Wadia Experience At CMY.

James making a product pitch to us.

On Thursday afternoon, CMY hosted most of us audio scribes and hardcore Wadia supporters to meet the company's esteemed VP Of International Sales, James Shannon.


Another Wadia, Jeff Rowland and Dynaudio demo system.

James was here to promote and re-establish Wadia's brand commitment in support of CMY Audio & Visual and Malaysian customers. He also gave us an up date of Wadia's future projects and a glimpse of future in the form of music in digital format.
Some of the familiar faces in the crowd.

A full range of Wadia digital equipment was on demo including the well received model 381i CD player, the 170i Transport and the top of the range 9 series digital separates supported by a model 581 CD transport. The much anticipated and exciting product in the form of the Wadia 151 PowerDAC was still in the process of customs clearance unfortunately.


The main demo rig.

James was visibly excited when he spoke about the Wadia 151 PowerDAC, which is the ideal partner to the 171i Transport. Dressed in the same matching style casing, (so one can stack or rack em' and look cool too!) the Wadia 151 PowerDAC is a digital to analog converter, digital input selector, volume control and 50W per channel stereo power amp all in one box. We hope to be able to take the Wadia 171i Transport and 151 PowerDAC for a spin soon. By the way, the good news is, this Wadia pair is relatively affordable too, but price is yet to be confirmed.

We were then treated to a selection of musical demo played back by the top of the range 9 series digital separates with suitably impressive top range Jeff Rowland electronics and Dynaudio C2 speakers. A few Apple loss less format tracks were also played back using an iPod.
The naked Wadia 381i CD player. Note the transport which is co developed by Wadia and Stream Unlimited(a Swiss based company that specialises in optics), dual power supplies on the right and the output board on the left with adjustable red dip switches to set output voltage should one need to run the Wadia straight in to the power amp.

The secret of the Wadia 381's good sound was also revealed by removing the cover of a unit, with James pointing out the design cues and technical aspects that enchances the performance.

As usual, I took some time to ask James a few questions that might be of interest to you. Stay tune for my 10Qs posting coming soon.