Oppo as transport

981HD. Bought it new from oppodigital.com Website.

I want to add, there are more things I do not like about the oppo. None of which take away from sound/picture, but troublesome none the less. Why not have a disable option in the menu for the volume control on the remote. Also why include those horrible sound effect modes and buttons on the remote? All this can lead to accidently pushing one of those buttons and hearing aweful sound. They are useless, and I cant believe there isnt a way to disable them if you arent going to use them, its to easy to press one of those buttons on accident. I also didnt like the delay selection process. You dont have feet, you have inches, and its you input the difference in inches from the main speakers-lame!

Goin back and forth between my Anthem avm 30's DAC's and the the oppo's with direct mode, its almost like anthem built the oppo.For the first time Ive came across, switching back and forth between the two pieces lead to both sounding so closely the same, I couldnt consistantly tell which was which in a blind test with my wife changing inputs at will.Something I have never not been able to do in the past. The oppo was slightly preffered in the end I guess, but just ever so slighly with 2 channel. Thats really saying alot. Is Anthem's 2 channel the very best out there? Maybe not, but its very very good! And to get the same sound out of a $225 player is crazy! Im going to order a ps audio $49 power cord for it, and also buy some preffered RCA interconnects(I never use rca anymore and only had some rca mit terminators laying around to use) and see what happens.

Ive found some good bargains lately with component sources.

-PS3 BLU RAY/upconversion
-OPPO 981hd cd/dvd/dvd audio/sacd

Sthomas,
The most annoying thing about the oppo is the Autoplay function on the unit, even if you turn it off the encoding on like CD's and DVD's still make it play as soon as you close the drawer, add that to the feature's gone bad section.. but for

The 981 is only about 75% of the audio performance of the 980 the 980 was built with audio in mind, the 981 was not, so look into that the info is available...

Audphile: I've had the Pioneer PD-65 and Sony ES 555 changer hooked up to the Adcom 600 DAC. The Oppo 983h
sounds better than both. I even tried the same DAC with
the Oppo. Oppo sounds better on its own.
Hope this helps!

I can't state how good the Oppo 970 is as a transport or not, but the reason this lowly source gained a lot of good press when it came out was that it had a smooth non-digital sound for $150 dollars. Incidentally, the discontinued HD970 sounds better than the newer Oppo 980 and their other models as a stand alone source according to reviewers because of its smooth non-fatiguing nature.

Obviously a good DAC will make a big improvement. Using it as a transport will suffice until a better transport can be had.

I bought my Oppo as an interim product for music while my system was in change, and kept it for movies too. At its price it is good to have around while my system changes. I'm currently using its variable output into a tube power amp until I decide my next move.