Oppo BDP-95 sounds GREAT?

From what others have said about the Venom 3 its a great powercord but I wouldn't hesitate to move up Shunyata's line when budget allows of course. If it competes with units $3000 and up, treat it like a $3000 unit! My intial powerord was Ps Audio's AC3(12awg) which list for around $150, I now us a $699 AC10(10awg) and the improvement is not small in terms of refinement and tonality and don't worry about price, the best cord is the best cord period regardless of cost. As for rake, this is leaning the speaker forward, backwards or perfectly leveled to further time aligning of the presentation, this is assuming of course your speakers have out riggers or spikes. As for the rule of 1/3's, I use it myself for speaker placement its fantastic, it can be a pain to adjust them for best sound , as my speakers are 6ft tall (120 lbs) and have 6 spikes per base! I know what you mean by large speakers .On another when budget allows try some new Ic's, this could really take things to the next level.

Any acoustic treatments?

"I think there's a new flagship from Oppo coming that will include inputs to the DAC to make it an all-in-one media centre. A bit like the Ayre I guess"

The Ayre has no digital input!

The 95's usb is a fantastic digital input and is already an all in one media centre and preamp to boot, just add a small 7 or 10" monitor and a external hard drive and your set for high rez files. At this point I'm not really sure where Oppo could improve on the 95 besides minor tweaks which may have nothing to do with sound & video. I hope they prove me wrong! But they struck gold with the 95 " Can you say synergy"

Jdud39, The Oppo 95 will not play Apple Lossless via USB.

The Ayre DX5 has a USB input which is an upgraded part of the QB9 USB DAC.

The 95's usb input is no slouch! and taps right into the Ess sabre dac's from mp3 up to 192/24 yielding playback that's nothing short of stellar. I have to say my prize recording is Ivan Fisher's Mahlers's 2nd Channel Classics sacd, but out of curiosity I down loaded some free hi res samples from a few sites Linn, 2L and Hd Tracks put them on a usb stick and latter that day out of sheer astonishment I purchased Eiji Oue's Rachmaninoff's Symphonic dances on the Reference Recordings label and it's now the second best( if not a tie) thing I've heard recorded period!