What's the bottom line on Oppo 980 for CD playback

My new Oppo 980H with a Asylum/Crump cord and a few vibration minimizing tweaks has now supplanted my Sonic Frontiers SFCD-1 with vintage 6DJ8 tubes, Isoclean fuse, Daruma ball bearing feet and a Venhaus Flavour 2 power cord. This was after many hours of comparison. Overall, the 980H lacks a bit of depth and midrange liquidity/smoothness but is a little more dynamic and detailed.

I have since sold my SFCD-1 and put the $900 net difference into more music to listen to.

My suggestion is to try it first before judging the new Oppo's redbook abilities. Your results may be different depending on the rest of your system.

The rest of my system is composed of:

Bryston B-60 and 2B-LP in biamped configuration powering Totem Arros and Dreamcatcher powered sub. Cables included Venhaus DIY cotton insulated 99.99% pure silver interconnects with Eichmann Silver Bullets and Sonocable silver speaker cables.

Mjcmt,

I am curious as to what ancillary equipment were you using with the Oppo? As well, did you do a head to head comparison with these other cd players?

The Bryston preamp/amp and Arro combo in my system is very transparent, revealing and unforgiving of the source. I planned my system to be this way so that the front end sonics comes through relatively unscathed. As such, it gives me a pretty good window on the source's true sonics.

Mjcmt, sorry for the late reply but your evaluation of the Oppo 980H's performance is not as a stand alone player but as a transport?

Further to the above comment, it looks like you are using a 970 and not the 980h which was inquired about.