Satow:
All the points you are raising have been discussed ad nauseum across this forum. As Marsilians has said, please go through the various threads. Many of us own Oppo players and we have discussed the procurement, usage, and value of the Oppo players.
I am a little surprised by your statement, 'The quality of most CD recordings can be just as lossy'. Are you referring to a standard Redbook CD, or are your referring to a CD containing MP3 files? If you are talking about MP3 files, then this discussion is meaningless.
Regarding your statement, 'Spending $5000 on a CD transport to play a $25 dollar CD is moronic'; well, every individual has his or her own way of reaching audio or video nirvana, and we cannot begrudge them that, can we? Aside that, if you have some way of scientifically and objectively proving that an Oppo player can extract and present data the same way a 5000$ CDP can, I am sure all us will be all ears. If not, your statement sounds very much like that of an 'argumentative Indian', if you understand what I mean. It also sounds very much like the topics we used to get when we had group discussions in college and interviews. The only way of winning these arguments was to start first and just shout everybody else down.
Reputed manufacturers of expensive equipment will not use the same deign or electronics that are used in a $169 player. For example, Cyrus was using stock drive units till last year. In the models they have introduced last year, they have designed and built from scratch their own drive units. Such manufacturers have a reputation to maintain, and they will not fool around with that. You might be surprised to learn that Oppo actually went to one of these manufacturers and 'borrowed' their circuitry for just the audio part which they are using on their 980 and 983 models. And they use that same 5000$ units as reference to test their own circuitry. The VP of Oppo has acknowledged that Oppo does not have the technology for superior audio, and they went to others looking for that. There must be some very tight legal agreement that the technology is not stolen, and used as is given by the audio manufacturer.
BTW, a CD is a media, and all media have to low priced. Other wise they will not sell at all. If you take a few Michael Jackson numbers and cut say a 100CDs. each CD will cost $10,000. If you cut a million copies of the same CD, it will cost just a dollar. The 10,000$ CD and the 1 dollar CD will be exactly the same in all ways. The 10,000$ CD will play exactly the same way the 1 dollar CD will play in the same CDP. The cost is not in the media per se, but in the value we place on the singer and the songs inside. This is called royalty.
I have been feeling for a long time that driving a Mercedes or a BMW on Indian roads does not make sense. But that has not stopped these companies from selling some 5000 units every year. At 25 lakhs a piece, imagine what all you can do with 1,250 crores!!
Cheers