High Quality Universal Player??

Rwwear - With respect to the Oppo UDP-205, I am considering it, too. I actually bought the Pioneer for my living room, but I have been very impressed with it in my main audio system as a disc player. I am waiting to read owner impressions on the UDP-205’s audio performance. It seems it will have the newest, and presumably best, ESS Sabre dac. I just wanted to put the Pioneer in the mix for the consideration of others who are researching universal players. It really is a nice player for optical disc playback. For a point of reference, I have owned the aforementioned Sony, a Modwright Oppo 83-SE, an Audio Aero Capitole, a Cary 306/200, and a Naim 5i.

Cool thaluza, every opinion is pertinent.

"The Pioneer does have two USB inputs, one in the front and one in the back, and one can access a server with the 88FD to play files from the server."

I stand corrected thaluzza. Thank you. It is very hard to tell from the small pics on Pioneer’s website and I missed this in the text: "The BDP-88FD is also designed to play high resolution music content from USB, disc, and hard drive devices."

This Pioneer looks like a real contender in this <$2k marketspace. However, the only review I could find said that it only supported streaming from YouTube and Picasa for those that are interested. 

Dave

thaluza

why did you sell the Sony 5400ES?  Thanks! for sharing your story on the Pioneer Elite.

@thaluza,
I hope Oppo gets the AKM top-of-the-line DAC in UDP-205. The best thing about this player is, it does not have the "apps" which would make loading faster. The only discouraging info in - they have decided to do away with HDCD.