Update on Wadia Transport Vs hard disk drive

Well this has been an interesting piece of research. Whilst I have had some conflicting advice and not everyone knows how i-Tunes works this is where I am at. i-Tunes only works when it can read all drives ie all drives are connected to the laptop or desktop. This is important, if correct, because I was thinking about buying a Glyph with multiple swappable drives and I will not be able to go down this route. I do not know the technical or operational reason for this. Can anyone confirm?

I also have followed the digital thread with interest. Jitter seems to be where it is at.

My conclusion at this stage is that i should buy an i-Book with a USB external soundcard and a Lacie 1 terrabyte drive. I am not sure which soundcard to buy. I am thinking of the Apogee mini-Dac as it is the very best (read most expensive - but has a reputation) in terms of Jitter and sonic abilities. (In the pro-audio world most of the high end stuff is multiple in and out and I just need stereo out.) Tony has been talking about the M-Audio recently (and in bake-offs) and this is also worth checking out.

All in the i-Book, DAC and Lacie drive will cost c £2500 - £2800. I will take the digital out of the DAC into my Wadia (unless the Apogee DAC is better than the Wadia) This puts it at the same price as the Imerge (limited hard drive upgrades - I can have 3 terrabytes plus with the i-Book) and maybe the DAC is not as good in the Imerge? There is also the Cyrus (re-badged Imerge with some upgrades but at £3600 is expensive and HiFi Experience's view is that it is only as good as the standard Cyrus - maybe off the pace of what I am looking at.

On this basis a no-brainer......but wait....what about the power supply and all the other stuff that goes into making a transport really good that an i-Book cannot deliver. Well, I do not know the answer but in my studio I have been listening to i-Tunes (uncompressed) on my Carillon PC with Soundscape (high-endish) Soundcard through a Soundcraft desk (pre-amp - a bit warm and wooley) and a pair of Dynaudio BM6a (£1000 active monitors). In the scheme of things a modest system and it sounds off the pace of my home setup but very listenable; no trace of harshness or hardness in the sound, lots of detail but lacking the clarity and emotion of the Wadia etc.

My next steps - I am planning to have an extensive home demo with an i-Book/Apogee/Wadia Vs Wadia/Wadia & i-Book/Apogee Vs Wadia/Wadia & i-Book/M-audio/Wadia Vs Wadia/Wadia & i-Book/M-audio Vs Wadia/Wadia etc. If anyone is interested in a small bake-off purely focussed on comparing hard drive systems Vs traditional transports (feel free to add a transport or two) then let me know. I am in London SW18. This will be on a Saturday during the day and I could accommodate say 4-6 in comfort so that all could have a good listen, a larger group may be possible but it would slow the day down. Food and drink will of course be provided and there are good pubs and restaurants within 150 meters of my house. I have yet to get to a bake-off so it would be good to put faces to names.

Cheers

Dominic

 

Sounds very interesting, but I doubt you could have picked a worse day - I'm off skiing :banana:, and I think most of the other regulars are off to Bristol :guiness: (and maybe a bit of :music: :guitar: :drum: :gould: )

 

Dominic, I'm in London on Saturday evening and would be very interested in hearing the variety of fronts ends [being both a Wadia and Mac user myself ].

 

Ah Dominic, this all sounds very interesting, and as the PC-Hifi thing is something that I hold an interest in, but unfortunately its a long way from Newcastle, so I wouldnt be able to make it, as much as I'd like to. Nevertheless, good luck with it, and I'll be very interested indeed to hear the results of this, even though a lot of the stuff you are considering is well out of my league

 

Bake-off is not THIS Saturday!!!

Guys, sorry but you have mis-read the bake-off date, I wrote "a Saturday" not "this" Saturday. It will take a bit of time to get the gear together. If anyone is interested in a bake-off in two to three weeks time then let me know and I will PM you. I can't make it to Bristol but hope that you all have fun.

Dominic

 

Re: Bake-off is not THIS Saturday!!!

Oops :shame: mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...would be interested.

 

Thanks Paul, the good thing is that the principles should apply to cheaper gear as well. An original i-MAC is £300 an M-Audio soundcard can be bought new for £150 and a 100 gig drive is c£200 and you could increase your drives as time progressed. Dominic

 

I'll be up for this Dom, and can I bring a toy or 2 along

 

Dominic, I dont know if you are aware, but I have already made a start with the computer thing, using my existing PC, which is geared towards quiet performance, but I also have a 120 Gb hard drive and I may increase that to 200 Gb in the future, and am using a Terratec soundcard, in to my headphone and speaker rig, and to be truthful, while its not the last word in fidelity, it sounds superb for the money paid - indeed I feel the Terratec is better than any midfi player that I've heard, and that I feel is the beauty with soundcards, their price to performance ratio is impressive to say the least.

As I say its a bit of a trail for me ATM, and I do have quite a bit going on at the minute, but I would like to have been there, but as I say good luck, if you can bring computer audio to high end performance levels, then I doubt you'll ever look back.

And if you ever need a help with compression, be it lossy or lossless (more likely I suspect) then give me a shout, I'll be happy to offer a hand if you get stuck.

Cheers.

 

Just had an interesting conversation with Ken at the Trading Station who used to use a Teac T-1 transport and now uses an Imerge 2000. He is convinced that the Imerge was just as good as the Teac with the Imerge acting as a transport. He also used to use a PC with a Midiman DAC (now known as M-Audio) and this was also as good as the Teac. He is also under the impression that the Cyrus is exactly the same as the Imerge with just a different badge on the front. Any other thoughts on this subject? Thanks Dominic

 

Dominic - following on from our incessant ramblings about jitter and digitally things, I'm reminded that (AFAIK) it's pretty much de rigeur nowadays in the pro market to have the master clock for the DAC originating in the DAC, and then the input data streams being demand driven (i.e. pretty much as in Wadia's and dCS's clock-link schemes). Has any of the kit you're talking about got this? This should mean that you should be pretty independent of cables and transport snake-oil (although a sensible amount of sheilding against noise would probably not go amiss)

 

Wow I managed to miss this entire thing.

So:

a. what are we trying to achieve?

b. What is the budget?

I have no doubt the apple will come through on both counts, but its worth having a spec!

 

Luvely jubbly,

Let us know how you get on - you know me, always singing hard disc praises (technicly far supperior as a transport than CD or DVD).

I would be interested in a visit - may be able to bring in some alternative hard drives to see if any sound better. maybe some SATA drives or laptop - could be an interesting day.

good work fella //lamboy