Oppo UDP - 205

@a25105 , I wished I could comment on the stock 205 but mine was sent direct to modding. The new ESS 9038 DAC chip is supposed to be superior to the older 9018 and from my experience having a modded 105, there is quite a difference. More analog like to me. 

If im ranking my DS DAC a perfect 10 then I would rank the modded 205 a 9. Ozzy also has very good points about the mods and I was lucky to get mine early enough to get a considerable discount.

@a25105, the UDP-205 sounds phenomenal. Trust me, and the scores of others on the AVS forum owners thread.

That said, I do take delight in knowing that while my system already sounds great (Oppo UDP-205 >> Musical Fidelity M6si >> Golden Ear Triton Reference), I can at least believe/hope (never know until you get there yourself) that it should only get better with an outboard DAC. What that DAC will be remains to be seen, and at such time I'll use the Oppo as transport.

By the way, there are six usable and one diagnostic digital filters that one can choose from. I've found the default Mini Phase Fast is best. Point though is the sound can be tweaked. XLR and RCA are the same, with the exception that XLR is +6db hotter.

I bought Oppo Sonica DAC couple months ago and as long as I use preamp and not the volume control of the DAC, it sounds very fine. Software is also very easy to use. I use Cat8 Ethernet cable into the DAC and that improved the performance by a magnitude.
i don't have 205 to compare.

Thx gdhal and giri!  I am looking forward to receive my Oppo 205 on Tuesday.

a25105,
lancelock is probably right about the Modwright mod improving the sound quality of the 205. But if you add the cost of the mod to the cost of the player, it is getting close to the PS Direct Stream territory.

If the PS Dac is a 10 then the 205 in stock form would be about a 6. 

I didn't buy the Oppo 205 for 2 channel listening since I already owned the PS Audio Dac. I bought it to play 4K movies and to record the Hi-Rez audio from Blu ray concerts to my external hard drive

ozzy