Krell KID vs. Wadia i170.

I was surprised when I discovered that the Wadia was plastic.

I have the krell kid and the wadia i 170. They are really good however the wadia i 170 is better. MY wadia was sent to steve at GNS co for mods. The wadia bypasses the i pods dac and the krell kid does not. The wadia sound depends on your dac that you are using. I had mine hooked up to ensemble hi dac and the sound is great it blows the krell away as is should. I really dont use a cd transport anymore the future is in ipod transport and music servers. I am now using the MSB ilink transport to my dac. Its cost 2300 however its worth every penny i cant tell the the difference between my ensemble transport which cost 4 times as much as the MSB ilink. I take that back the MSB has better mid and highs to me. I would not spend mega bucks on cd transports you will just be wasting your money.

So neither of these actually contains a DAC?? as in, you still need to spend additional cash on a good DAC to get any real improved sound? bourns to this mide as well buy a DAC/Amp combo and save yourself 400 bux.

Good to hear , I just heard the I170 ran into a Wadia 581 using its DAC. It was good. The music was compressed but still was good. I may look into one !

Hello,
i own both and they are connected with Krell KPS 25 sc 24/96 cast II.
The Wadia 170 has Acoustic Zen digital cable to Krell digital in.
The Krell Kid has symmetric Siltech cables to Krell analog in.

The Krell Kid sounds definitely better, more analog, soundstage is bigger the vocals are much better.Krell has as much detail than thru Wadia 170.The Wadia 170 in comparison to Krell KID is more digital sounding.I use only WAV files on my I POD Classic 160 GB.