Krell KID vs. Wadia i170.

I have both the krell kid and the wadia i170. My wadia i170 has been modded by steve at gns co. and it is hooked up to my wadia 521 dac gns mod also. I can tell you for a fact that the wadia i170 is better than my krell kid. You get what you put into the wadia i170 ie meaning it all depends on the dac you are using. I love my krell kid it a great unit, i have it hooked up to paradigm active 40v2. The jitter from the wadia can be lowered by using empirical audio new pace car 2. I plan on getting one in the next week to further better the sound from the wadia i170. The cost of pace car 2 is around 1,800 with all the opt. I think it great that we have a lot of options to choose from for making the ipod a good source.

As important as a DAC is in the chain thru the Wadia 170i, the coax cable election is also critical - I ended up spending more in this part than in the Wadia, but it paid for itself.

The custom coaxial cable that comes with the Wadia unit is crap, I tried at least a dozen from Audioquest to Kimber to SIltech, and found peace with an HT10 G5 Siltech. Using this combination (Wadia 170i-Siltech HT10 and Reimyo DAC) I do not miss my Reimyo CDP777 at all.

Hope this helps,

Has anyone heard any more on the Wadia 171i? Supposed to have shipped this summer. Heard Wadia was upgrading jitter and a few other internals to enhance digital output signal.

JCC

Unfortunately, Wadia couldn't hit an estimated ship date if their collective lives depended on it. Enjoy the holidays and worry about it in 2011.