Oppo UDP - 205

My Modwright Oppo 205 is well broken in now and I am very impressed. I feel that Modwright has taken advantage of an excellent ESS 9038 DAC chip with an excellent transformer coupled tube stage and the results are outstanding. Fine micro details and very dynamic. I felt it had overtaken my PS Audio DS until the recent firmware update which brings the DS up another level. Anyway, my point being the 205 is excellent and the Mods are so worth it for your 2 channel listening.

@ozzy , I must chime in. Once the 205 has been modified, in my case Modwright tube output stage with separate power supply, the Oppo does come quite close to my DS DAC. It was extremely close before I loaded Huron.

i think the UDP-205 has an excellent DAC chip and mearly needs attention in some other areas. So modding is another alternative to adding a separate DAC. The "Swiss Army knife" can become a special forces tool.

Lance

@a25105 , I wished I could comment on the stock 205 but mine was sent direct to modding. The new ESS 9038 DAC chip is supposed to be superior to the older 9018 and from my experience having a modded 105, there is quite a difference. More analog like to me. 

If im ranking my DS DAC a perfect 10 then I would rank the modded 205 a 9. Ozzy also has very good points about the mods and I was lucky to get mine early enough to get a considerable discount.

Tonight I've removed the Modwright 205 and reinstalled the old Oppo 105. Now I knew the mods would widen the gap between the two but, holy crap! The modded 205 ridiculously out performs the old 105. There seems to be a major veil, like someone threw a wet blanket over the speakers.

hopefully the few bugs in the 205 will be sorted out in future firmware updates.

Lance

@im4umia,

for the the price of the DS Jr you could send your Oppo 205 to Modwright for full tube mods and separate power supply. I have the the DS DAC and the Modwright 205. As good as the DS DAC is I slightly prefer the Modwright 205 for its dynamics. They are both good just different. Just know that the oppo’s two 32-bit HyperStream Dual ESS ES9038PRO Sabre DAC chips are very good and respond in an incredible with the modified output stage.

In defense of the DS DAC, it does get better with every new firmware update.