I have had a chance to do a direct comparison of both of the units you are looking at. The Apollo blew the Oppo/DAC1 combo away for sound quality.
this comparison was done at my house in my rig, with my Sequels and my Oppo/Benchmark setup. Tom brought his Apollo up for the afternoon, and we compared the two digital front-ends to each other. We also compared them both against my Apple Airport Express, streaming Apple lossless files wireless to the Benchmark.
Needless to say, the streaming audio fell far short of the Apollo AND the Oppo/Benchmark rigs. It wasn't hideous, just flat and a little rolled off in the high end. OK for "background music" which is what I use it for mostly (when we have friends over, or have parties, etc). That setup is more for convenience than for critical listening.
The Apollo does have a VERY different sound than the Oppo/Benchmark setup. It has that distinctive "Brit kit" sound--VERY detailed and high resolution, laid back but engaging presentation, and a VERY 3-d soundstage--deep, wide, and high. (It sort of reminded me of the Meridian 208 I ued to own) The Apollo is a VERY sweet-sounding CD player, and compliments Martin Logan speakers well. However, I thought that like the MLs, it was a little soft in the bass on some recordings. But overall, it was a VERY smooth, musical, and "live" sounding CD player.
The Benchmark I have is the one optimized for video--the DV-981-HD. It does an ASOUNDING job at upscaling regular DVDs to my 1080p/120hz Toshiba LCD TV, and it does a respectable job playing CDs (redbook and SACD) on it's own, and with the Benchmark (as a transport, feeding PCM), it's performance on Redbook CDs is VERY good--perhaps better than anything else in the under $1000 range. It is highly detailed, has a very dimensional soundstage, and has nice, tightly-defined and musical bass. It's not as ultra-detailed as the Apollo, I'll admit, and the soundstage seemed a little compressed in comparison too. It also was a little more "up front" and "in your face" in presentation than the Apollo.
I dig that Brit sound, and on a lot of music, I think that the Apollo was the hands-down winner in our comparison, but the Oppo/Benchmark combo is certainly no slouch, and it gives you the added bonus of being able to use the Benchmark with several other digital sources (mine has 4 inputs--BNC AES-SPDIF, Toslink, BNC balanced, and USB), plus the Oppo will play Redbook, SACD and HDCD's, AND it plays DVDs and does an astounding job at 1080p upconversion.
The Apollo (for about the same price) plays Redbook CDs only. But it does do that one thing VERY well. I hate to admit it, but it IS better than my Oppo/Benchmark combo. :bowdown:
Tom and I pretty much agreed point-for-point in this comparison, which made him very happy, and left me a little bummed, as far as CD playback in my rig. An interesting note--we ran his Apollo through the Benchmark briefly, and I preferred the Apollo as a transport feeding the Benchmark, whereas Tom preferred the Apollo's own analogue outputs. As a transport, the Apollo was VERY impressive to my ears. It had an alomost Krell-like level of detail and resolution, but somehow retained a little of that warm, smooth Brit sound. Very nice...
I haven't heard the Oppo that is more optimized for audio playback (the DV-980-H)--perhaps it makes a better transport than my unit.
I'm probably going to be adding a Sony BluRay player (BDP-S1) into the mix sometime this week, and we'll see how the Oppo stacks up against a $999 player (original retail--I'm not paying that though)--the up-conversion on the Sony BluRay is VERY impressive. I'm interested to see how the Oppo (at 1/5 the price of the Sony) holds up. However, I already know that the Sony BluRay will lose against the Oppo for music--it does not read music CDs at all, even for outputting PCM for outboard D/A conversion It ONLY plays DVD and BluRay discs...
--Richard
