What’s your preferred connection?

[David A]

Thanks David for your thoughtful reply. The reason I ask is because basically I’m going to have to buy everything I want send through the d200

CD (nice to have as I have some cds I listen to from time to time)
I may be able to “share” my oppo 203 with my home theater /Marantz by utilizing one of the digital outs since I am using hdmi to the HT. But I’m not even sure the oppo can handle two different audio outs, if not, I will need to invest in a separate cd transport of some kind.

Music streaming (most important)
Since the d200 does not appear to have airplay direct streaming support for Apple Music, I will need some sort of device to stream my Apple music subscription. I have briefly looked at the Lumin u1 mini or the Auralic Aries G1. Both of these have all 3 of the connection outputs I mentioned. I have also looked at the Cambridge Audio CXN and Azur 851N network streamers as a cheaper option. I think the more expensive 851n has the aes/ebu out like the Auralic and Lumin, but the cheaper cxn only has Toslink and coax out. All of the streamers mentioned seem to support airplay, TIDAL, Spotify, Qobuz. Etc.

Vinyl (least priority)
I currently have no LP’s but intend to get a decent TT (VPI Scout, clear audio concept, or something decent in the 2k range)

So I realize I can’t connect 3 devices via AES/ebu, but I was trying to get opinions on if I did add all 3 of the devices mentioned, would one benefit more than the others for one type of connection over the other 2.

Thanks again for any feedback.

You can use multiple outputs from the Oppo. I have mine connected by HDMI to my TV, and by RCA to my Devialet for CD and SACD duties.

Thanks Axel,

So no need to go into the menu and make a setting change each time you want to listen to HT or 2 channel?

To that end, if there was any specific setting you recall having to change, please advise.

Sounds like this will at least resolve my disc dilemma. 

Now to figure out the streaming...

Thanks,

Mike

All of the Oppo's outputs are always active so you don't have to make any changes to menu settings when you  want to use a different output. If, for example, you had the stereo analog outputs connected to an analog input of your Devialet as I did for SACD playback (you can only get digital DSD output from an SACD over HDMI) and the coax digital output also connected to my Devialet for CD playback, all you have to do to switch from one to the other is to switch inputs on the Devialet. No need to change anything on the Oppo each time you swap.

There is a restriction with SACD because of Sony's licensing arrangements. The only way to get an SACD player to output high res digital output from the high res DSD layer on an SACD is over HDMI and the Devialet doesn't have an HDMI input. You can get the 16 bit/44.1 kHz output from the CD layer of the disc over the Toslink or Coax digital outputs but if you want to play the DSD layer of an SACD your only choice is to use analog output from the Oppo. That will sound quite good, I did it for a while, but it doesn't sound quite as good as the sound you get playing ripped DSD data from the disc from a hard drive.