Official OPPO BDP-95 Owner's Thread - Page 274

The DTS lossy and lossless tracks on AIX have their own peculiarities. That's why we're just using the AIX LPCM tracks for comparison.

The TrueHD track is also a good comparison except for the Dial. Norm. related shift.
--Bob

Are the Pentatone DSD analog results using DSD to PCM conversion?

Roger Dressler, Can you explain why the low level resolution will remain the same in case of volume reduction digitally. If the volume level is decreased digitally, before the DAC, it should lover the resolution, since fewer bits will represent the voltage waveform. Increasing distortion level as well. Every DAC has higher distortion and lower resolution as the signal level decreases.

You are correct. However, what I am talking about is not what can be measured, but what can be heard - that's all that matters here.

Consider the signal from the player feeding the amplifier is at "full listening volume." As the song ends, it fades out. Or maybe you have some wide dynamic range classical recording where the sound is really low. Do you hear distortion? No.

That low level signal is exactly the way the louder signals will be rendered when attenuated by the digital volume control.

Where the issue you describe comes into play is if you take that really low level signal, and amplify it by 40 dB. Now you hear problems. Don't do that.

See below.


Thanks for the new data. That the PentaTone PCM and DSD results look the same suggests that the Oppo is not doing anything wrong.

Something about the other data is a little perplexing. The analog outputs do not reflect the -5 dB headroom gain shift in the Oppo Sub out. Was the Sub trim elevated by 5 dB?

Well well well, you are absolutely right. It is all about actual listening.

The sub was calibrated 5/6 dB above the mains, and the Onkyo applies +15dB over the LFE for multi-channel analog (by default, adjustable from 0 to -15).
When I get a chance I'll compare analog PCM vs. DSD, now that thanks to Bob I know that the HDMI Audio option is what prevents direct DSD in my setup.
The +5dB DTS LFE is a known bug.

My personal experience is that playing the 95 through any pre-amp, and I am talking stereo analogue out/in, is that there is a definite degrading in sound. I have tried it with a vintage Harmon Kardon Citiation1, 60th Ann. McIntosh C-22, and an Audio Research LS-26 using an assortment of single ended and balanced hi-end cables.

When connected directly to those system's tube or transistor amplifiers; whether they be Grant, McIntosh, or Esoteric, the sound cleaned up dramatically. The dynamic's were greater and the sound stage improved by widening and presenting greater depth, the low end was more solid and deeper, and the high end was simply more realistic.

As the 95's volume was adjusted, I personally, the owners of the systems, and others present, could not hear a loss of sound quality as the volume was lowered, or an improvement as the volume was raised that could not be attributed to the effect of the volume change itself.

So if there was a loss in sound quality from the DAC's as the volume was lowered, it was not noticed, or at most it was less noticeable than the greater loss of the quality of sound when a pre-amp was used.

And of course YMMV.

Very interesting. I will have to try this setup and hear for myself. I will hook my Oppo directly to my Rogue Audio Stereo 90 Amplifier, and see if I can hear a difference in sound presentation.

So, does the Onkyo ingest DSD, or not?

After alot of soul searching and research, I went for the Bel Canto Pre 6 GenII
connected to the Oppo via analogs. No audyssey for me yet.

Thank you all for answering some of my questions.

Yes, the Bitstream numbers above are with the Onkyo decoding DSD over HDMI. The only thing I haven't measured is DSD over analog.

Make sure the 95's volume control has been activated and that it is set to "0" before you play anything.

Yes, I thought about how in practice I would have to ensure that the Oppo's volume control is always set to 0 before turning on my amp.

On the SACD LFE level anomaly discussed above, some additional, but still preliminary results:

1) It's beginning to look more like the LFE level in track 48 of "Stay in Tune with PentaTone", SACD, really is authored about +5dB too hot. More work is being done to confirm this and determine the exact delta. If true, then the anomaly we've been discussing is *NOT* a bug in the 93 or 95.

2) There was a firmware fix to SACD LFE output level early last year. I suspect, but I've not yet been able to confirm, that the bug fixed was that the player was putting out SACD LFE -5dB too low, and thus the fix was to put it back to the correct level -- +5dB louder. If this turns out to be actually what happened, then of course this presumed bug and (1) above would counteract each other. And thus any tests I did on the PentaTone LFE level PRIOR TO the player firmware fix would have given the FALSE result that the PentaTone LFE was correct.

3) It looks like there is a bug in the player's built-in Analog Subwoofer test tone. It appears to be +7 to +10dB too hot. Calibrating the volume trims using that test tone would thus result in you incorrectly lowering the Subwoofer volume trim too much (or the equivalent change in the Sub's own Volume knob setting). This, too, is still being double-checked. It is possible that the error here may be different on the 93 and the 95.

4) At the moment, it appears that calibrating levels using the 5.1 or 7.1 LPCM track from AIX Audio Calibration, Blu-ray, (according to your actual speaker set up) produces correct results, including correct results for SACD Analog PCM playback (and also for SACD Analog DSD playback given the caveats in (6) below). Roger has posted concerns about the way the AIX LFE level test is constructed, but for people with a Subwoofer with good (i.e., wide) frequency range, the AIX LFE level test appears to work.

5) The Analog Subwoofer output of the 93 and 95 needs +15dB boost, external to the player, to match the main speaker channels. This is by design, and is true WHETHER OR NOT all Speakers are set to Large in the Oppo. It has been confirmed that this is true EVEN for SACD playback using DSD-Direct-to-Analog conversion. This is as expected, but it's been re-confirmed as part of this checking.

