Separate DAC or continue using the Oppo UDP-205

Our Club, AZAVClub.com held a blind DAC shootout last month
and the results of the 20+ people who attended are posted to the site.

I too have the 205, and was ready to buy a $2,000 DAC for an upgrade.
After listening to the 10 DACs we tested, I have an entirely new plan.

Innous. $4,200 new. Looking for a used one. 

As your first responder warned, twenty answers all different.
Good luck. 

The Oppo 205 has the ESS 9038 Pro, their flagship DAC. It is a very good DAC. I had my 205 modded at Modwright with the full tube stage mods and separate power supply. It sounds incredible. It’s worth keeping and upgrading. My opinion of course.

I have seen a couple of Mytek Brooklyn DAC+ going for around $1100 here and on US Audio Mart. Retails for $2k new. Fantastic DAC with tons of configurable features, nice OLED screen, 2 headphone amps for 2 SE or 1 balanced and has preamp in/outs to act as a good preamp as well. Finally, the footprint is 1U tall and 1/2 rack wide, so is very easy to integrate/find space for. The Brooklyn was met with rave reviews and IMO is one of the best DACs on the market for the money. The only one I have liked more is my PSAudio Directstream which retails for $6K and can be found second hand for $3-4k. Cheers!

Nobody here has mentioned that Oppo is compatible with Roon. In other words you could do without that Sonos altogether. Roon running on your computer can manage your music collection, streaming etc and you could simply use the Oppo as a Roon endpoint (playback device). 

Regarding the Oppo itself it looks good on paper, good DAC chips, great SNR, very detailed but it fails where all but the most expensive DACs succeed: tonal balance. However, in your case, pairing it with valves probably compensates to a certain extent for the lean, mean, colourless sound signature of the Oppo. 

I would upgrade the switched mode power supply in the Oppo - it makes a difference (the sound becomes a little bit more refined / rounded and there is more meat on the bones so to speak). Clones Audio and Oppomod do good ones and all you need to replace it is a screwdriver and a bit of courage. 

Then get Roon. The Oppo is quite sensitive to trash in the mains so just removing the Sonos from your mains ring will give you a small boost in sound / video quality.  

Keep it simple. The whole point of it all is to enjoy the music and you do. So why fix something that doesn't need fixing? Just make the most out of what you've got. 

+1 to anwar.

A friend brought his laptop over to hear some live recordings he made and to listen to a few songs in his hard drive that I had on cd: that experience totally blew my mind, but Im too old to abandon 3-400 cds
You’re not likely going to like my answer, but here it goes

My dac/pre is a ~ 4 year old model Audio Alchemy DDP-1 dac/pre with PS-5 outboard power supply. I assumed it was a vg dac, and the resultant music sounded quite good, but, like you, Im thinking ’new dac’, however, I upgraded my amp to a EVS 1200 from Ric Schultz/TweakAudio. It took about 80 hours break in before the spooky magic started happening. I now have ~ 100 hours on it.

When the redbook CD recording is good the musicians are in the room comparable to when I had an all tube system; Lector pre and cd player, Rogue M150s with cryoed tubes run fully balanced (had to special  order the Lectors to get fully balanced).

Best of all, it’s only $2200 for 600wpc idle wattage is a low 57watts meaning I can leave it on 24/7, although it has standby toggles which reduce wattage to 1-2 watts, which one would employ if they turn off their tube pre between sessions.