Wadia with or without a preamp ?

I recently bought a Wadia 270/27ix to "upgrade" from my Sonic Frontiers T3/P3 run through a BAT VK-50SE. Having a baby in the house meant huge variations on the volume at which I listen, depending whether the baby was in the room or in another part of the house. At low volumes, the Wadia was terrible sounding so I sold the Wadia stuff and now realize how happy I am with my SF front end. If you always listen at the same level, a properly adjusted Wadia sounds unbeliveble direct. If you turn it down for conversation or other reasons, better have a preamp in there. However, that said, Wadia does upsample so that bits are not lost if you are not playing full tilt. This only becomes an issue when you have VERY discrepant listneing levels.

I run a Wadia 860x direct to tube amps with Dunlavy speakers. I have not really tried a preamp much with the Wadia. I did try an Adacom GFP 750, and I liked it better with the Wadia direct. In my system the Wadia is far from bright, I would even say that it leans toward the laid back side of things. I don't really notice that the volume setting affects audio quality either. I don't usually ever play with it less than 50. If you have a preamp try it before you sell it. It seems like the guys who think that Wadia direct is bad either have solid state amps and a tube preamp or a big dollar preamp.

Well my turn. I had a 850 direct into a Bat vk200. Great. Then bought a vk50se preamp. Much better. Not cost effective, but nothing is in the hobby!

I have run my Wadia 830 direct and I have found the music to sound thin. Disks sound better, in my opinion, when run through a decent additional stage in my system which is based on a tube preamplifier and a tube amplifier. While I am sure that theoretically I am sacraficing detail, I feel that I am gaining musicality.

I was afraid of what I would hear when I hooked my 861 directly to a Levinson amp because of the large investment made in a great tube preamp. Hooked up directly through Transparent Ultra balanced cables it has great transparency and depth but it lacks warmth. The digital volume works great and didn't seem to lose anything when kept at 80% or more. I lost very little if any image quality but gained musicality when I ran it through a preamp. Vocals and pianos gained warmth and the base seemed better as well. Experiment to see what works best for you.