Wadia 170i vs Onkyo NDS1

wadia / onkyo comparison

ok here goes - the onkyo looks pretty smart in silver and blends well with my silver ipod. Was a little bigger than thought was going to be and could do with some weight adding to it, weight to me means quality and this feels a little flimsy - the connections on the back feel solid and includes digital, optical, composite and usb connection - the onkyo comes with remote (although doesn't seem to skip up albums even though there is a button - my ipod needs updating so this could be corrected), mains leads, usb cable, optical cable and the yellow one for conneting to av amp ect No ipod inserts come with the onkyo so you will need to dig your old one out. The dock has a sliding tray to pull over the ipod connector to prevent dust

the usb connector is a nice touch and a button on top swaps between the two - it says you can synch ipod whilst in the dock although not tried yet but def a worthy adition also imagine you can plays tracks straight from computer using this but again not tried

ipod connects very quickly  and is ready instantly - well now the important bit sound - there are no analogue outs so needs connecting to a dac using either optical or digital - i used digital as my dac has no optical in. It sounds far better as expected than any other dock that uses the internal ipod dac. The sounds is pretty tight and detailed and has weight and punch whilst reamining open no problems with the sound stage, personally think internal ipod dacs sound flat. Using my cdp player as a transport through same dac still edges it but not by much its very close. All in all a great product for the money and a steal at £150.

The wadia in comparison is also light, perfectly square and twice as thick - the wadia is rough to touch not smooth like the onkyo but probably beats it for style but personal choice. The connections on the wadia feel cheap to me and never liked the mains connector. The wadia came with digital cable, remote and mains lead. The remote is very cheap even though the one with the onkyo isn't much better but is better. From memory i think the wadia came with ipod inserts.

The wadia has both optical, digital and analogue outs - its has an internal dac but no computer connectivity, i have never tried the internal dac so can't comment. It also lacks any light to say whether its working or not. The sound between these two is even closer but going to hold judgement and will update this shortly as trying to get an identical digital cable as to me there seemed to be a difference in volume between the two which i wouldn't expect going through the same dac and the wadia seemed to sound a little more exciting but could be the cable/difference in volume as the only spare cable i had was a standard interconnect - if i can't get matching set with try the freebie out of the wadia box as seemed decent cable to be fair - not easy for me to swap the two over due to cabinet watch this space as need to do some more experimenting and have an in depth listening session.

Although to be honest at this moment in time i think the onkyo could be the better option at half the price and with the added computer connectivity is the one i would probably go for - would be keen to hear what hifi thoughts on the comparison.

please ask me if you have any direct questions and will try to answer

Great review and I am waiting patiently (not) for more on the sound! Could I get the Onkyo and a type a to type b USB cable and connect it to my USB DACs? Have you got the GQ-24 cable for a further comparison?

My thinking is that at the moment I use my GQ-24 to connect ipod to the phonos on my amp. But with the Onkyo I could connect ipod to amp(DAC) via USB.

i bought my wadia from america works a charm check this link http://www.thecableco.com/product.php?id=6509 they have it at $379 us its more about your dac and having a reliable coax cable they give you a reasonable one with the 170i anyway

Hi Chaps,

I was happy to read this and find the award winning onkyo ipod dock. I really enjoy carrying my music around digitally, have a large usb pen drive in my car, but have been awaiting a good solution for my living room. I'll probably go with an AV reciever, as I'd want cinema and music in one, though I'll tend to an amp that is more musical. I was at first thinking of the Pioneer VSX-919 (within my budget) because it has supposedly nice ipod intigration, but in the end I do not like the idea of having the TV on, and the cable connects via the front.

So, I started reading up on docking stations, and have finally found a dock which outputs digital into the av reciever.

Thus the av reciever that I'll probably get is the denon 1610 or the 1910. Any comments? I'll be starting off having the system in stereo 2.0 then maybe expanding to 5.1. The speakers I'm looking into are the diamonds 9.1 or 2 or the 10, maybe even floor stading ones. Just a question of listening to them. These speakers look nice (girlfriend) and also have rave reviews, and are not so pricey.

K out

I can clearly see your train of thought, but thankfully bitstreaming is specific to HDMI with respect to iPod audio. Coaxial and Optical only output PCM from an iPod source. They can output a bitstreamed DTS or AC3 but that's only relevant to Home Cinema. Cheers.

