Wanted to jump in here early morning. My setup a bit different but I thought worth mentioning. I have the Oppo 95. No TT. Rarely use a disc, I should say it is at this time not common for me to do since most of my listening is thru TIDAL. I have the Grace Design m920 dac pre-amp, high resolution monitoring system which is connected to the Oppo 95 bypassing the 95's internal dac. The m920 is a great value in Hi-end audio that has an ESS Sabre DAC with DSD decoding.
The combination of the m920, Bob Latinos mono tube amps and the B&W803 diamonds for me is eternal bliss while listening to my favorite piece of jazz, blues, classical, rock and R&R.
While not an external dac the Grace Design's dac seems to do it all in my favorite flavors.
This is really interesting, since both the m920 and the OPPO95 use the same dac, the ES9018. Like anything in this hobby, its all the pieces are out together as there is more to a dac than its chip.
