Official OPPO BDP-95 Owner's Thread - Page 332

Sure, usb-powered is very convenient and you can get them anywhere.

You have to carry something between the player and the computer because there is no other way to populate and maintain the drive. Either the complete drive unit (in which case usb-powered is good because there is just one plug) or the bare-drive from a dock, which gets you the convenience of portability with the no-kidding reliability of external power.

I have a couple of Seagate USB-powered devices but mostly use 1TB bare drives in a dock. They are 3.5" and tend to run hot, but they are supposed to. I have always wanted to try the 2.5" versions which I suspect would be cooler. And quieter, not that the big drive is very noisy, but you can hear it running and seeking if you listen.

-Bill

The Audiolab MDAC shows the true bit-depth of the incoming LPCM. The MDAC designer has repeatedly clarified that if the incoming LPCM is 20-bit result packed into 24-bit with padding zeros, the MDAC display will show 20-bit and not 24-bit. That the M-DAC shows 24-bit indicates that some dithering may be taking place to fill in those extra 4 bits, making all 24 bits "meaningful"

I did not and was not concerned about bit-perfect testing from a 24-bit stream in the case of a CDDA disc (more on that later). I was interested in if the OPPO is bit-perfect as a CDDA transport, i.e. read 16bit/44.1kHz from CDDA and output the exact same 16bit/44.1kHz on the digital outputs. If I set HDCD Decode to OFF, both the regular Optical/Coax digital out AND the HDMI->SPDIF(Coax) passes the bit-perfect test, and in both cases, the M-DAC show the incoming LPCM as 16bit/44.1kHz.

It is only when HDCD Decode is set to ON, the regular Optical/Coax digital out fails the bit-perfect test, while showing 16bit/44.1kHz. With HDCD Decode is set to ON, playing non-HDCD CDDA discs via HDMI->SPDIF(Coax) has the M-DAC show the incoming LPCM as 24bit/44.1kHz.

The MDAC has bit-perfect tests for both 16bit/44.1kHz and 24bit/96kHz. Both files, either burned as WAV or FLAC files on a DVD-Data disc, or streamed from a DLNA server, pass the bit-perfect test via regular Optical/Coax digital out and HDMI->SPDIF(Coax). This shows that the OPPO is bit-perfect most of the time, except when playing non-HDCD CDDA discs with HDCD decode set to ON.

Note that the bit-perfect test files are not HDCD encoded. This is not a test about if the OPPO is bit-perfect when playing back HDCD-encoded CDDA discs.

Leon
Edited by travelfotografer - 11/30/12 at 10:00am

Thank you again Bill for the enormous amount of info, I think I'll tap out on 1 Tb, and USB powered just to make life easy on me.


Dan

I thought I recalled that while the Oppo handled USB usb-powered stick drives, that it didn't always handle usb-powered hard drives, and that hard drives with their own power supply were best???

I have a 2TB WD Elements player (with its own power supply) hooked to the rear USB port of my 95, and in that way use it purely as a hard drive (not a player) to read FLAC sound files and .TS video files (HD video recorded from my cable set-top box).

I also have the WD player connected to my receiver via hdmi and use it here as a player, as the oppo 95 won't read the menu files for ripped DVD's and Blu-rays (it will read and play the individual VOB files, but won't allow any sort of menu control - it is respecting copy-right rules here, I gather).

I would be inerested to hear if anyone is successfully running USB hard drives purely from the USB port, without their own external power supply, and if so, which brands and what capacity (gigabytes-wise).

The manual says:

I have Seagate "Freeagent Go" and "Go Flex" drives that work. They are 250 and 500GB, but I think you can find them bigger.

-Bill

I would rather ovoid extra cables, power supply and such, that's why I was interested in the self power type, or what ever they called...I notice when looking for them over on Newegg they're not described as such.Making it difficult to know what's what from driver to driver..

Edit: I like this ONE What do you guys think besides being expensive




PS

Are they're any Solid State External HD? Weird I haven't seen any or been aware of their existences.

