Unsound
The Oppo 205, at its original MSRP of $1295.00, could be considered a “reasonable” value I suppose as a mid fi product. However, it certainly is not worthy of the inflated prices it has been going for since it was discontinued. The midrange and high frequencies are very clearly “digital” sounding. That is one of the first things the mod guys work on. Just because it has the Sabre 9038 DACs does not mean it automatically sounds great. I spoke out about this product not because of snobbery or jealousy, but to warn people to not be sheep and pay inflated prices for an extremely overrated product.
Now for the snobbery part. If you are still listening to Thiel speakers, that would explain why you don’t hear the problems with the 205. I worked in high end audio for years and Thiel was one of the speaker lines we carried. I spent a lot of time with equipment and cable pairings trying to tame that tweeter.
The Oppo 205, at its original MSRP of $1295.00, could be considered a “reasonable” value I suppose as a mid fi product. However, it certainly is not worthy of the inflated prices it has been going for since it was discontinued. The midrange and high frequencies are very clearly “digital” sounding. That is one of the first things the mod guys work on. Just because it has the Sabre 9038 DACs does not mean it automatically sounds great. I spoke out about this product not because of snobbery or jealousy, but to warn people to not be sheep and pay inflated prices for an extremely overrated product.
Now for the snobbery part. If you are still listening to Thiel speakers, that would explain why you don’t hear the problems with the 205. I worked in high end audio for years and Thiel was one of the speaker lines we carried. I spent a lot of time with equipment and cable pairings trying to tame that tweeter.