With Wadia, pre-amp or no pre-amp

I own a Wadia 301 and used to own an 850. I've run them with and without preamps and concluded that CD direct will give more detail and subtle textures, but you will lose a little soundstage.

Whether the soundstage of the Wadias is more accurate or not, it is definitely somewhat more centered (narrower) than the preamps. My personal preference is toward the detail, especially since I listen mostly to acoustic music, so I've opted to run CD direct. The other posters are correct in that the Wadia digital volume control needs to be above 70-75 to really come alive (the owners manual clearly states this). My philosophy is to use the money saved on the extra interconnect and component to buy better cables and power conditioning/generating.

Jla, I've recently done extensive tests with my Wadia 301 against my buddy's Wadia 860-X. Also, we both previously owned 850's before buying our current Wadias.

My 301 took a very long time to break in. We did the first comparison test at about 40 hours on the 301, and it was disappointing. We did the second test at about 140 hours and it was a different story. We both felt the 301 is better than the Wadia 850 in general. I won't go into specifics, because we didn't have it available to A/B.

When we first compared the 301 to the 860-X, the 860-X had more weight and a more sophisticated sound (less digital sounding). But after the 301 was fully broken in, the two players were very close, and the slight glare I'd heard earlier in the 301 was gone. I still preferred the 860-X by the smallest margin, but my buddy thought they were really too close to say one was clearly better than the other, just slightly different. To be that close is quite an achievment for the new 301 at $3650, because the 860-X is no slouch even though it's now been superceded byt the 861. I believe the various new technologies on the 301 have substantially reduced the gap between the models, and eclipsed the performance of the older 850 in the process.

I should add that both players were evaluated using PS Audio Mini Lab Cables and a Power Wedge. They were running CD direct into a Cary V-12 amp, Soliloquy 6.3 speakers, AQ Anaconda interconnects and Stealth speaker cables (model unknown).