Djoel
Edited by Djoel - 11/30/12 at 8:15pm

Anyone else notice the Pandora not playing unless you reboot the player bug is back in the latest firmware?

Oppo solved this in the last version by having me alter the HDMI audio settings, but now that doesn't seem to work and the only way I can get Pandora to actually play music if I've watched a BD is to power cycle the player first…

Yes, there are.

http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-trade-240GB-External-Portable/dp/B004G7KK30/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1354365600&sr=1-1&keywords=ssd+hard+drive+external

Just do a search on external ssd hard drive. That would be my preference. As you know from the most recent hi rez thread, I buy a lot of hd tracks and linn records downloads. I've got a a couple of 32 gb thumbdrives i use and I burn them to dvd audio as well, but I'd like to have one ssd drive for them all.

Looking around they are kind of expensive. I'm not sure if I'm not better served by picking up a handful of 64 or 128 gb thumbdrives when they are on sale.
Edited by glangford - 12/1/12 at 7:21am

Hi kucharsk,

I have always had this problem and didn't know one of the firmware versions fixed this.

Anyhow, my workaround from having to power cycle the player is to play some music through DLNA after playing a BD. Then Pandora works.

Hope this helps.

Stanley

The known issue impacts both YouTube and Pandora. It arises if you play a Blu-ray disc with both Secondary Audio ON and HDMI Audio LPCM set, and then try to play audio in YouTube or Pandora before power cycling the player.

There's no problem if you play the Blu-ray while you have Secondary Audio OFF, or if you are using HDMI Audio Bitstream, or if you use YouTube or Pandora BEFORE playing a Blu-ray disc on any given power up.

OPPO Engineering is aware of the problem, but I don't know when a fix might be forthcoming.
--Bob

sometimes when I transfer a folder of flac files from computer to remote drive and then plug into the 95 via usb, the oppo does not see the files. It sees the folder but not the files. However it sees the files of all other folders I already have on the drive. This just happens sometimes with the new transfer. Of course I power down etc to see if that works but it still does not see it. I have to go back and transfer it again and then it sees it fine. Anyone know what is going on? thanks

Is it possible you are disconnecting the drive from the computer before you have let the operating system "eject" it? Or aren't waiting long enough for the "eject" to finish? This sort of thing can happen if the computer is caching the directory entries for the new files you've written, and you disconnect the drive before the computer has fully written all that stuff to the drive itself.
--Bob

I've had good results with a couple of such drives but they generally require using both the front and rear USB ports in order to get adequate power.

That could be it Bob sometimes I unplug immediately after transfer to move the drive to the Oppo. I wonder how much additional time I should wait?? I'll try 20 seconds and see if that works. Thanks

On Windows, there should be an icon in the task bar notification area (usually the bottom right of your display) that says "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" when you hover over the icon. Click on the icon and select the USB drive you want to remove. Windows should give you a "it's safe to remove your drive" message once it is ready. Otherwise, turn your PC off before disconnecting a USB drive. Just unplugging it randomly is asking for trouble.

That may be so but there are some drives that seem never to disconnect.  A half hour after accessing anything on a drive, I can get the warning against removing it.  Hard to trust the system when that happens.

There is no question that the HDCD decoder in the Oppo is in the HDMI and S/PDIF digital output paths. The Oppo manual explains to turn off HDCD if the external processor has HDCD decoding so it does not get tripped up.

So the only remaining question is some ambiguity about >16-bit outputs. You mentioned that the 24/96 tests pass bitperfect with HDCD off. Have you checked with HDCD on? If it fails, it is a good indication the same mechanism is afoot as for 44.1/16. The reconstruction filter. But if it passes, it is probably because the HDCD filter is prevented from running at anything other than 44.1 kHz, which would make sense. Now if you had access to a 24-bit/44.1 kHz bitperfect file, that could resolve the matter.

