11-30-10: Bar81
Unfortunately Paperw8, what you fail to realize is that the concept is quite simple. The Wadia is trying to do two jobs - that of a CD player and that of a preamplifier. It should come as no surprise that a top flight dedicated preamplifier, such as the Ayre KX-R, which is focused on a singular task, will outperform the all-in-one digital preamplifier in the Wadia.
you are comparing apples and oranges because, as i explained, the wadia preampliifer operates in the digital domain while the ayre preamplifier operates in the analog domain. so your statement is incorrect that the wadia is doing *two* things - in reality, the wadia does *one* thing: digital signal processing. since the wadia performs preamplification in the digital domain, that constitutes part of "digital signal processing" which is what the unit does anyway. thus, there is no need for separate "fixed" and "variable" outputs as i previously stated.
11-30-10: Bar81
Accordingly, you actually are entering into your analysis backwards since your basic assumption, i.e., that the Wadia produces an "uncolored" presentation, is incorrect. Rather, the Wadia is coloring the sound via the suboptimal volume control in its digital preamplifier.
i will accept your statement that the wadia colors the signal. in fact, wadia does something called "resolution enhancement". ostensibly, the purpose of resolution enhancement is to reduce DAC errors by randomly augmenting the signal. but notwithstanding the rationale, resolution enhancement is a coloration of the signal (although wadia's claim is that in the end you get a "truer" analog signal). however, that a wadia-colored signal is passed to the preamplifier so net net result that you get is a wadia-colored *plus* preamplifier-colored signal. it is then up to the individual to decide which sounds good to him. it's just that it is my preference to also understand how stuff works because that allows me to get a sense of which explanations make sense and which ones don't.
11-30-10: Bar81
With regard to your argument that there is no way to turn off the digital preamplifier in the Wadia; while that is technically accurate, even Wadia itself admits that the preamplifier portion of their players do the least harm to the signal as you go higher up in the volume range. Accordingly, 100 volume (i.e., using a preamplifier) must impose the least harm to the signal as it exits the Wadia.
i don't know how much you know about digital signal processing, but i explained all of this in one of my previous posts - it's the part where i talked about the 16-bits resolution and 21-bits resolution stuff. if you do understand this stuff, then i would suggest that you read the wadia white papers; if you don't, then those papers may be a bit hard to follow; even though i think that wadia tries their best to explain technical material in understandable terms.