Official OPPO BDP-95 Owner's Thread - Page 185

Oppo UK support wrote that I should make sure I made a factory reset after making a firmware upgrade. I had not done that, but doing it did not change anything.

The player sits on it's own top shelf with nothing around it, in a 24°C (75°F) room, and it does not feel warm at all, so there is no reason the fan is running most of the time, even when just playing CDs with the video section off.

The fan itself does not sound broken, it just sounds like it's pumping a lot of air through a small hole. It's the airflow that's making the noise, not the fan bearing.

When I'm listening to music, I have a desktop PC standing on the floor behind my sofa with the power supply fan pointed towards my direction. But it's inaudible (10cm fan running at 1000rpm max). The Oppo on the other hand, which is further away an has it's fan pointed towards a side wall (with 10cm space) is multiple times louder. I don't need to pay attention to it, it's immediately noticeable during quiet music passages.

Curious indeed, on the fan issue! I have an extremely quite listening room and 90%( mostly classical) of my listening is done at very low listening levels. My room is acoustically treated and my 95 sits on the top shelf of an open rack at 11 feet away. The only disturbance I may hear is the ac or fridge kick on. My listening sessions are the quietest I v'e heard in my room

P.S Oh yeah Gbaby the 95 has a new trick after 5 months can you say "Air"

Maybe you had a faulty fan in yours. I sit about 2 meters away from my 95 and I never heard it, even during very quiet passages.

gbaby, why are you still posting in this thread if you're no longer an owner of a 95? I remember looking fondly on one of your last posts when it was announced you had shipped it back to Oppo. I quickly grew tired of reading the back and forth exchanges mostly comprised of your remarks aimed at defending your opinion. If all you're now going to do is post with negative comments aimed at convincing others that the 95 is not worth buying or keeping, then I am going to ask the mod to remove them.

Agreed, esp. since my BDP-95 lives somewhere in the center two congested 72" MA racks, in Florida.

I have to admit that I could never hear any fan noise with the 95.

If you haven't already done so, check (Setup > Device Setup > Firmware Information) that all 3 parts of your firmware are up to date: Main, Loader, and Sub/MCU. The Sub/MCU piece is the most important as regards fan speed. The version numbers are listed with the release notes on Oppo's Support page and also in the firmware history collected in the first post of the BDP-93 sticky thread.

The fan is variable speed and normally will not run very fast at all, which is one reason it isn't audible. I suppose it's possible you had a fault in your unit which kept your fan running fast.
--Bob

I would like to know what PC's people have found to make a positive improvement to the 95's sound.

Mini-reviews would be nice.

Bob, you may be right with your diagnosis. I can't tell for sure now, because the BDP-95 has been returned.

Today I received the BDP-93, and I upgraded it to the latest beta firmware. I was surprised to be asked seperately to install two parts of the firmware, because I don't remember having seen that dialogue during the BDP-95 update. Maybe the MCU upgrade part wasn't installed back then. In both cases, the upgrade was made from the same file on the same USB stick.

What speaks against this theory is that people generally didn't complain about fan noise with the old MCU firmware.

Anyway, even if that incomplete upgrade was the reason for the noise, I don't miss the BDP-95, since the superior analogue section is of no use to me, as I found out when comparing it to my other hardware. I'll connect the BDP-93 to my DAC only and continue to play SACDs with my Sony XA777ES.

Here are some fan-noise measurements I reported here a while back: Noise Measurements which in my case shows ~ 20 dB SPL about 6 ' (2 m) from the player translating to *just* barely audible in the quietest music passages. I didn't notice this until someone commented on it.

Anyone in this thread have this player hooked up to an Epson 6500ub front projector?

Just wondering if you get a good 'out of the box' picture with this player matched up with this projector.

My old 60gb PS3 fried last weekend. I replaced it with a Panny 210 and have not been able to get a watchable picture without resorting to the ambient light mode. That creates some unpleasant color issues, so this is not a permanent solution.

I tried running the player directly to the projector, and tomorrow I have new HDMI cables coming in. I have tried turning off every feature on the player and using every available color space, and most movies look like up-converted dvds.

