With Wadia, pre-amp or no pre-amp

when you go direct are you folks using single ended or Balanced?

As an 850 owner, I agree with the posts by Jfrech and Ejlif above. Wadia just sounds more palpable and natural direct. Through a good preamp you get some extra dynamics, but lose some sense of "real instruments playing" (superb timbre from Wadia's DSP). I've had a number of preamps in my system to test this out (e.g. Pass X1, ARC LS25, Levinson 380S). The direct Wadia sounds even better after the Great Northern Sound mod (which I did). As for RCA v. XLR, I doubt it would make much difference unless your system is truely fully balanced throughout. As for the volume control issue, many people seem to really sweat over this or criticize it, but it is really simple to resolve given the internal switches which can adjust output voltage between 0.25V and 4.0V. You can always adjust such that the volume will stay above 80 for most recordings.

With most (possiblly all) their designs Wadia recommends balanced ics for the shortest signal path and best performance. I went from Stealth PGS (excellent RCA's) to a balanced pair of Nordost Quattro fils w/ a Wadia 21i feeding a Coda 11 amp. The balanced Quattro's get my vote. Wish I had a pair of balanced PGS to do a real bal vs. single ended test. Steve Huntley at Great Northern Sound is better informed than most on what works well with Wadia gear.

My system consists of a Wadia 860x CD player, a BAT VK500 amplifier, Martin-Logan reQuest speakers, Nordost Quattro Fil interconnects XLR and Nordost SPM Reference speaker cables. In addition, there is a PS Audio P300 feeding the Wadia, one PS Audio 20-amp high current outlet for the speakers and one PS Audio 20-amp high current outlet for the amp. I run the Wadia straight into the VK500, no preamp. I adjusted the output voltage to .5 volts using the internal DIP switches. I sold a BAT VK50SE pre-amp. Today, I consider pre-amps as sound polluting devices........

JSL,
Your response is scary as your experience mirrors my own.
I too am thinking of selling my 50se. It's been sitting on standby for 6 months now since I received my statement upgrade from GNS. I may wait till I get a new set of cables and upgrade to the new 51se before finalizing my decision.

Running the unit direct is so sweet now. I can't say that I miss the pre at all. If you enjoy detail and no veils to your music, running direct can be a beautiful thing. However, I didn't always enjoy the direct sound prior to my mods. The sound was often too transparent and edgy at higher volumes. Thats all gone now fortunately.