What's the bottom line on Oppo 980 for CD playback

Further to the above comment, it looks like you are using a 970 and not the 980h which was inquired about.

Ckung,

I do use the 970 as a transport, but started out using it as a stand alone unit for 1 year. When I bought it, the 970 and 980 were both available similtaneously. I bought the 970 because the Absolute sound said the 970 was better sounding and the 980 was a bit harsher. Since the 970 is not available the A-sound now recommends the 980 as they only recommend current products.

At the time I owned the 970 I also owned the Consonance CD120 Linear cdp at $995 USD. The Consonance was vastly better. My previous cdp, the Cary 308 was also better by a large margine. You will notice the difference in finese, soundstage, and elegance of presentation. But the Oppo does get most thing correct, just after using it for a while I noticed a roughness that bothered me.

I since sold the Consonance a bought the Benchmark DAC to use with the Oppo. I went the DAC route because I can use its analogue volume output direct into a tube amp and upgrade the source later. I will upgrade the Oppo sometime to a better DVD or BluRay player.

If using the Oppo with an outboard DAC use the Raw digital output setting, as the PCM setting does use some of the internal digital soundfield processing. With the PCM output > DAC it sounds like a $900 cdp, but with Raw output > DAC it sound much much better, maybe a $1.5k-2k cdp.

I hope this helps clarify my uses of the Oppo 970.

Check this out www.joerasmussen.com I just received his 980H today and out of the box it absolutely smokes my marantze SA17.Same as the SA11 except 5.1 capability.Joe is the Australian agent and fellow callaborator of Allen Wright of Vacuum State.Joe says the oppo with terra firma out does the sony dvp9000es with level 6 VSE mods.The rest of my stem is Spectron musician 3SE, H-Cat X7 and Sp Technology continuum 2.5 speakers.I didn't realize how dead my front end was till today, it is astounding

Dart6,
I'm glad you love your modded Oppo. I considered a modded Oppo for some time, but in the final analysis I chose an outboard DAC because I'm not locked into one player. I have the option to change transports and still have world class sound. I ultimately will be getting a BluRay player for movies and with my Benchmark DAC still have great sound.

The difference between vacuum state oppos and other modders oppos is the others just change parts where as VSE incorporate their own modules with another set of rcas.You can still use the oppos native rcas to do A/B comparisons