oppo's volume control

05-11-14: Kr4
The "official" word has been that none of the 10X series are recommended for use as a preamp although Oppo recognizes that many will want to do it.

I find this odd, but maybe it's for other reasons than sound, I will find out.
Kr4 can you post a link where it "officially" says this, Thank's.

He said, she said, they said, all MAY have ulterior motives for saying this.
But Ohm's and Kirchoff's Laws do not lie, and the fact is, the Oppo's are even better able to drive the inputs of poweramps than many active (especially tube) preamps can.

Cheers George

I'm driving a Woo Audio WA6 headphone amp directly with the Oppo 103 with excellent results. Very immediate sounding and transparent.

I tried it on the BDP-105 and a Bryston 14BSST amp with poor results. I ended up with the Conrad Johnson Classic SE and was blown away with the warm result.

From just a couple of reviews of the Oppo going direct into poweramps and using it's own volume control, instead of having a preamp in the system

Excerpts from Hometheater
"Using the BDP-105 as a fully-functioning preamp by disconnecting my reference Parasound Halo JC2BP from the chain, I still got the same level of detail and precision as I repeated my battery of tests. In fact, there was an even greater sense of transparency and openness to the sound. Using the digital volume "knob" via the Oppo remote control was absolutely painless."

Excerpts from TNT Audio
"Things get really interesting when we dispose of the Django preamp altogether and simply plug the OPPO straight into my Unity Audio Rock active speakers. Now the sound really came alive, with even more drive and power than through the Django. Used like this, especially through the balanced connections, the sound is truly wonderful and probably the best digital replay I've had in my system. Going back to the Django, now sounds a little bit blurry, slightly constrained and somewhat less interesting."

As I said before, it's horses for courses. If you have a system that needs no tonal/colouration changes, then going direct will be the most transparent/dynamic way.

Cheers George

The clicks and popping only starting occurring after the Oppo was connected as preamp for about a week. Which reminds me, I started experiencing hiss as well. It's hard to say how long the above quoted reviewers had their Oppos set up in preamp operation, but the Oppo threads at AVS have repeated complaints of this.

It has been my experience that separate preamps typically have nothing to do with "tonal/colouration" changes in a system.