Oppo 105 D vs. DAC-transport combination.

Many CD or even DSDs are copied form Vinyl so you could imagin the sound quality without more digital processing. Modern direct digital recording improve this. Even the spinning CD has variation from all sources. Digital stream is the new form of music playing. IMHO, music is above all. DAC, amp and speaker are second. As far as 105D as DAC, it is a very good CD/DSD/SACD/Blueray player. Save your money and subscribe to Tidal or even Spotify at $20/month. The $2000 DAC upgrade can buy you 100 months Tidal Hifi/MQA. For two channel music, I will use the the balanced XLR out at line level to get the best SNR. Use balanced all the way to amp. For SACD, I would use the 5.1 analog out to 5.1 speaker setup.it is a totally new music listening experience when you heard 5.1 ( I should say 5.0) when you hear SACD multi-channel.

many SACDs are ADD. Like the very famous Mercury Live. I can hear the poping noise from SACD. On the other hand, a modern multi-bit remastered 44.1k/16 bit PCM sound as good as 2.8 Mk/1bit SACD. Vinyl is just like film camera, it is for hobbyist now. I digitized my CD collection and everything is in the cloud or on hard-disc now. No need to sort CD anymore.

Amazon now selling the famous RCA recording CD boxset #1 and #2. there are the recordings by the very excellent musicians. I also bought same SACD so basically a duplicate of the CD but in DAD form. But Tidal allows me to to explore more new generation artist with better recording technology. I also like the dynamics of classical music. Think about upgrading speakers and amplifier. As far DAC, I got the recent 205D which has built in DSD/PCM/MQA DAC.

Oppo 105 is an SACD player which has multi-channel analog out. If you use it as transport,  DSD will be downgrade PCM to external DAC. So you loose 1) multi-channel 2) more information from DSD.

Oppo 105D 1st of all is an SACD player and Hifi DAC. Which can produce 5.0 channel hi resolution music. Best of all, it is both audio and video steamer. Build in Tidal and Berlin philharmonic digital concert hall app. I could really enjoy the music and live concert with the touch of my iPad. No LP for me.