Oppo Vs Esoteric

Oppo makes a state of the art blu ray player. It makes an above average CD player that doubles as a blu ray player.  All for a little over a grand.  That's great value. However, I put it up against an older Bryston player and it lost, up against the parsasound cd 1 not even close. Luxman d06 not close. Ayon cd2 not close. Solutions 540. Not in the same building! 

lancelock . and of course anyone that wants to read ...  got the Modwright Oppo205 back... only had it for a few days / 8-9 albums of listening...  still breaking this thing in... not good at giving out a review but the first thing is the digital sound is much less if at all.... not sure if it has more detail but one time I was up doing something while listening and there was this one time this part of this song i know well where it made me turn my head in amazement or curiosity (lack for a better word).... this light guitar playing in the background seemed more pronounced...  I didn't remember it this way.. I wish I can listen to that song again with out the mod and compare... bass seems better than I remember too... anyway glad I did it... I don't know how you feed your Oppo music... i did some cd but mostly downloads sent via DLNA... sound is way more hi-rez with DLNA... ha ... you should try it... no software stepping on it (like USB does)...   anyway i'd like to compare 24/192 music thru my Oppo to what the Luxman/Esoteric 16/44.1 offers ...  by the way, i'm ordering some new tubes tomorrow from Upscale that supposed to be better sounding than what came with the mod for $40 each...  he says its awesome : ).....   hope this helps

Agreed.  I have both and the Esoteric is so much better.  OPPO is very good as a universal player (awesome on video) but it is a "digital" player with that distinct character.  The Esoteric is designed to deliver Cd's and SACD's with a wonderful "analog" character, which it does in spades.

I think the Esoteric should sound much better than the stock Oppo. The real test would be between the Modwright Oppo and the Esoteric. This would be a closer competition in sound and price.

@gdhal 
Thanks for the heads up - though I will state my -205 was "absolutely" set as 'Brick Wall' as default when I set it up. At the time (quite a few months ago) there was nothing on the 'net about filters, filter setups, and any reviews on them. Since then I've seen some tips on what people have liked. After you post I went back and did some more critical listening and landed on a 'slow somethin-or-other' filter. Seemed smoother over time - I found nothing was super-drastic sounding and took quite a few days of heavy rotation to develop a preference. Peace, and thanks....