05-14-14: Doak
@Georgelofi: Fighting a losing battle. It's OK to be wrong.
Not at all Doak, it's ok if some can't see the forest for the trees. Direct is the best transparency possible, runnin obviously has problems coming out of his source doing this, if he has odd noises this way.
They sound like they could be faulty dac glitches or dc offset pops from the buffers, whatever it is, it's not right to make noises like this, and a capacitor coupled preamp is hiding it for him, by not letting it through, but it still should not be there in the first place.
It could be a problem with his own Oppo, or that model was not sorted properly in it's design, as a normal amps input impedance + interconnects will not load it any better or worse than a preamp with the same interconnects will.
Cheers George