[Bill Noble[_2_]]

"paperw8" wrote in message
...
i am considering purchasing a wadia 581 cd player and am interested in
reading of opinions on this unit.


I'll add my 2 cents to this- a few years back I did a whole bunch of
experimenting with various CD players. What I finally decided is that it's
all in the D/A, and if you get a good D/A you can use the world's cheapst
player or the most expensive and it doesn't matter. But, some D/As are
better than others. In my case, I settled on a unit by Mark Levison - at
the time, pretty much any "low power" box from ML cost $6000, and power amps
could be a LOT more. - anyway, with the ML D/A, no one (including the sales
person) could distinguish any transport from any other one. Nor could any
of us hear any difference in any digital interconnect with the good D/A.
With some other D/As both the transport and the interconnect made audible
differences.

Now, if you accept that the above is at least reasonably close to true, it
suggests that a good strategy to consider is to find one of these "good"
D/As, buy it, and then use whatever cheap transport has a user interface you
like. I have two transports, a single CD unit and a 300 CD changer wired to
the D/A. There is no audible difference, it's just that it is more
convenient to put individual CDs into the single CD player.

Note also that even at full price, it was cheaper to buy the D/A and a cheap
transport than to buy a "high end" transport.

so, I guess from this, you may wish to consider an alternative - that is if
good sound is your only criteria.

[Dave]

"Bill Noble" wrote in message
...
"paperw8" wrote in message
...
i am considering purchasing a wadia 581 cd player and am interested in
reading of opinions on this unit.


I'll add my 2 cents to this- a few years back I did a whole bunch of
experimenting with various CD players. What I finally decided is that
it's
all in the D/A, and if you get a good D/A you can use the world's cheapst
player or the most expensive and it doesn't matter. But, some D/As are
better than others. In my case, I settled on a unit by Mark Levison - at
the time, pretty much any "low power" box from ML cost $6000, and power
amps
could be a LOT more. - anyway, with the ML D/A, no one (including the
sales
person) could distinguish any transport from any other one. Nor could any
of us hear any difference in any digital interconnect with the good D/A.
With some other D/As both the transport and the interconnect made audible
differences.

Now, if you accept that the above is at least reasonably close to true, it
suggests that a good strategy to consider is to find one of these "good"
D/As, buy it, and then use whatever cheap transport has a user interface
you
like. I have two transports, a single CD unit and a 300 CD changer wired
to
the D/A. There is no audible difference, it's just that it is more
convenient to put individual CDs into the single CD player.

Note also that even at full price, it was cheaper to buy the D/A and a
cheap
transport than to buy a "high end" transport.

so, I guess from this, you may wish to consider an alternative - that is
if
good sound is your only criteria.


Yes, this is true. A CD player is a combination transport and DAC/audio
stage. What is the benefit to having a "high-end transport"? Longevity?
The DAC and downstream analog stage are all that matters. I run a JVC DVD
player as my CD source, using the digital out into an external DAC. It
sounds excellent, and if I need to spend an additional $50 every two or
three years (my unit is now 4 years old and still works fine) then so be it.
The Dac itself was ~$1,000 when new about 10 years ago and it still sounds
phenomenal... no moving parts, not much heat generated, I should get a lot
of life out of it.