I bought my OPPO 95 two years ago to use exclusively in a headphone system i was setting up. I selected it on-line without audition because it could play SACDs. I already owned a Blue-ray player from Denon that cost twice as much as the OPPO and had no expectation that the OPPO would be nearly as good on videos. I was happy with it at first in this limited role, but I got bored one day and swapped the Denon into the analog system and my new headphone systems and just for kicks, decided to see how close the OPPO could come Blue-rays. I was blown away at the improvements to the picture, especially in terms of its color palette breadth and the level of details. Many subsequent improvements to all three systems only proved to increase the level of superior sound and video from the OPPO. This player really is an overachiever in any role I ask of it, and its extra features have made it an important tool to help me fine-tune my other set-ups. Its versatility allowed me to establish a test of several different connection schemes to get get the best sound in a 7.1 HT. At one point, I had wired it to compare 2 brands of HDMI cable (Ps-Audio I2s and Mapleshade Vividlink) against a Toslink and silver SPDIF connections and a card of RCA's from the analog outputs, all by switching inputs on my receiver remote. This enabled me to answer for myself some of the age old audio questions about what sounds best, where is the best place to decode lossless sound, the receiver or the player, and to discover that Mapleshade's $170. HDMI dances circles around the PS-Audio that cost 14x as much.
While this OPPO model is the only one I have experience with, I a truly delighted with it in every way. I read that the 105 is even better and has even more features yet and some folks are using them to replace the preamp and DAC in their digital media systems. This model is not enough to tempt me to upgrade from the 95, even though the unusually high resale value for it would let me sell it for enough to cover up to 80% of the new one. This is because I probably would not be able to pull the trigger on actually selling it, since i think i really need three of the.
While this OPPO model is the only one I have experience with, I a truly delighted with it in every way. I read that the 105 is even better and has even more features yet and some folks are using them to replace the preamp and DAC in their digital media systems. This model is not enough to tempt me to upgrade from the 95, even though the unusually high resale value for it would let me sell it for enough to cover up to 80% of the new one. This is because I probably would not be able to pull the trigger on actually selling it, since i think i really need three of the.