6) It's been re-confirmed that, as expected, the player's internal, speaker output Volume Trim settings are *NOT* active for SACD playback using DSD-Direct-to-Analog conversion. If you want to compare SACD playback of Analog PCM vs Analog DSD you must have all the speaker volume trims in the player set to 0dB (and all speakers Large, and at least 5.1 speakers configured, and all speakers set equidistant -- since crossover, down mix, and speaker time alignment processing ALSO doesn't happen during SACD Analog DSD playback). Any necessary balancing of speakers and subwoofer would need to be done external to the player when using SACD Analog DSD output.

Normally I wouldn't post such info until everything had been thoroughly nailed down, but I know we have a number of posters here playing along at home on this, and so I wanted to get an update out.

THE INFO ABOVE IS STILL SUBJECT TO CHANGE!
--Bob

^^ Looks good, Bob. Thanks for the update.

Will there be any confirmation of the "SACD playback drops LFE 10 dB" question? I still allege that does not happen, and even after LFE is dropped 5 dB it will read right in the ballpark with the AIX, THX, and Disney discs.

As best I can tell, the player is correctly attenuating SACD LFE -10dB for HDMI LPCM playback (i.e., as intended -- so that the "standard" +10dB HDMI LFE boost in HDMI AVRs still works without regard to whether you are playing an SACD).

If I'm correct in that, then it is ALSO happening for SACD Analog PCM and SACD Analog DSD output. (For the two forms of Analog output, an additional -5dB of attenuation is also applied, bringing the total to -15dB as detailed in the post above.) I would NOT expect it to happen for HDMI DSD output, but I can't test that one way or the other. The actual result with HDMI DSD output would, of course, depend on what the AVR does with that.
--Bob

Since I was terminated from the 93 thread, there is a way to rollback FW. This can only be discussed in PMs ONLY.


Edited:

After emailing AVS, I am allowed in the thread.

I guess I was just wondering if the same resources being brought to bear on resolving whether the disc's LFE is 5 dB too high could also definitively tell us what level the LFE is printed on the disc.

Agreed, and I think we'll get there. The problem is making sure the check tests aren't being tripped up by some other bug -- or set of bugs -- in whatever you are using for comparison.
--Bob

Is it possible for the BDP-95 to do independent handshakes on the two HDMI outputs?

Looking for 2.0 audio on one and Multi-channel audio on the other.

Thanx for the update Bob.

Stanley

Does anybody know a good third-party remote control extender for my 95EU, which I can connect to the IR IN of the player (with mono plug) ?

The Oppo IR extender is not for sale in Europe, and all the 3rd party extenders I found on the web seem to use an "eye" that one has to stick on the remote sensor on the front of the player. I'm not quite sure if I want to do that though and if these are reliable...

I think you are just using the wrong pre-amps, based on just 3 pre-amps. I suggest some "better" pre's?

I did say my opinion was based on personal experience, and that YMMV.

Try it for yourself, and let us know what you hear.

I recently got the omnimic and I was using it to double check my distance setting in the analog portion of the 95. I can basically only do the front pair of mains as it relates to impulse response. It shows that the right front speaker is several feet further away than it's physical measurement. But when I was testing the subwoofer, it appears to be agree with the setting for my prepro. I test the right main along with the sub to verify that the subwoofer has the correct distance. This makes me think that the distance setting for the front main is what's in error.

Can someone else check their's to see if their right front distance setting in the analog speaker setup measures correctly. I was using an impulse response test and kept adjusting the distance until the front right and front left peaks converged.

This does make me wonder if the other distance settings are also off.

This is consistent with what Oppo tech support told me when I questioned them about this same topic. Essentially the entire speaker configuration menu is nonfunctional on SACDs in the DSD direct to analog conversion mode.

It should be noted that the human ear is only sensitive to, at most, about a 2 millisecond difference in the time domain. Therefore, if the speaker distances are within a few feet of one another, there should be no noticeable effects under normal listening conditions. In my case, there was a big improvement in sound imaging when I moved my listening position further from my mains and, even though I was closer to my surround speakers, I could hear no artifacts when listening to SACDs. (Of course, the time domain adjustment is made for all other formats.)

The other requirements/limitations of SACD DSD direct mode are surmountable using workarounds external to the player, e.g. trims, crossover, and even down-mix, if needed.

^ One interesting difference between the 93 and the 95; in the 93 the player's main Volume control is inactive for SACD Analog DSD (except for Volume=0 which is implemented as Mute). But it IS active on the 95.

Speaker distance adjustment is mainly important if you need precise positioning of sounds in the surround field -- e.g. sounds that should come from a specific spot between a pair of speakers. If the time alignment (distance adjustment) is inaccurate, then the sound will be shifted a bit either side of its intended location on the line between those two speakers. This is definitely worth getting right for movie sound tracks but the same precision is much less important for multi-channel music. Why? Because with Music playback there are no visual cues that might conflict with the sound placement.
--Bob

Some MKV files play back on the Oppo with a squeezed image (figures look thinner and taller) no matter what setting or aspect ratio I use. On the Oppo I set TV aspect Ratio to 16:9 Wide/Auto as default.
The same files play fine using VLC player on my macbook.
The resolution data in the Oppo shows for two of these files is 1280x536 and 1920x800.
The VLC Media Information for the same two files:
-Codec H264-MPEG-4 AVC (Part 10) (avc1)
resolution 1920x800
Decoder format Planar 4:2:0 YUV

-Codec H264-MPEG-4 AVC (Part 10) (avc1)
resolution 1280x536
Decoder format Planar 4:2:0 YUV
Any one experiencing this? Any solution?
Thank you very much for your support.