If your system has only one source, however, there's no question about the musical advantages of Wadia's approach. In addition, this simple approach eliminates the cost of a preamplifier and a pair of interconnects. The 850 is a large, squarish back box weighing in at a whopping forty-two pounds. Balanced and unbalanced outputs are provided. A front-panel display shows the track number, time, etc., and the 850's output volume is indicated by numbers from 0 to 99.
Volume is adjustable from either the front panel or remote control.
If you drive a power amplifier directly from the 850, you must set the 850's analog gain to match you system by selecting one or more tiny switches inside the unit. If low numbers are displayed, you're not realizing the musical performance the 850 is capable of. I enjoyed the 850's functionality, remote control, ergonomics, and overall feel. In fact, the company was founded to make digital decoding products using the unique DigiMaster filter algorithm. Wadia also employs a trick to increase the effective oversampling rate.