pre and through atc scm20-2 active speakers running balanced with an analysis plus gold coax cable. The detail is much higher in the msb, the bass is not as tubby, and it's almost like a blanket was lifted off the speakers after I switched to the msb. I know there is a huge difference in price but I know alot of people were on the fence about this one so I wanted to help them put and give my 2 cents worth. This ipod dock is pretty killer and I can't even imagine what it's going to be like when I hook it up to a great dac.
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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' *******
******************************************************** 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! |
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