beowulf asked:
Quote:1. Is the Outlaw neccessary with the Oppo BDP-105 and Zektor Combo?
Not at all. I originally bought the Outlaw when it came on the market as a possible upgrade to the previous Dolby decoder/Switch, and as a brief substitute for the Ultra while it was in the shop. I already had a Dolby Digital decoder to run the audio outputs from the Comcast DVR and the AppleTV, but the Outlaw seemed a better arrangement, because it took HDMI in [video and audio], and allowed me to split out the 5.1 and send it to the Ultra, while sending the video straight to my display. And it had a decent FM tuner I wanted to add.
I had originally hoped the Oppo 105 could assume the task of accepting cable & Apple TV inputs, and eventually, it might, but right now, its lip-sync issues remain a problem, and while Oppo is committed to fixing them through firmware upgrades, so far, they have not been successful. Also, the Oppo only has 2 HDMI inputs, one of which is on the front panel, and I really do not like front panel cable inputs. So, for me the Outlaw is a bit of a "necessary luxury."
Quote:2. What are you using the Apple TV for (i.e. for wireless connectivity streaming of certain files)? It seems like the Oppo could take care of most of that as well.
The AppleTV syncs up and makes content available from our significant [4tb] iTunes audio and video libraries. At this, the Oppo pretty much sucks, as its network playback is not only not as robust as I would like, but it won't play back AIFF files [a preposterous limitation in my view] or many DRM-protected files [a more understandable one, but not very helpful considering the amount of such content I own].
Quote:3. Do you have a PC, Mac or NAS somewhere within this mix ... and is the PWD, Oppo and DSD Dac connected directly to the PC, through USB, a Network (ethernet or wireless) or somehow through the Zektor?
I have a Synology DiskStation 411+ in an 8tb RAID-array. It does both Time Machine backups for all the Macs in the house, as well as serving as a separate iTunes & media server. There is also a 2012 Mac mini connected via Ethernet to a bridged Airport Extreme to the network. The mini hosts a third copy of the entire music library. The PWD is connected via Ethernet to the same bridge, so that neither communicates with the other over WiFi. The Mac mini runs PS Audio's eLyric Music Manager software to stream to the Bridge in the PWD. EMM is managed through iOS devices and apps. The mini is headless, and is managed remotely through any of the other Macs. The mini will also be connected to the various new DSD DACs I will be trying, either through Firewire in the case of the Mytek, or USB in the case of the exaSound and Invicta. For playback of DSD, I will use Audirvana Plus, or eventually JRiver Media Center for Mac OS X as the alpha release starts to get closer to a beta. Current alpha will not stream and it downsamples hi-res [kinda defeats all the purposes].
Hope that helps!