I liked the info posted on the Onkyo NDS1. Whats really captured my mind is the recent WHFN Linn article saying music from a hard drive is far superior to that from a CD player and the WHFN raving reviews about the Mission CD6 player and its new servo drive mechanism. Clearly musical quality of CD players are heavily limited by their optical drive systems and this is not my view but Linn's and Mission's. 

I can't aford either companies products much as I would like to be able to but I do have an iPod and I do have a slightly aging Dacmagic. So if I record my music in WAV (not compressed) and connected my iPod and Dacmagic via the NDS1, I suspect I might be able to achieve a musical quality far in excess of any current £500 CD player for the little money Onkyo is asking for. Has anyone given this try or have any further comments?

Hi oldntired. The impression from similar threads where the source is a PC instead of the ipod is that a £200 DAC can compete with a CDP up to £1000. But that is a generalisation. Furthermore, using the Onkyo and Wadia are still rare. From reviews, it would appear you have a very good chance of excellent sound. I hope you go for it and post back your impressions.

Thank you for the feedback idc. I hadn't used my PC as a source as it doesn't have a separate digital output (integrated sound board?) but a suitable sound card might be the quick and cheap way way to test the theory as post Christmas the Onkyo won't slip into the budget just yet! 

if its any help in my opinin the difference between the two having had them both for sometime now is maginal - if you want to use a computer go for the onkyo but the wadia just edges it for sound - the wadia has a built in dac to offer analogue out if needed (sorry that's wrong its just a pass through oops) although never tried it as feed mine directly into the mf dac

matengawhat:

the wadia has a built in dac to offer analogue out if needed

oops - not sure where that came from! just to stress no it doesn't have a dac it is just pass through

Thanks for the review, very useful.

Is  the confusion about the alleged internal Wadia DAC maybe due to the reclocking in the Wadia? A review at http://www.soundstage.com/digitaldomain/200902.html mentions the following:

"Of course, most iPod owners care more about the
quantity of music on their players than the quality of the files, so the standard 128
kilobit per second (kbps) data rate of Apple's standard AAC file format will be
presented to a 170iTransport far more often than should ever be permitted by law. These
files, once whole musical beings, are nothing more than a shadow of their former selves
when they enter the Wadia dock. Letting them out into the world wouldn't do much for
Wadia's reputation, so the company's engineers planted a little surprise inside
the 170iTransport: reclocking, which is applied to all incoming data regardless of file
type. Wadia's digital masters couldn't add
many features to the 170iTransport and still deliver it at an appealing price, so they
focused in on what really matters: sound quality. As mentioned, with lossless or WAV
(uncompressed) files, quality wouldn't be an issue, but AAC files might well be a
mess. Upsampling wouldn't make much sense with low-quality files, but reclocking
those files did. When the 170iTransport senses that it is receiving a compressed file, the
iPod's clock signal is discarded and the unit's internal circuitry inserts new
clock timing. The major benefit of this is what seems to be a considerable reduction in
jitter. Indeed, when listening to files ripped at AAC's default 128kbps, the
170iTransport sounded consistently better than the same file played off my music-server
laptop. Of course the 170' isn't magic and it couldn't make these files
sound as good as real high-quality files, but the improvement was impressive nonetheless
and would likely be good enough for casual listening or less discerning music lovers."

This could be the major difference between the Wadia and the Onkyo? The Onkyo states that it possess a "High-Precision Circuit Clock (ñ10 ppm) for Precise Digital Processing", but I assume this is not the same as what the Wadia does?

Can anybody comment on this. I would like to buy one but cannot decide...

Matengawhat, could you make a comparison between your Onkyo and Wadia for a highly compressed file (128kbps)?

Thanks 

not sure i can as the onkyo has no analogue output only digital so the only way to compare the two with a 128kbps would be to take the digital feed from both and run through my dac which i am pretty sure re clocks and would removes any jitter so in the end it should end up exactly the same

i hate 128kbps files they lose all definition to both bass and vocals and just sound wrong to me

oldntired:

Thank you for the feedback idc. I hadn't used my PC as a source as it doesn't have a separate digital output (integrated sound board?) but a suitable sound card might be the quick and cheap way way to test the theory as post Christmas the Onkyo won't slip into the budget just yet! 

I have only just noticed this post, apologies as I suspect it is too late. Your PC does have a digital output, any USB port outputs a digital signal, so you can connect to any DAC with a USB.

Sadly idc my dacmagic is older than you think (more '98 not '0 and only has BNC connections. C`est la vie!