Detroit meet at Wadia - Impressions

[elrod-tom]

I wanted to quickly get this thread going, though I'll only post a few impressions for starters.

As usual, our friends at Wadia couldn't have been more gracious. Thanks so much to John Schaefer and the rest of the good folks at Wadia for inviting us and making us feel so welcome.

Thanks also to member jefemeister, who did a great job organizing the meet.

Some quick impressions (much more later):

I always enjoy spending time with the Wadia equipment. The 302 is a VERY nice product, and IMHO priced very reasonably for what you get. It's one of the more natural-sounding players I've ever heard, with huge soundstage and loads of detail...all without harshness in the top end. This is in my experience often where the trade-off occurs. Wadia has found a third way. The 302 also has tight and resolved bass, and an airyness and separation that I did not find in my own system.

Of course, I always enjoy spending time in the Wadia listening room. I'll provide much more detail later, but all I can say is that after we finished I had a craving for a cigarette.

Ray Samuels had his B-52 balanced tube amp prototype there too, and the short version is WOW!! Nice product...I'm afraid to find out what it's going to cost (I know...sorry about my wallet).

That's all for now...thanks again to Wadia for a great day.

[gordolindsay]

Please, someone post impressions and pics.

I wish I could have made it!

[Todd R]

It was great to see old friends again, and to meet new ones too.
I even met the mighty Jude for the first time, live & in person.

I was so impressed by the Wadia factory, the attention to detail, amazing build quality, and the sound. By the end of the tour, I had to have one of their CD players, there was no question about it. John mentioned that they try to keep all their products upgradeable, pointing out that upgrades were even available for their first product.......... built 18 years ago!

I'm very very seriously considering becoming the West Michigan dealer for them.

As usual there was too much to hear & too much to talk about so I didn't spend as much time with the gear as I wanted but I got a few impressions down.

The new Grado GS1000.
Not your usual Grado at all. Very lightweight and comfortable since the pads were over your ears instead of on them. Light, airy, open highs, big soundstage and nice solid bass. I liked them, but not quite enough to buy them at the current price. They will show up used eventually, then I'll ponce on a set.

I did get to play with the new 302 CD player.
I did a very quick compare between it and my Cary 303/200. Both were good very good, but the 302 was cleaner and clearer sounding than the Cary which was darker and more bass heavy. The controls and operation of the 302 were smooth, precise and easy to use. The display is also nice and big so you can easily see if from across the room.

I also listened to an older player that will be replaced by the upcoming 581 (I think it was the 860?), which they told me is supposed to sound lot like the new 581.
Loved it!
It had that smooth detailed sound that can suck you in to those marathon listening sessions.

Ray Brought the new B-52.
No surprise here, it was awesome of course (did you have any doubt?)

Will post more later, tired from the long drive zzzzzzzzzzz

[pawlowski6132]

There was a Detroit meet?????????

[Lil_JV]

Originally Posted by pawlowski6132

There was a Detroit meet?????????

Does it matter? You're "Not in Detroit" anyways...

[markmaxx]

How about the new, Sure E 500's?

Wake up guys it is time to post.

[jude]

At least a couple of people who were there had long drives afterward, so they'll likely not post until today either.

Sorry I haven't posted yet, but I had plans right after the Meet. My son's awake now, so we're going to play for a while -- I'll post in just a little while.

[Todd R]

Originally Posted by markmaxx

How about the new, Sure E 500's?

Wake up guys it is time to post.

All right, all right I'm up! Can I have some coffee first

The E 500 was pretty good, nice bass. Finally someone made a well balanced IEM, not too bright, not too dark.
I did hear a small midrange coloration that I didn't care for so I still prefer my ETY ER4 over the 500 by a little bit.

Jude had some new earbuds from Sennheiser that had a little "arm" with a pad on it that was designed to hook into the top part of your ear's pinna to keep them in place. I had no problem putting them in, and I could shake my head vigorously without them falling out. On the other hand, Jason's ears were shaped differently and couldn't get them in. Definitely designed for the exercise crowd (I wouldn't know anything about that activity). The sound was far better than any earbud phone I have ever heard. No idea of the price.

My son was checking out some crazy green earbuds that Jude also brought. I didn't hear them, but he was really liking them. I'll see if he'll post his impressions later today.
Todd R

[elrod-tom]

OK...I'll be posting stuff as I go along today. It is, after all, Mother's Day.

My first impressions are not about the gear per se, but about the place that MAKES the gear. For my money, the most interesting part of this meet was the tour given to us by John Shaffer of Wadia.

We had an opportunity to take a walk through their engineering and production area, and it adds value to the equation without a doubt!! John took us through each step, from engineering to shipping/receiving to the assembly process for the boards to the final testing and burn-in. We learned some very interesting things about Wadia's technolongy - how their clocking works differently, that they can up-sample (that's probably the wrong phrase...someone feel free to correct me) up to 2.8 ghz. I observed at the time that 2.8 ghz was the same as an SACD...which seemed like a clever observation on my part until John mentioned that SACD is at one bit, and the Wadia was at 24-bits!!

The facility was very nicely organized, and spotlessly clean. Not unlike their products, they obviously paid a great deal of attention to this area...right down to the anti-static floor! Oh, and just taking a peak at all the different boards that go into a Wadia product makes it clear the extent to which these folks pay attention to every last detail.

After that, we went on a little tour of the listening room!!

The listening room, not unlike the production facility, was designed with great attention to detail. John explained how the room itself was assembled with three different layers in the walls, that the floor slab was free-floating and not connected to the rest of the facility, and how the measurements of the room itself were done with the optimal environment listening in mind. The listening room is outfitted with a Wadia 861 feeding the Series 9 Decoding Computer, powered by (I think I'm remembering this right) Pass monoblocks, all driving the Hales Transcendence Eight speakers...oh, and seating for 9 or so very happy people!!

I've had the opportunity to listen to similar set-ups at Wadia before, and it's always been wonderful. However, the last time was shortly after move-in, and the room was not fully outfitted with accoustic treatments. Well, it was this time.

We spun a couple of tracks...and wouldn't you know it, I was the only one who thought to bring his CD's in with me (). We heard the first three tracks from the new Neko Case CD, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood. This CD is IMHO recorded unusually well by todays standards, with lots of hollow-body guitar and cathedral-like resonance...making it an excellent CD with which to judge the degree to which the Wadia system reproduces with life-like realism. Well, the short answer is very well indeed. The reverberations from the hollow body guitar and Neko's voice literally made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

Next, two of my favorites: "Alone Together" from Chet Baker's excellent Chet hybrid SACD, and another favored Baker track, "Easy Living" from the Baker's Holiday hybrid SACD (it's a collection of Billie Holiday covers). The Wadia system filled the listening room with clean, clear, wonderfully analog sounding music that seemed more like a live performance than anything I've heard. I think the key is the way the treble is presented - no distortion from jitter...just clean and clear, like Chet was right there in the room with us. Oh, and presence...the speed at which the stand-up bass came at us really caused me to sit up and pay attention. I started to hear details that I didn't know were even in that CD, and other elements presented in a way to which I was unaccustomed...but in short, all very life-like and quite simply breathtaking. I commented (only half-jokingly) at the end of "Alone Together" that I had a craving for a cigarette...and I don't even smoke!!

More impressions later...

[RaYSaMueLsSoN]

Hey everybody, I just want to thank the guys at Wadia for having an awesome meet with some real good food lol. Hopefully we can do that again. I am uploading the pictures right now so i'll post them up soon. Once again thanks to the guys at Wadia for hosting an awesome meet.