Wadia 861 or keep Electrocompaniet mk2

I'm with the Swamp. Why don't you just try it? I demo'd a Wadia directly into my Aleph 2s, and STRONGLY preferred my current EMC-1 MkII SE through my Aleph P. But that could have as much to do with proper impedence-matching with the Alephs as my preference for the less-white, analoguey sound of the EMC-1....Note that I also run VA Parsifal Encores. If your Fidelios seem a bit lightweight in bass response because of the forced-rear-firing woofers in your room then you might prefer the VERY bif bass performance of the EMC-1 through the pre as well. Be careful if using just the Wadia alone if it can't drive the amp enough to push those backwards 7 inchers....
Happiest Holidays to all!

The exerpts from Wadia's site really dont have any true merit agreed, but there are noticeable improvements over the older 860x. I just brought it up due to the fact that the DAC board was redesigned and now incorperates 0 global feedback cleaning up the signal.

If you are concerned about colorations introduced by your preamp, you might want to consider a good passive preamp such as a transformer or autoformer-based unit, or perhaps a very neutral active preamp without gain (e.g. Placette). These are discussed in Audiogon forums. BTW, internal switches in Wadia allow for reduction of its output voltage such that you can nearly always stay within a "low digital attenuation" range for your system.

No offense, and surprised no one has mentioned it--a bigger upgrade would be the 1300 upgrade to 51SE status

I have the 31SE, and feel it outperforms the 50SE (which i also borrowed).

Cheers,

KeithR

Interesting thread, as I'm going through a similar hand-wringing exercise now, owning a Wadia 830. Subaruguru - did you mean to say the EC has big bass? Also, which Wadia did you try out? Thanks