Pre-amp or cd direct to XA30.5 ?

Many tks. If direct.. was thinking Wadia or Esoteric. I'll see if these have this "bit strap" issue.. Many tks for your help.

modwright advised against direct for their oppo 105... for bit stream issue (ie. Loss in sound quality).

I think there is an ulterior motive for saying this, a standard Oppo 105 that has low output impedance would be fine driving into the XA30.5, but Oppo 105 with a modded tube output stage will be much higher in output impedance, and maybe have trouble driving into the low input impedance of the XA30.5

Cheers George

"02-20-14: Fsyme
advantages / disadvantages?"

You have to take it on a case by case basis. You can get great sound wither way. I used my Wadia's on Pass amps and was very happy with the results.

Also, I got together with a few friends and we tried to see if we could hear any loss in SQ at lower volumes. None of us could hear any difference at all. Wadia was the only brand we tried. Don't know if it will be true for all brands. One imporent thing to note is that Wadia players have different global gain settings that you can change using DIP switches. That way you can keep the volume as close to 99 as you can with just about any other components.

I had Mark Levinson No.39 a while back same setup, that's why Wadia did this also, so you could run it near full digital volume with the analogue gain selection so there was no risk of "bit Striping".
But to be honest the difference between full 16bit resolution and 14bit is not that huge, 14bit just sounds a little softened around the edges, which as I said is probably a good thing for dinner parties, or lift music.

Cheers George