Wadia 302 CD Player- Into power amp directly ?

I run my Wadia thru my tube pre as well. Tried it both ways - I lived w/ each (thru pre & direct) for several weeks before switching back & forth. For me, thru pre is much better.

I agree with Lousyreeds1 in that digital volume control takes bits away & has the tendency to affect sound quality. However, here is some math on this: Wadia says that the 861 DAC bit length is 21 bits. They provide 50dB digital volume control over 100 steps. If each DAC bit is 6dB then 50dB volume control is little over 6 bits. So, yes, when you are at 0 on the volume control, you have 15 bits of music but you cannot hear anything at 0 volume! Every 12 volume control steps down from 100 is 1 LSB (of the 21 bits) lopped off. So, what one should do is get inside (for the 861) or on the back-panel or whatever the case might be & set the DIP switches correctly so that one is listening to the Wadia digital volume control around 85 or 88 or 90. One will lose little more than or little less than 1 LSB. There's only 16 bits of real music coming off a CD. When Wadia upsamples, it's not creating any new info rather extrapolating using their DigiMaster algorithm (if you use Algo A setting). If one loses the LSB of that, I'm willing to bet that there is no significant loss in the music quality.
I think that understanding how far down one can go from 100 on the dig. vol. control is better than simply rejecting a CD player out-right just because it has digital volume control, n'est pa?

Bombaywalla explained it better than i ever could have. i have had it explained to me a couple of times and as Bombaywalla said, it's the upsampled bits that are used for volume control, so it doesn't for the top part of the volume range, affect sound quality. to be honest it's a hell of a lot better than sticking a pot in the signal path!

Many high end pre-amps due not employ a potentiometer as a volume control. Some use a high quality resistor ladder instead. So comaprisons have to be a little more detailed.

Everytime I've heard a comparison between a Wadia (or any other cd player w/volume control) direct to amp vs. preamp, I have strongly preferred using the preamp.

For what's worth, I'm using a 301 with a tube VTL 5.5 pre and a Plinius 102 power amp. And to my ears that's the best option. Í tried the "direct" option, and the sound lost some of its weight, soundstaging was flatter and became a little brighter. A lot of it may depend on your preamp. And if your power amp prefers direct feeds. Peter Thompson, from Plinius, says his amps don't like direct feeds...and he's right.