CompetentAccident
New Head-Fier
It looks like they have an analog, wired input and a digital, wireless input. So I’d assume the same thing you do, the question is, do you do anything that requires their internal DSP? Room correction is critical for me, so I’d certainly go the wireless route if the analog path would bypass that.
If you run wired XLR from a DAC/preamp to Buchardt A500 / A10s it will bypass the room correction as that is processed by the Platin hub prior to the WISA wireless transmission to the speakers. (With XLR to the upcoming Buchardt Sub 10 subwoofer I believe you'll be able to use the sub to do the room correction rather than the Platin hub, then XLR out from the sub to the speakers.)I guess DSP can only be applied to the digital signal. It would suck to lose the room correction. Maybe the digital signal is our best bet.
It's not possible to bypass the internal DAC in the A500 / A10s using the XLR inputs as it's the speakers' DSP that applies the master tunings. To me there is an audible difference when using a preamp vs wireless with the Platin hub. FWIW several reviewers have noticed this too. One hypothesis would be that the ADC>DAC conversion applied to the XLR input is transparent enough to retain some of the differences imparted by the upstream components. I hope to give this a real test with the Wandla GSE spatial enhancement mode for speakers – assuming this makes a reasonably substantial difference to the sound in general, I'm hoping that it's still pretty obvious (and still sounds good!) having gone through the ADC step in the A500s.