Wadia 170i and Benchmark Dac1 - anyone try it?

You are not pouring gas on a fire, there is nothing wrong with sharing your experience. That said, something doesn't seem right. (I am not doubting your results, just questioning the why.) I question this based on the many ways I tested things myself and the experience of many others.

11-12-08: Teddy_bear
"Dave, maybe you are getting old :)"

Hah Teddy, I think you're half right, but I think that the reason my Wadia sounds so good with lossless is the reclocking and upsampling routines of my excellent DAC, which is also applied to CD. The Benchmark and Bel Canto are excellent DACs at their price points, but they are not at the very top echelon of performance.

There IS a message here and it's the old YMMV. The subject of this thread is Wadia with Benchmark. There's much evidence here that this combination will not be superior to a good stand alone CD player (I haven't tried to discover the range of CD players we're talking about here) and/or Lossless may not sound as good as WAV. I expanded the thread by throwing in my experience with my Playback Designs player/DAC and Brianmagrarcom threw in his experience with his PS Audio Digilink. We both had very positive experiences with Lossless via iPod.

The cause for the differences might be a number of things, including differences in reclocking and/or the presence of an upsampling routine, or not. I suspect that all the observations here are valid and accurate, demonstrating that different downstream equipment can yield different results with the same sources.

Hmm, I've got an old Digilink in a closet, I wonder...no, I'm too lazy. ;0

Dave

The Benchmark and Bel Canto are excellent DACs at their price points, but they are not at the very top echelon of performance.

The subject of this thread is Wadia with Benchmark. There's much evidence here that this combination will not be superior to a good stand alone CD player

I think the question was actually what transport to hook up to DAC1 and if there are any differences. The answer seems to be that DAC1 sound is independent of transport & cable & digital input provided the "bits" arriving at the DAC1 are the same (at least many people report this and it is what Benchmark vehemently claim).

Now what "sounds" better or best is, IMHO, a whole other can of worms, which includes the subjective preference of the listener. Certainly a different D to A converter and analog output stage of another high end CDP (removing DAC1 from circuit) is going to sound slightly different - just the same as different DACs will sound slightly different.

Subjective sound preference is hardly "evidence" in the same sense that test results made on the Benchmark DAC1 demonstrate it to be jitter immune and hence transport & digital cable independent (provided there is bit transparency). Note that DAC1 test results say nothing about subjective sound quality - the DAC1 while transport independent may sound terrible to some people. My advice would be to simply listen yourself and buy something more "top echelon" in that case.

Dave, I have an old Audio Alchemy DDSv3.0 right by my right hand :-D

The way I read his question is that he wants to use his iPod in home and car and he has a Benchmark and wonders if the Wadia will be a good iPod transport to interface with his DAC. He mentions CDPs, but his question and his followup clarification seem to be focused on iPod as a transport.

If that is indeed his question, then I know of no device superior to the Wadia for that purpose. I just bought my Wadia and searched for a similar interface that bypassed the iPod's DAC and could find none. (That may change soon). Given the lack of direct competition, I think that the Wadia is the best solution for using an iPod in a high end system.

Some of us attempted to validate that course of action by comparing the output of an iPod/Wadia/DAC trio to the source data played on excellent CDPs, finding it either vary close or, in my case, the same. My experience leads me to strongly endorse the Wadia for the IP's intended use. If he upgrades his DAC later the Wadia will yield further improvement. He seems to like his DAC and I doubt that he'll find something superior without spending a good bit more money.

Dave