I have a similar question, but with the discussion of the various Oade mods (about which I know almost nothing), I'll ask it my way and hope it's not a duplicate.
Back before I got my Nomad JB3, I used to use a Sharp MD-MT15S minidisc recorder. After getting the JB3, I stopped using it, and figured that I'd eventually get around to processing the MDs I had accumulated but not transferred; a while back, I started through the stack of them, and found that the MD-MT15S was toast, so I gave up.
I just got my hands on another MD-MT15S, both to process the MDs, and to serve as a backup (in case the JB3 has problems) or alternate recorder (in situations where I have access to another source, like a soundboard).
For processing the accumulated MDs, I'm wondering whether it'd be better to run the line-out of the MD-MT15S into the back-panel RCA ins of the UA-5, then the optical out of the UA-5 to my JB3 (and then from the JB3 to the PC over SB1394 after the transfer is done), or just run the line-out of the MD-MT15S into the line-in of my (Creative Soundblaster Audigy) sound card.
As far as I know my UA-5 has only the Oade "digi-mod," not the W+ or T+ or other mods. I'm thinking that the A>D conversion on the UA-5 will be better than what the Soundblaster provides, but I'm not sure. On the other hand, it looks like the RCA ins on the UA-5 are controlled by only a single level knob, which means I won't be able to "tweak" the left/right balance during the transfer, which I can do if I go right into the sound card (some of the MDs were done with mics that were a little mismatched); on the other other hand, I suppose I could do the transfer using MD-MT15S > UA-5 > JB3, then figure out how to balance the channels using Audacity, which would be a useful skill to have.
Any info or tips would be appreciated. Thanks!
Aloha,
Brad