Analog is not better than digital. I’d have been committed if I’d said that a few years ago, but I’m no longer ashamed to admit that digital reproduction is better than analog reproduction. In order for me to make a statement like that, I had to be convinced on more than one level that digital is better, and I have. First, I considered convenience. CD’s are certainly more convenient than LP’s. They don’t require as much maintenance, take up less space, and can be listened to in the car. Next, I considered software availability. There is no debating this point – CDs are everywhere. I also considered the technologies themselves. Obviously, I’d rather hear my music without pops and ticks, so CDs win there. Also, because it’s digital, the chance of any analog-waveform distortion is none. And what about frequency response? No question, CDs win here as well. CDs have a frequency response of essentially 1hz all the way up to 22khz. At best, you are getting 17-18khz out of your turntable, and we all know they aren’t going all that low. Sure, there is an argument that, while they aren’t heard, the frequencies that are beyond the range of normal human hearing (called transients) add openness and "air" to the sound, which is true. But until we get sampling rates raised as a standard, neither format is really getting the job done here, though until recently, analog had the edge. However, companies like Wadia are now making CD players that sound more and more like turntables while obviously adhering to the limitations of a 44.1khz sampling rate.

The most important point on which I had to be convinced is sonics. If it doesn’t sound good, it doesn’t matter, period. What I mean about "sound good" is not the subjective aspect of sonics, rather the notion that any piece of source equipment should at least be able to faithfully reproduce the recorded material. ---BEGIN WARNING!-- Now I’ll have to ask any readers to forgive me. From here until the end of the next paragraph, I will be talking about my opinion of what good sound really means. If you just want to know about the 830, skip ahead. Here I go… Whether or not something has been faithfully reproduced is not debatable; either it has or it hasn’t. Whether or not something "sounds good" depends more than anything on an individual’s taste. I’m not making any revelations here. Asking if something sounds good is almost like asking someone if blue is better than green. It is with this point that self-proclaimed (and sometimes self-righteous) audiophiles have missed the mark. Listening to music is an emotional experience. Audio equipment is a tool used for the conveyance of music. Until audiophiles start to realize this, they will continue to be seen as arrogant elitists by the rest of us who listen to music simply to feel something. For this reason, I regard anyone who labels themselves an audiophile, and I am guilty of this myself, immediately suspect. Don’t let any audiophile tell you that they know better sound than you or that they can hear better than you. Run away from them as fast as you can! At what point does it stop being about the equipment and start being about the music?

That said, there are certain pieces of equipment that, in my opinion, convey the emotion of the music better than others, and the Wadia 830 is certainly one of them. But does your Radio Shack CD player deliver the emotion that you want from your music? If you said yes, great! You are one step closer to musical nirvana than most. You certainly aren’t getting the most accurate reproduction of the recorded material with the Radio Shack, but who cares as long as you are getting what YOU want out of it? I record and mix music for a living. People who do what I do have some of the most finely-tuned ears in the world, not because our ears are any better than yours, but because we spend years sitting behind a pair of speakers listening to, creating and analyzing music. I can pretty quickly tell if a particular piece of equipment is doing its job in terms of accurate reproduction, but believe me, there is no fun in that. It’s about as much fun as sitting in front of a test pattern all day. When I get jazzed is when a piece of equipment transcends the analytical and becomes emotional. In other words, it gets out of the way of the music. No, a piece of equipment in and of itself is not emotional, but if it allows you to get closer to your music, then it can almost be labeled as such. Therefore, when I refer to something as "sounding good", I mean to say that it already does the job of accurately reproducing music and has moved into the next level, of emotional delivery. Some high-end manufacturers, such as Krell and Levinson, do the reproduction thing extremely well, but that is where they stop. Frankly folks, it isn’t that difficult to do what they do, and the fact that they charge as much as they do for their product begs the question: "How smart are the so-called audiophiles really?" Wadia, along with companies like Simaudio, Rega and Rotel, take sound reproduction to the next level with flying colors and lower prices, and that’s where I get impressed. Anyway, sorry for the major digression, folks! --END WARNING!!---

The Wadia 830 is an awesome CD player. As Wadia’s entry-level unit, it is the least expensive in their lineup, but sounds better than any other one-box player out there, bar none. When I first plugged the unit in and pushed play, I was absolutely astonished at it’s remarkable detail and clarity. The bottom end is wide open and controlled, the mids are placed perfectly in the soundfield, and the top is transparent and open. It gets everything right without being too soft, as some high-end players tend to do. After about 10 days of warm-up and break-in, it got even better. When listening to my own mixes, they sound better than I remember them sounding in the studio, and that says a lot!

The 830 is a fully balanced design with a built-in digital volume control. It also has a pair of single-ended RCA outputs and a BNC S/PDIF digital I/O. A nice feature of the 830 is that both the balanced XLR outputs and the RCA outputs are available simultaneously. Where the 830 truly shines is when it is plugged directly into an amplifier, bypassing any pre-amplification. I have about as many amplifiers as I do socks, both balanced and single-ended, and the 830’s high output voltage ensures that it will have no problem providing full gain to even the most hungry amplifiers. The single-ended outputs sound great, as was evidenced in my system that incorporates Vandersteen 2Ci’s powered by an NAD 2600A amplifier that was fed from the Wadia by Alpha Core’s Goertz MI interconnects. The balanced outputs, however are nothing short of extraordinary. Going directly from the 830 with a pair of Monster M-series XLR interconnects to my Aragon 8008BB amplifier, which was set up on a pair of Merlin TSM-M’s and the aforementioned Vandersteens, proved to be the most accurate reproduction I have heard outside of the studio. I absolutely love not having to use a preamplifier! And because Wadia’s volume control is done in the digital domain, it maintains it’s output voltage at all listening levels, thus providing the highest possible resolution at all times. This is as good as it gets, in my opinion.

The Wadia 830 is essentially future-proof. With the current format wars going on between SACD, HDCD, DVD-V and DVD-A, I would certainly be cautious of buying any source equipment until a true leader has emerged, especially when considering the near-$3000 price tag of the 830. What Wadia has done to alleviate some fears is provide a way of accessing their excellent 24/96 DACs via a digital input on the back (at extra cost). While this won’t help with the decoding of multi-channel formats, it will at least ensure that any future changes in sampling rates as they apply to stereo formats will be able to be handled by the 830. And one simple fact remains: CD’s aren’t going anywhere for awhile.

On the negative side, my comments are minimal. The remote is garbage, as I mention in the next paragraph. The buttons on the front of the unit are too small, and the display is extremely difficult to read from more than a few feet away. Also, I had a couple of comments to make about the unit, so I emailed Wadia's customer service a few times, but never got a reply. All things considered, I'll deal with these minor issues because the sound quality is unparalleled.

A word of advice: If you can, buy the optional remote that was made for the 860. It’ll cost you an extra $300, but it’s well worth it. The remote that comes with the 830, while fully functional, is made of cheap plastic and hardly seems like it should even have the Wadia logo on it. The 860 remote is made of a very heavy metal and will give your arm a workout, but is much more closely related to the quality of the 830.

Another word of advice: I said this earlier, but if you can at all get away with it, bypass your preamplifier when listening to the 830. If you can afford it, take it one step further and get a fully-balanced amplifier. I like models from Aragon and Simaudio best. The 830 was designed to be run this way, and you absolutely will get the most out of the unit if you can try one or both of these suggestions.

If you agree with me that there is more to listening to music than just accurate reproduction, give the Wadia 830 a listen. Close your eyes, push out all thoughts but the music, forget about equipment for a minute and just listen. I’m sure you’ll be as impressed as I was.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 3000