oppo dac vs rotel pre amp dac

i would go with the Oppo 105 using xlr outs, great sounding for the money

Why buy a 7 channel blueray for stereo? Why not get a nice little 2 channel DAC? Your Pioneer isn't so great but will work well as a transport, digital out to the DAC to the preamp. Especially since this is for 2 channel, not theater.
The Oppos are great but a lot of technology and money spent on them is for the video processing which you will never utilize. Their DACs are great too but if you look at a $1200 Oppo vs a 2 channel DAC you may hear a big difference.
The one bonus with the Oppos is that you can stream almost any music through them via wifi/bluetooth/usb/digital...

I agree with 68pete. Using my Oppo 105 as a CDP, running stereo XLR
cables out to a Krell HTS 7.1 (used as a volume control only, no processing
or D/A conversion) and Krell TAS (also used a Krell KSA-250) sounds
excellent IMHO.

thanks for the advise guys. I think I will go with the 105 xlr outs to my pre. I forgot to mention my pioneer bdp is on the fritz and I do occasionally watch movies.

Wow time flys.