I've had an Oppo 203 for about six weeks now, and I have nothing but positive things to say about it, especially its audio output quality.
The core of my system is a Pioneer Elite AVR, a VSX-82TXS. Great amps. And, when it came out, great DACs. Now that the machine is 10 years old, or several generations of DACs old, the 203's analog outputs allowed me to upgrade my DACs by connecting my AVR to the Oppo via the Oppo's analog outputs and the AVR's 7.1 analog inputs.
The Oppo handles virtually every form of disc out there, but the ones I care most about are SACD and DVD-Audio (as well as the obvious formats like Blu Ray, DVD, CD, etc...).
Additionally, the Oppo handles high-resolution digital file formats like FLAC and DSD (essentially an SACD format).
The upgrade in sound quality was immediately apparent. Much greater resolution of details, in particular. Sustained notes and cymbals tapering away, the singer's breath, wiind instrumentalists' tonguing the notes (I know that sounds disgusting, but when I played trumpet, we called it tonguing - you know, like double- and triple-tonguing).
Build construction is unbelievable. My previous Blu Ray machine, a Pioneer Elite BDP-62, another universal disk player, weighed in at six pounds while the Oppo tips the scales at 9.5 pounds. Obviously, weight alone is not an indication of either build quality or performance, but it certainly helps convey that sense of solidity (and, conversely, if a manufacturer skimps on things that add weight in an effort to reduce manufacturing costs, you have to wonder what else they skimped on).
Support is outstanding. They issue firmware updates to tweak performance, and the speed of their response to customer questions is outstanding. Once I swapped my Oppo over to analog out audio, I wasn't able to get any subwoofer output from 2.0 sources, so I emailed their support group. They had a response to me within two hours that was not only easy to do, but worked beautifully!
The Oppo also has a significantly more intuitive and speedy user interface than my Pioneer Elite unit had. On my Pioneer, when I accessed my external hard drive to play FLAC files, the player failed to load files at least 50% of the time, and, when it did load them, it would often take upwards of a minute for the track to start playing (though once that first track loaded, the rest played just fine). By contrast, with the Oppo, stuff just works. And works fast. When I'm playing FLAC or DSD files, you click Play on the remote, and the songs start!
- Audio quality is outstanding, especially if you have older DACs on your AVR or pre-amp/processor.
- User interface is great
- Build quality is frickin' incredible
- Plays just about every known disk and file format (while early literature says it doesn't process HDCD, I'm playing my only HDCD through it now, though I presume it's processing the disk as a CD)
- Oh, yeah, and then there's that funny little thing: it puts out just about the best picture you'll see ... until the 205 comes out