Wadia 151 PowerDAC: One of those WTF moments

[Diapason]

I borrowed a Wadia 151 PowerDAC from Cloney yesterday. It's a tiny little thing that packages up a DAC and a 25-ish watt Class D amp with a Wadia badge on the front, and my intention is to use it in a small and simple system beside the TV in the kitchen: plug in my NUC, some speakers, Bob's your uncle.

Not actually having any speakers in the kitchen currently, I decided to see how it would fare in the main system. I took the USB cable from my printer, plugged my entirely-not-modified-for-sonic-excellence laptop into the USB input and connected the Kharmas. I used XBMC along with its nice interface of album art, etc, to play some FLAC files.

You know where this is going so I won't labour the point, but I seriously spent the rest of the evening wondering why the hell we spend so much money on exotica. Was it as good as the Wadia CDP/Graaf valves combo? In many ways yes, in many ways no, in some ways better. All told, if you'd stuck it in a shiny box and told me it was 10k I wouldn't have disbelieved you at all. Sure, it lacked a bit of air and a little midrange valvey magic, images were a little smaller, but the bass was better and more solid, and the whole sound was so balanced you'd be hard pushed to criticise it. Nothing jumped out at me, nothing sounded excessively anything, it was all just good and solid and accomplished, and I listened for quite some time. The spec says 25w but I don't believe that -- I had no problems with power at any point.

I'm a bit rattled to be honest, and starting to doubt my ears and my sanity. Admittedly I didn't listen to any classical because I haven't ripped any classical discs yet, so maybe I'll hear all its deficiencies in due course. For now, though, I'm dead impressed.

[nige2000]

Oh dear
Don't look into the rabbit hole
Run..... run.....

[Diapason]

Don't worry, the whole point here is to keep it simple. You remember what that is, dontcha Nige?? :)

[nige2000]

What you mean
My audio system is simple
Simple to turn on
Simple to use
Simple Good sound
It's the 18 mts of spare time testing and building that was the complication
Anyway in pc audio their are many many ways to get increase in sq with little or no cost over just using z laptop :)

[Diapason]

But here's the thing: I don't believe these differences are all that meaningful. That's the point of this thread, really. The more I hear the more I think non-speaker components sound more similar than different. Maybe I'm becoming the personification of the wam... Shudder!

[Fran]

Intervention! Quick!

[nige2000]

But here's the thing: I don't believe these differences are all that meaningful. That's the point of this thread, really. The more I hear the more I think non-speaker components sound more similar than different. Maybe I'm becoming the personification of the wam... Shudder!

well i was thinking about that statement a while
coz i wasn't sure how to reply to the "non speaker components sound similar" and " I don't believe these differences are all that meaningful" thing

well i suppose if it doesn't matter,
all sounds more or less the same
you could downgrade without sq loss :)

anyway said it before if disbelievers want to come down hear my system id be happy to host
im sure i could rig up some test comparisons

though this is probably a little sidetracked from the Wadia 151 not sounding have bad thread

[Diapason]

Haha, maybe I'm just losing the plot -- not getting enough sleep!

[nige2000]

Haha, maybe I'm just losing the plot -- not getting enough sleep!

[tony]

Troll alert has a foreign agent compromised Simon's logon?
Down with this sort of thing