Wadia ITransport

wadia itransport is a bitperfect transport with high levels of jitter.
with a dac capable of eliminating it the results are equal to a good cd.
but always the high levels of incoming jitter affects the sound quality in even the best dacs.
I have a nonos dac that is very sensitive to jitter and I am not happy with itransport. I can easily hear the difference between the wadia and my esoteric transport. I have order a m2tech hiface for a direct comparison.
Nikos

Perhaps the next generation of the Wadia dock will have improved performance in the area of jitter. One noteworthy comment I received from Wadia about this first generation Dock, is that though measured performance is important, the technician said their release criteria for the dock came after extensive listening sessions. I think in the world of high end products, a manufacturer caring not only about spec's but more so about the sound is admirable. Lastly, my DAC does a good job of re-clocking, and using the loss-less option when I import leaves me with sound quality very close if not equal to the source CD. Good luck and thank you.

One last thing worth mentioning about the transports sound quality. It can sound better than your source CD depending on it's condition. I have a well recorded artist but about half way through the disk I get an almost static like noise, the disk has always been this way. Importing the disk using the Apple Loss-Less with error checking selected resulted in the problem being eliminated when played back with the IPod and Dock. So, yes, in this case the IPod sounded better than the disk.

i just added a 170i and am very impressed. followed this thread's advise regarding tweeks and couldn't be happier. picked up a used audioquest nrg-1 pc and a vdm-5 rca on the cheap. feeding the i170 to my ps audio perfect wave dac. the pw dac is doing a fine job of sorting things out. can't even begin to describe all of the improvements compared to the crap $59 doc i'd been using =). for about $600 total... i'm back to enjoying the ipod at home again.

have not had a chance to a-b compare disc's via my pw transport but judging from my current enjoyment levels, the 170i can't be too far off. we'll see.

great thread fella's!. thanks for turning me on to the 170i + tweeks.

@rpg
thank you for your comment.
My post was just an alert for people with non oversampling dacs without jitter reducing circuits. itransport is not for them!
There is a big discussion about jitter all around the net. There are many people who prefer transports without a lot of jitter instead of using the dac or reclocker to eliminate it.
thanks
Nikos