[Byang]

Probably this is due to its marketing as a universal 4K disk player and the generally accepted consensus that separate headphone amps and dac configurations deliver better performance. To be honest if I had demoed the 205 in a store or at a meet on the default dac setting it certainly wouldn't have impressed same goes for listening impressions via speakers and headphones straight out of the box I was quiet underwhelmed at the audio performance at first and wondered if I had made the wrong choice and should have gone for the Oppo 203 instead.

I purchased the oppo for a home cinema set up, lots of the 4K players just did not have the flexibility, features and build quality I was interested in particularly those on the analogue out side. The fact it had a headphone out that was marketed to be high quality was more a curiosity to try out. My main misconception for headphone use was due to previous experiences with sabre chip based dacs the most noteworthy and best of the bunch tried being the well reviewed Eastern Electric sabre dac a lot of folk rate this dac very highly. After trying it myself A/Bing it against several other dacs at home I was of the general opinion that both sabre and NOS dacs were not for me for me at that time.

The headphone set up I have been using for the last few years has been a Leema Acoustics Elements precision dac (£1400) > Bottlehead Mainline (modified £1500) > Senn HD800. During this time several amps and headphones have come and gone and moving this combination on has never been a consideration. Its still early days with the 205 and while I don't feel the Oppo 205 outperforms this set up (for me) but after a bit of running in and experimenting with the dac filters I don't feel its far off and it makes for very enjoyable listening experience. For anyone looking for a high performance, high build quality, one box solution for headphone use, the oppo 205 is a highly capable product that deserves serious consideration.

 

[Byang]

Sounds like you have good ears.yes,virgin 205 is good but with some typical mifi issues.
Sonica dac and 205 shared similar 2 channel audio output circuitry, but 205 is much more complicated in power supply department. So it is similar but more work to do level 2 modification on 205.
Try level one mod on 205 if you can, that will yield 70% of level 2 mod with 1/3 of the cost (no costlyteflon
Bypass caps) . Basically,need to use fast diodes to replace main audio power
Supply bridge and bypass 3.3/5.0 voltages supply with silver mica capacitors. That mod increases dynamics great deal and sweetens high frequency.

 

[JamieMcC]

Interesting I will take a look at the mods, sweetening of the leaner higher frequencies a tad would be welcome. I upgraded my Bottlehead Mainline with 10uf Teflon tin foil caps that were originally custom made by RTI for Audio Research tube pre-amplifiers they gave the Mainlines performance a significant boost.

I quiet like what the Teflon caps can bring to the party and have them in several other bits of kit as well Mundorf Supreme Silver oils and Jupiter Bees wax's. in other amps.

 

[Byang]

Interesting I will take a look at the mods, sweetening of the leaner higher frequencies a tad would be welcome. I upgraded my Bottlehead Mainline with 10uf Teflon tin foil caps that were originally custom made by RTI for Audio Research tube pre-amplifiers they gave the Mainlines performance a significant boost.

I quiet like what the Teflon caps can bring to the party and have them in several other bits of kit as well Mundorf Supreme Silver oils and Jupiter Bees wax's. in other amps.

For level 2 mod, you need 4 diodes, 12 82000pf silver mica caps. 2 0.015uf Cooper foil Teflon caps for balanced output only, or 4 Teflon caps for both analog outputs.

 

[JamieMcC]

Thanks for the info the 205 is probably good enough for my needs as is for the time being but its good to know some extra performance can be coaxed out of the player if required.

As its still quiet new I am hoping/expecting it will improve a little further with a few more hours on the clock.

 

[Greeni]

bad decision. a modified oppo 205 (fewer than $250 IN PARTS) reached the level way above those schitt yggy solid state discrete component types. may still behind well design tube based dacs, but at faction of cost.

Hi Byang

I had a 10 year old Reference Audio Mod Oppo player, and looking to modified Oppo 205 as potential upgrade. Would you be kind enough to share where could I get a decent modification for this player?

 

[Sterling2]

All,
If I install J. River Media Center on my laptop, will the OPPO see it as a network device? I have some multi channel downloads on foobar 2000 which will not play through OPPOs usb DAC. Foobar 2000 is also not seen by the OPPO network section.

 

[Byang]

Hi Byang

I had a 10 year old Reference Audio Mod Oppo player, and looking to modified Oppo 205 as potential upgrade. Would you be kind enough to share where could I get a decent modification for this player?

I did it myself.