I did the 24/96 tests a while back and it was with HDCD decode set to ON, and it passed. The 24/96 wav and flac test files were on both DVD data disc and from DLNA (did not test USB storage)

I understand that OPPO's HDCD Decode only affects physical discs in the CDDA format (i.e. regular Compact Disc Digital Audio). OPPO's HDCD decode does not work on files burned to Data discs, nor from USB storage, nor from DLNA. Thus, the effect of HDCD Decode set to ON only affects CDDA, and since CDDA only caries 16/44.1, this is where it matters. So to answer your questions: yes, the HDCD filter is prevented from running at anything other than 16bit/44.1kHz on a CDDA.

OPPO is capable of sending decoded HDCD via HDMI in 24/44.1, and OPPO does send 24/44.1 on HDMI (when HDCD decode is ON) regardless if the CDDA is a HDCD or a regular non-HDCD (this is to equalize the 6db difference in volume between HDCD and non-HDCD and also to handle disc with mixed HDCD and non-HDCD tracks). However, this processing (with HDCD decode set to ON) of 16bits to 24bits seems to also affect the digital output on the standard optical/coaxial output, making them different from the original 16bit data on the disc.

This is not a bug but a side-effect from the HDMI implementation. This is something for audiophiles to take note when playing regular CDDA and using the OPPO as a transport feeding an external DAC using the standard optical/coax output. We tend to expect a transport to deliver unaltered bits from the media (i.e. no processing what-so-ever). I also had assumed HDCD decode set to ON should not affect non-HDCD CDDA, but apparently this is not the case because OPPO does something different and useful on its HDMI output when HDCD decode is set to ON, just that this affects the regular optical/coax output too.

Leon

What are my options for drive formating (FAT, NTFS) using a mac and MKV files. Some video files are larger than 4 gb and can't be written to usb in fat 32. How do I get them to a USB drive formatted device the oppo can read?

I keep an ancient XP laptop for just such emergencies.

-Bill

Leon, thanks for the thorough reply. I believe it has nothing to do with the HDMI. It's the HDCD reconstruction filter which works on any CD when HDCD is activated.
It may turn out that what it does on the S/PDIF output is also useful, even though it is not bit perfect. This depends on whether one subscribes to the school of HDCD or not, I suppose.

I found a third party sw utility that interfaces directly with disk utilities and dies ntfs.

Has anybody check out is power input modification from Hong Kong?

Link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Oppo-BDP-93-95-103-105-Mod-Kit-Furutech-IEC-R-Mundorf-Silver-Gold-Wire-/121032045992?pt=DVD_Players_Recorders&hash=item1c2e1275a8

Here we go again!

^^ I'm going to have to pass on that mod - they didn't even bother to cryogenically treat the cables...

And pass a magic stone over it several times while facing the magnetic North Pole. Too many important features missing to buy it. Besides any mod that cheap can't be any good.

Correct.

OPPO Engineering told me that, and by setting HDMI audio to "off" I got the problem to go away and everything worked nicely - until the latest firmware update.

As of the latest firmware update (BDP9x-74-0908) I now experience the problem even with HDMI audio set to "off."

^ So you are using Analog audio? Try setting Secondary Audio OFF and HDMI Audio Bitstream even though not using HDMI audio.

I've tested against this firmware, and the workaround does work.
--Bob

Searched here and the BDP-93 thread but surprisingly, I may be the first to ask this question. When playing SBS (side-by-side) 3D content, the Oppo volume/setup/information menus are scrambled on the tv display and the 3D icon on the Oppo front panel is not lit. Oppo volume/info/setup displays fine for 3D rental discs. I assume that the Oppo is just passing along what it thinks is a 2D frame (which an SBS frame basically is). The SBS frame is getting split and processed on my tv, so I understand why the Oppo menus are getting scrambled. Is there a way to force the Oppo into 3D mode so as to get the Oppo menus to display correctly, other than purchasing a BDP 103/105 which will natively process SBS content?

I assume I could convert my SBS files into frame-pack files and play that instead, which would cause the Oppo to enter 3D mode.
Edited by genesplitter - 12/4/12 at 4:35pm