I read a lot about how all players have roughly the same video quality, but I am wondering if there is something about the Panny signal that the 6500 doesn't like. I wanted the Oppo in the first place and would like to use this as an excuse to give the 210 to the inlaws and step up to a better player. But, not if I am going to have the same issues.

So would I.

Neutron, I like your setup there with the headphones, but especially with what appears in your link to be a very small display that is hooked up to one of the Oppo's video outs (perhaps Composite?), to give you the GUI access you need to choose different music files from the Oppo display interface for personal listening sessions next to the shelves there. I am considering doing a similar thing with the second HDMI output from my Anthem D2V for exactly the same purpose (or I could use the Composite out from the Oppo directly). In any case, does anyone know of a very small display, preferably HD display with HDMI, that will allow me to have a "second" but tiny little display next to my A/V rack?

Suggestions welcome. Cheers!
Brian

Yes, the display uses the composite out of the 83/95. Good question about HDMI monitor and one I have thought of for this purpose. This search included a compact laptop computer with HDMI *input* .... couldn't find any of those. But a compact display ( < 10") with HDMI input doesn't really make much sense considering what HDMI is. For pure menu navigation, the 7" unit I have with composite video resolution is perfectly adequate and also fine for paging through all the 83/95 setup screens. However I did find one noname 15" LCD monitor with 3 HDMI inputs but decided that the tiny 7" footprint of the Haier was better.

Thanks. And understand on the over-engineering use of HDMI here...it's simply a matter of cable connections for me, I will already be using Composite and Component in addition to HDMI, so that I can feed the Anthem D2V everything it needs to deliver independent switching of inputs for all 3 Zones in the house, as I do today. So that Composite from the Oppo will already be feeding the D2V, specifically to enable my Zone 3 for the Oppo. However, just had a though on that - is there such a device that would allow me to "split" the simple 75Ohm Video composite connection (yellow) into 2 signals, so I could send one to the D2V as needed, and the other to a small 7 inch Composite type monitor??? Hmmm, never tried to split a composite video connection, but I would think it would be much easier than some others.

I'll poke around on monoprice or something. Excellent feedback, thank you again!
-Brian

I have been a happy owner of the 95. And yes, I too can hear the fan and have never been satisfied with the circumstances in which it runs. It is barely audible, but not silent. The 95 sits 7 feet from my listening position.

The funny thing is, the people who complain they can hear the fan are probably the same people most likely to appreciate the 95. If your hearing isn't good enough to hear the fan, how can you really fully appreciate the audio from the 95?

ManwithaPlan and Jam1415 - Lol! - Make me the third owner with no noise and an open Salamander rack. I won't attribute any correlation though.

Definitely a gearhead's rack.

I'm using the Shunyata Venom3. I can't give a comparison to anything because I've had it with the Oppo 95 since I put the Oppo in the system. I made that decision based on replacing three other after market cords with Shunyata Venoms previously in my system. My vague memory is that they provided blacker backgrounds, less grain and greater dynamics. The price is great so you could try one out without breaking the bank.

....and how are these cables better than Romex that's in your walls and feeds your system?

Please take the audio theory discussion to the appropriate forum... (not this one)

Lots of (composite) video splitters around; probably you can get a 1:4 fanout for ~ $30, maybe less on sale. Talking about splitters or "fanout", this reminds me of a high-quality dedicated stereo audio fanout circuit I was designing a few months ago, to buffer and 4X-fanout the dedicated stereo analog outs of the 95, maintaining the superb analog output characteristics there (using, of course more of the LM4562NA opamps :-) ... don't ask why

Perfect, thanks!

The poster was responding to my question.

+1

Thank you for that. I have heard some good things about these cables. The 95 is the first really good piece of digital equipment that I have bought. Up until this time I have been mostly analogue, so I have no experience with PC's and digital sources.

