It’s hard to find a universal "transport" that doesn’t break the bank which led me to buy an OPPO 103D. It is a great machine that sounds pretty good but the reason I bought it was to pair it with my DAC. I would buy another OPPO in a heartbeat, most likely a 205.....or a "305" because I will run the 103 til it dies.
I too use an OPPO for 2-channel, SACD and blu-ray, but it needs some help:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=154408.0
With Synchro-Mesh, the transport does not matter. Achieves jitter of a $20K transport. ANY transport will do. The SPDIF iPurifier lowers jitter for blu-rays. For SACD, there is nothing you can do except for modding it, and that will yield only small improvement. I modded transports and DACs for 10 years myself, but I don't mod anymore.
My Rotel 990 is built like a tank and has a great transport, to use it with the Synchro Mesh for 2 channel. and get the Oppo for surround-SACD, and blueray. Would I benefit from this set up for CD’s or is it a minimal gain and just the Oppo for CD’s as well?
The OPPO will be necessary for SACD and blu-ray. I would highly recommend the SPDIF iPurifier to reduce jitter for blu-ray movies.
You can use either transport for 2-channel if you have a Synchro-Mesh. It literally does not matter what the source is for the Synchro-Mesh. It will sound identical if you use a Sonos, cheap transport, expensive transport, ipod dock, computer laptop. Does not matter.
It also galvanically isolates the transport from the DAC BTW, so eliminates that ground-loop.
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
