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Wadia 302 Direct to amp or via pre-amp

Wadia recommends that my 302 sounds best when connect to the amp and further recommends that its output be adjusted so that on its output scale of 1 to 100 it output should be in the top third of its range (67 or higher) and if it so regularily fall lower than 50 you should increase the level of its varible output control.

Wadia go on to recommend that when connected to a pre-amp you should run the metered out put level at 99(max) for best performance.

What I can understand, if 99 is the best when using a pre-amp, wouldn't 67+ be a degredation direct into an amp?

If I wanted to do an A/B comparison and assuming that my CDP's meter said 75 wouldn't I get a truer comparison of the quality of the sound by making it the same when I processed it thru a pre-amp.

I'm having a hard time understanding Wadia's position on this. Help......
newbee

Showing 1 response by newbee

newbee OP
4,751 posts
 
Nsgarch, What I don't understand is, assuming for the sake of discussion and clarification, I had a totally neutral pre-amp wouldn't the sound of the 302 be better with its volume control out of the way (or just wide open, perhaps?) than direct into the amp with a substantial reduction in signal strength? Or are they saying that the volume attenuator on any pre-amp is more detrimental to the sound than the attenuator used in the 302? To my way of thinking IF the quality of the pre-amp attenuator was SOTA then you could run the 302 at, say 67 and still get the same quality signal at the amp. I want to maximize the benefits of the Wadia, but I have other sources to consider and I'd prefer not to have to get a seperate amp for the Wadia. BTW, FWIW, I now have it directly connected to an amp and it sounds quite nice, in fact much better than I anticipated when I bought it! :-)

Thanks for your comments.
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