 

[unknownuser]

I have had my 205 for a few days now and would highly recommend experimenting with dac filters to fine tune in your personal preferences, especially so for headphone use. Personally I thought the default dac filter was the worst sounding of them all (excluding brick wall) I have a strong preference for the Corrected Mini Phase Fast filter when driving my 300 ohm Sennheiser HD800.

The Oppo 205 has surprise me, I really wasn't expecting it to be so capable in the headfi department

Why are you surprised?
TI TPA6120A2 AMP and SABRE ES9038PRO DAC are one of the best if I'm not wrong.

 

[JamieMcC]

Probably because it is the most unsabre like sounding sabre dac implementation I have heard.

 

[unknownuser]

Probably because it is the most unsabre like sounding sabre dac implementation I have heard.

By the way it's good to hear that it sounds good even with a HD800 quality headphone

 

[Sterling2]

The OPPO DAC is so good, it reveals the poor recording engineering that I did not discern from DAC in my 18 year old Sony TA-E9000es pre/pro.

Probably because it is the most unsabre like sounding sabre dac implementation I have heard.

What does unsabre like mean? Are the ESS DACs distinct among DACs? I had been assured by audiophiles that DACs all sound the same and that any sound signature would be from post DAC processing. Have I been bamboozled by the audiophiles that post here?

 

[JamieMcC]

Unsabre like from my own personal perspective means less digital harshness and a more rounded musical presentation without the dreaded sabre glare that I found off putting in earlier sabre incarnations that would make extended listening sessions near imposable.

Essentially I see it as NOS, R2R, Sabre and more conventional dac chips all have their own strengths and weaknesses, for simplicity I will limit these strengths to excelling in

1 resolution,
2 believable organic sounding tone across all frequencies,
3 image sound scape.
4 musicality & dynamics

You can easily find a dac which excels in any 1 of these 4 points for not much money but it gets harder to find a dac when you want 2, 3 or all 4 of the attributes within a particular dac architecture while most dac types are capable of delivering all 4 those that can deliver all 4 at reference levels tend to be priced accordingly at much higher levels. It all really I guess comes down to how you listen and what you listen with along with what suits your own preference. If all dacs sounded the same we wouldn't have different companies pushing the boundaries of what's currently possible, luckily for us as the performance envelope keeps getting pushed the technology trickles down in to more affordable models and we as end consumers all benefit.

Edit I might add this is just my personal opinion

 

[pibroch]

Unsabre like from my own personal perspective means less digital harshness and a more rounded musical presentation without the dreaded sabre glare that I found off putting in earlier sabre incarnations that would make extended listening sessions near imposable.

Essentially I see it as NOS, R2R, Sabre and more conventional dac chips all have their own strengths and weaknesses, for simplicity I will limit these strengths to excelling in

1 resolution,
2 believable organic sounding tone across all frequencies,
3 image sound scape.
4 musicality & dynamics

You can easily find a dac which excels in any 1 of these 4 points for not much money but it gets harder to find a dac when you want 2, 3 or all 4 of the attributes within a particular dac architecture while most dac types are capable of delivering all 4 those that can deliver all 4 at reference levels tend to be priced accordingly at much higher levels. It all really I guess comes down to how you listen and what you listen with along with what suits your own preference. If all dacs sounded the same we wouldn't have different companies pushing the boundaries of what's currently possible, luckily for us as the performance envelope keeps getting pushed the technology trickles down in to more affordable models and we as end consumers all benefit.

Edit I might add this is just my personal opinion

Excellent analysis.

 

[unknownuser]

Unsabre like from my own personal perspective means less digital harshness and a more rounded musical presentation without the dreaded sabre glare that I found off putting in earlier sabre incarnations that would make extended listening sessions near imposable.

Essentially I see it as NOS, R2R, Sabre and more conventional dac chips all have their own strengths and weaknesses, for simplicity I will limit these strengths to excelling in

1 resolution,
2 believable organic sounding tone across all frequencies,
3 image sound scape.
4 musicality & dynamics

You can easily find a dac which excels in any 1 of these 4 points for not much money but it gets harder to find a dac when you want 2, 3 or all 4 of the attributes within a particular dac architecture while most dac types are capable of delivering all 4 those that can deliver all 4 at reference levels tend to be priced accordingly at much higher levels. It all really I guess comes down to how you listen and what you listen with along with what suits your own preference. If all dacs sounded the same we wouldn't have different companies pushing the boundaries of what's currently possible, luckily for us as the performance envelope keeps getting pushed the technology trickles down in to more affordable models and we as end consumers all benefit.

Edit I might add this is just my personal opinion

And which points are true to the 205 in your opinion? At least it's not clear to me