Best way to output hi res files to DAC?

Larrybou,

The Marantz does have a coaxial digital output for connection to the digital input of your Wadia amp, bypassing its own internal dac. So the Marantz can output to any external dac of choice.

The Marantz also has analog outputs direct to your amp. You can compare the sound quality of the digital output(using the Wadia's dac) to the analog outputs(using the Marantz's internal dac). As reported in another thread, I have found that for hi-rez files, the latter is better in my set-up. Your personal experience with the Wadia amp may differ.

Happy listening.

Very interesting. Unfortunately one quirk of the Wadia is that all the inputs (analog or digital) are up sampled through the DAC. Fortunately the DAC is very natural and organic sounding. Typically though the digital input sounds better than analog to me.

It doesn't uprez to DSD but does accept DSD and DSDX2 (or whatever it is) natively. Have you done much more with it than just play hi rez files through a flash card? Have you tried loading music on the internal hard drive? Any quirks so far?

Larrybou,
I ma curious as to why the Wadia would upsample analog input signals too. It is always better to input digital signals for d-a coversion without another a-d coversion step. Maybe I am missing something here.
I have also tried dsd and double dsd files and they sound great. The Marantz does not have an internal hard drive, so you need to get your own external drives.
Hope this helps.

No idea why Wadia also runs the analog through the internal DAC. But it sounds quite good and natural in any case. They jammed lots of good technology into a small unit - and it works very well.

Aurender