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?
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?