? Modded Oppo 983 ?

My new Oppo 980H with a Asylum/Crump cord and a few vibration minimizing tweaks has now supplanted my Sonic Frontiers SFCD-1 with vintage 6DJ8 tubes, Isoclean fuse, Daruma ball bearing feet and a Venhaus Flavour 2 power cord. This was after many hours of comparison. Overall, the 980H lacks a bit of depth and midrange liquidity/smoothness but is a little more dynamic and detailed.

I have since sold my SFCD-1 and put the $900 net difference into more music to listen to.

My suggestion is to try it first before judging the new Oppo's redbook abilities. Your results may be different depending on the rest of your system.

The rest of my system is composed of:

Bryston B-60 and 2B-LP in biamped configuration powering Totem Arros and Dreamcatcher powered sub. Cables included Venhaus DIY cotton insulated 99.99% pure silver interconnects with Eichmann Silver Bullets and Sonocable silver speaker cables.

Thanks everyone. I bought the Benchmark DAC1. This way I can use any cd transport, DVD, or universal player I want. Even a BluRay play can be used for movies and cd playback with the Benchmark providing excellent sound in my 2 channel system.

Yeah this way it keeps 100% of your options open with any format you want, and is cheaper to change out a player for a couple hundred, and still have the core performance of a good DAC for the final sound, plus resale on the DAC will not suffer nearly as much as a modded DVD player.

Mjcmt,

Let us know how the DAC1 sounds - can you hear a solid imprvement or not? I note that Benchmark's DAC1 has a few years under its belt and yet lives on with high resale value - an almost certain sign of a good product. (I avoid bleeding egde latest and greatest and am a mere follower when it comes to products - many satisfied users with better ears than me and five or more successful years in the market without "lemon reports" is my weeding out - stay-off-the-merry-go-round selection process).

I'm sorry I didn't respond sooner, but this way I can tell you what the Benchmark DAC1 really sounds like after living with it for a while.

I'm running the DAC1 directly into a tube power amp using the Benchmarks volume control without a preamp. The DAC converting the digital signal to analogue, instead of the Oppo's analogue output, has very balanced sound the entire audio spectrum w/o highlighting an one instrument over another.

The background is so black that I initially thought something was missing. Something was...the noise and grain I was used to hearing. It is quite eerie not to hear it anymore. I can hear where one instument stops and another is placed in the sound stage, because it is black in between.

Even though there is greater air and upper frequency detail it is smoother. Not the smoothness associated with tube gear or soft presentation, but the smoothness of each note not having any distortion, grain, or harshness.

It is amazing to me how much I want a detailed sound, now that the noise and harshness is gone, and all that is left is clarity. I can design my system to emphesis detail if I want.