Same situation: I sit about 7 feet from the 95, which sits on top of 4 vibrapods on an open stand, with ventilation on all 4 sides, and about 35 cm. of space BEHIND the unit. All in all, it should be more than enough. I can hear the fan at all times, though, even when not paying attention. It usually kicks-in after around 30 minutes of playing and after that it varies in its speed and intensity, but never really comes to a full stop. The latest firmware DID mercifully improve this. The noise now seems more subdued, and, at least to my ears, it feels as if the fan is not working as hard. But the noise IS still present. I do not understand how most people do not hear this. It is particularly noticeable when you shut the unit off after a couple of hours of use. The contrast between the unit working and the unit fully off is not subtle. After I press "power off", a few seconds go by, then there's a loud "pam!" followed by a welcomed burst of silence once the display goes blank and everything is fully off. Am I the only that experiences this? Again, it is not subtle at all.

All my previous Oppo's have been a little on the noisy side, even the ones with no fans. My 980H's drive mechanism was pretty temperamental, for example. But that unit is still kicking and working great, so I am not complaining. I now use it mostly for PAL R2 DVD's.

I do agree with the quote above. A lot of people either do not hear that particularly frequency from a short distance (granted, it IS low, but still audible and bothersome), or probably learned to subconsciously block and ignore it. In any case, I envy them!

I wonder: what would happen with NO fan at all? Is it really necessary? We are talking about something that barely uses 50 watts. If the unit is handled with reasonable care, would it really get THAT hot if it has no fan in it? If you are into classical, and enjoy low listening levels, there is no way the whirling noise from a fan, ANY fan, will not intrude your listening session. Would it really be that counterproductive and dangerous NOT to use a fan in a future unit?

I realized how much information was truly being "obscured" or "covered" by this noise once I switched to my Squeezebox Touch, playing the same content and using the Touch's own internal DAC connected directly to my tube integrated amp. Even though there is no comparison between the Touch's DAC and the Oppo's, what is the point of such a resolving and detailed DAC when you have so much "external interference" to ruin part of your enjoyment? In the case of the Touch, the PC feeding it via wi-fi is in a different room, so no spinning mechanisms nor moving parts are in the equation. Just 100% ABSOLUTE silent backgrounds during quiet passages or whenever music is not playing. It is pretty amazing.

Having said all of this, I love my 95 and would not part with it. Once Oppo figures out a way to use the fan in a more "conservative" manner and offers a solution to control the unit via an external app or similar device (specially when it comes to browsing USB drives connected to it), I'll truly be a 1000% happy owner. In the meantime, there's nothing out there that comes even close to it for $1K.

That's funny. I have a Panny 310 hooked up to a 6500UB and the picture is great.

I have a PS Audio Perfectwave loom going I use the AC3 on the 95 and Anthem avm 20, AC10 on my Quintet and an AC12 feeds my Halo A21. The reason of choice on the PS Audio cable is the clean extended highs , low noise, great tonality and extended lows with excellent video. I plan to put another AC10 on the 95 now that its setteled.

First, I do not own a BDP95, but I hope to be able to afford one in the not to distant future.

I have a friend who does have one and i have had a chance to do some serious listening on his system. The 95 replaced an 83SE and the improvement was immediately and dramatically obvious. The 83SE was very good. The 95 improved detail tremendously, particularly with well recorded 24 96 source material.

The system has B&W Diamond 802 Speakers biamped with 2 Marantz SM11S1 Amps. The 95 LR XLR outs are connected to a McIntosh C220 preamp and the C220 XLR Oouts are connected to the Amps.

(This is without a doubt the best system I have ever listened to snd it has amazing resolving power. My freind and I are both lovers of Wagner's Operas and most of our listening is to Wagner coupled with some 24 96 Swing Band recordings.)

After yesterday's listening session I will have to admit that it is possible to improve on the sound of the 95, but at a steep price. My friend just took delivery of a Weiss DAC202, a $7,000 item. He had hooked it up to a MacBook via Firewire and used the 202's XLR outs to connect to the C220. He played the First Act of the Solti Ring Die Walkure CD release.

There was a definite improvement in the detail, especially in the Bass.

My conclusion is that in a cost no object system it is possible to improve on the 95. The delta is going to be 5 to 7x and the analog chain, preamp to amp to speaker must be good enough to reveal the improvement. For more than 99% of systems, in my opinion, the 95 can't be improved upon by a " better" player or a separate DAC. I would also think that for a majority of systems the 93 would be good enough.

The opinions expressed above are my own and based on more than fifty years of listening to live unamplified music and recordings.