Wadia 170i Ipod Dock Vs Onkyo ND S1 Ipod Dock


I had both the Wadia 170i Ipod dock and the Onky ND-S1 Ipod Docks which both take pure quality digital sound directly off the Ipod/Itouch and bypass poorer sounding analog output.

I found that I didn't like the lack of an on light with the Wadia and the way it seemed to stop working with even a slight transient variation in current such as caused by changing the output downstream on my preamp, etc.

I found that the Onkyo sounds every bit as good and has an on light and a superior remote, and all of this for about half the price.

The Onkyo is hard to find but can be imported from Japan as it is not yet marketed in the US yet. The power supply that comes with it works perfectly with out USA 110-120 60Hz current.
128x128plangco
just had an opportunity to demo a friends 3 week old NDS1. have had an 170i for some time now and really enjoy it. chose a digital cable after trying a few and even upgraded the oem pc ( to audioquest ngr's). think i have my 170i performing as good as it's going to get *for me*, in my system.

spent about 2 days trying to declare a winner here, but couldn't. they both sounded identical to me. without any tweeking and right out of the box, the NDS1 matched the performance of my slightly tweeked 170i. given it's price, the NDS1 seems to be a slam a dunk imho. if my 170i takes a crap anytime soon, the Onkyo looks to be a great replacement option.

am planning on setting up a server based system someday, so neither doc will be a keeper for me. just something inexpensive to get me over the technology hump i see coming in server music systems and interfaces. ps audio (and others) have some very interesting things in the pipeline. hoping the doc can keep me going until then.

BTW...i also compared the NDS1 to my transport and just like the wadia, it was beaten very handily. these doc's sound good (way better then traditional docs that don't bypass the ipods dac), but they're still a notch below a good transport/dac setup imho.

cheers
Lev
have been using lossless Mark.

no doubt it's a Apple licensing agreement that's holding the NDS1 out of certain markets. more coin for Apple with two companies paying for exclusive rights. doubt they're long term deals so like everything else in digital audio, expect to see some changes soon.
I just purchased the Peachtree Nova and the Onkyo ND-S1 iPod dock, I can't wait to get them, I found a black ND-S1 on eBay!
I'll post my feedback ASAP!