bcgator,
Anticipating an audition of the low-end Denafrips DAC on Monday, the Ares, and having followed this post with much interest given the varied opinions of adding the Yiggz to a system with OP's Oppo 205CD player, I think your take is spot on: "if you haven't had your "wow" moment already [with the addition of the DAC], it's not going to happen." I will admit that my Spatial Audio open baffle speakers took a very long time to break in, and we all understand the physical break in process of drivers, but I remain dubious of the "need" to breaking in DAC's or most electronics for longer than maybe a week or two.
I admit that my frame of reference, to your point, is that if I don't hear a perceptible benefit in SQ with new electronics within a pretty short period of time -- either from the first measure of music played ... to a week or so -- then it isn't going to happen.
The Denafrips Ares I am getting on Monday is well broken in so I can forget about the "run-in" issue. I will share my impressions on a new thread on AG.
I have come to two conclusions on this discussion. First, the Oppo variants are astounding musical CD players for not much coin of the realm. My Oppo 103D was immediately more musical than my far more expensive Consonance tube DAC -- it was a "wow" moment from the first note of the music. Forget about "run in", right out of the box, it was clearly more music. Second, I think that to significantly improve on the sound of the Oppo 205D using an external DAC, you probably will have to spend $3K-$5K to get there. However, for me, to spend an amount of money for this improvement in my ~$10K system is not in my view worthwhile... the Law of Diminishing Returns sets in.
To reiterate, I think the Oppo CD's players are simply astounding in their ability to reproduce digital music and perhaps are the best price/performance audio components extant.
Anticipating an audition of the low-end Denafrips DAC on Monday, the Ares, and having followed this post with much interest given the varied opinions of adding the Yiggz to a system with OP's Oppo 205CD player, I think your take is spot on: "if you haven't had your "wow" moment already [with the addition of the DAC], it's not going to happen." I will admit that my Spatial Audio open baffle speakers took a very long time to break in, and we all understand the physical break in process of drivers, but I remain dubious of the "need" to breaking in DAC's or most electronics for longer than maybe a week or two.
I admit that my frame of reference, to your point, is that if I don't hear a perceptible benefit in SQ with new electronics within a pretty short period of time -- either from the first measure of music played ... to a week or so -- then it isn't going to happen.
The Denafrips Ares I am getting on Monday is well broken in so I can forget about the "run-in" issue. I will share my impressions on a new thread on AG.
I have come to two conclusions on this discussion. First, the Oppo variants are astounding musical CD players for not much coin of the realm. My Oppo 103D was immediately more musical than my far more expensive Consonance tube DAC -- it was a "wow" moment from the first note of the music. Forget about "run in", right out of the box, it was clearly more music. Second, I think that to significantly improve on the sound of the Oppo 205D using an external DAC, you probably will have to spend $3K-$5K to get there. However, for me, to spend an amount of money for this improvement in my ~$10K system is not in my view worthwhile... the Law of Diminishing Returns sets in.
To reiterate, I think the Oppo CD's players are simply astounding in their ability to reproduce digital music and perhaps are the best price/performance audio components extant.