HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

Has anyone here got or had any Oppo equipment?

I'll probably wait for a Ultra HD Blu-Ray version early next year but does anyone have experience of Oppo players, in particular the 105:

http://www.oppodigital.co.uk/ecommerce/ ... -105D.aspx

From initial research it seems to be both a fantastic Blu-Ray player but equally good with music and other sources.

It features two ESS Sabre32 Reference Digital-to-Analogue Converters (DAC), balanced (XLR) & unbalanced (RCA) dedicated stereo outputs, a Toroidal linear power supply, and asynchronous USB DAC input and costs about £950. I'm guessing the native Ultra HD will cost about £1500.

It's expensive but not that bad when you compare it spending money on both a CD player, Blu-Ray player, DAC etc.

Someone at work has this – http://www.oppodigital.co.uk/ecommerce/ ... ifier.aspx just for improving sound while sitting at their desk and it's not bad.

Just interested if anyone has any experience with Oppo.

I had the BDP-95, that everyone was raving about, for a few weeks, and for CD playback it was utter shite. Frig-kows where it got all the raves about it's musical performance, it was dire!
Seemed to work ok as a blu-ray player for TV.

Interesting the 105d seems to get good feedback for audio but I don't want to spend £1000+ on something that's shit. I'm just trying to avoid having a CD player and Blu-Ray player as I've got limited space for equipment. The other option is to just buy a Panasonic Ultra HD Blu-Ray player next year and use it as a transport that goes into a decent DAC like a Hegel.

selby wrote:Interesting the 105d seems to get good feedback for audio but I don't want to spend £1000+ on something that's shit. I'm just trying to avoid having a CD player and Blu-Ray player as I've got limited space for equipment. The other option is to just buy a Panasonic Ultra HD Blu-Ray player next year and use it as a transport that goes into a decent DAC like a Hegel.

That's exactly why I got one. I do seem to be about the only person in the world who thought it was shit so maybe there was something amiss with the machine I bought, (second-hand). Not much help I guess, sorry.
I eventually picked up a Pioneer BDP-LX70A and it was much better, and cheaper!

The 105 is supposed to be better for audio. However I would always recommend a dedicated CD player as the dacs in universal players appear to be tipped towards Hi-res and surround formats. Not heard one but it is one of the few options if you want to have native DSD conversion of SACD these days rather than conversion to PCM. Reports suggest it improves on the old Denon Universal players. I can't see that paying a premium for Utra HD blueray is going to be worthwhile for a few years. If you have a quite a few SACD and DVDA discs it is probably worth a look as it's a fraction of the cost of Esoteric and Ayre.

The reason for Ultra HD Blu-Ray is I have a 4k Ultra HD TV, so I want to get as much content as I can on it. Netflix 4k is ok, but the triple layer 4K blu-rays will be visually special. I play most of my music now via Tidal so looking at streaming solutions like Bluesound etc.

It's just one of those tricky situations where you need to make a decision and none of them are perfect, it's all compromises.

I see your problem. There is little content for 4k tv at present. Most TV channels aren't even in standard HD yet. Sounds like you would be better off with a dedicated Ultra HD blue ray player which would be a lot cheaper. The enthusiasm for Oppo is based more on audio rather than visual capabilities.

I have only owned the Oppo headphones (hp1) and headphone amp ( ha1.) . The only relevance could be build quality and general performance. Both are excellent. Oppo are clearly a serious company spending serious money on research and development. Their economies of scale suggest they can offer unusually decent value.

Can I please make one plea - just because a DAC is good for high speed video use, doesn't automatically mean it's properly optimised for Red Book audio! Westlake has been ballsing up the Audiolab DAC he designed using these chips I believe - and jumped ship too, before setting up as a third party bodger of his designs I believe. Stan Curtis, who's been around the UK audio industry for well over 45 years now and has designed some amazing and popular gear along the way as well as his other antics, has an excellent and easy to read article he wrote on his website = if interested, look it up.

It would appear from the above that the best audio DACs are possibly the simplest ones, within reason, where the decoding is free from all the up-sampling faff as much as possible and also, where the audio output side is properly attended to with clean power supplies.

For a top quality cheap CD player, seriously, try a low cost Denon (I think it's the DCD 520 nowadays). You'll get the raw truth of what's there and with no bullshit in terms of add-ons which basically add hugely to the complexity of it all.......

+1 for the Denon DCD520AE. I have one which replaced my Rega Apollo R. It sounds excellent and to my surprise has improved on the Apollo R.