Opinions on the Cambridge Audio Azur 751BD - Page 2

The Mediatek handles a lot of things, but the Oppo uses Sabre DACs for the audio conversion, and the Cambridge uses Wolfson DACs. The Qdeo scaler handles lots of the scaling and noise reduction, and the Mediatek handles more basic features I believe, like 4:2:0 colorspace conversion and SACD data. I'm not sure on this, though.

Hi Chris Heinonen,

I have read your review on 751BD, have you come across with what Paul Millers mentioned about the anamolies in bass management which shared by all Oppo-based players, he wrote this ...... http://www.primare.net/assets/_manag...2HFN212web.pdf

When set all speakers to LARGE, there is still quite active LFE comes out from the SUB in audible extent of course.

Will anyone be able to confirm the anamolies with Cambridge audio and see if they are aware and provide fix soon?

For all 751BD users, I suppose you may know by hints in its manual if you ever noticed, let me just emphasize how important is it for you to TURN ON the QDEO processor by tweaking the SHARPNESS to +1 or above, it is night and day for the PQ, it is so crispy and bring your bluray experience to whole new level. We all shared this trick in Hong Kong and most of us consider 751BD can achieve 20% better picture you can ever get in Oppo 95.

Just a quick note: The Oppo 95 puts out what is on a Blu-ray, pixel for pixel, perfectly. You fundamentally can't improve upon that. The 751BD does the same. They are identical as far as Blu-ray playback is concerned. With the settings you can adjust that output, but any adjustments that move it away from bit-for-bit perfect also inherently introduce downsides that can't be fixed.

By saying "but any adjustments that move it away from bit-for-bit perfect also inherently introduce downsides that can't be fixed." I bet you have not tried it, I don't see any downside at all, tell me about it if you had.

The Cambridge 751BD went away, but with everything at default it passed the tests perfectly and passes exactly what is on the disc. If you adjust the controls (I'll do it with the Oppo later this week) this is what happens:

Contrast and Brightness: Shift the Luma, reducing dynamic range. It's not possible to adjust them in the player without affecting dynamic range.

Color and Tint: Adjust the output of the colors, causing shifts in the Cb/Cr data, which when converted to RGB will lead to color errors compared to what they were originally supposed to be. There's no way around this.

Sharpeness/Noise Reduction: Will apply enhancement, or reduce block/mosquito noise, but at the expense of other details. It's impossible to add detail that isn't there without adding some other enhancement, usually ringing. You can reduce noise, but that often is also at the expense of fine detail. With noisy sources (like DVD) you might wind up with a better image than you started with, as there wasn't much fine detail to begin with, but with a Blu-ray, these issues are typically accounted for at the mastering stage.

The reason I don't play with those is because if they image is already perfect coming off, all I can do is take away from one area of it to add to another area. I'll see if I can test some of these on the Oppo and see what the adjustments do.

See? I was right, you have not tried.

It passes out of the box are the video processing tests, not the clarity of image. It is far from what it can achieve for the out of box setting.

I wonder why you mention the effect on tweaking contract/brightness/color/tint etc., it was on one thing to tweak, SET THE SHARPNESS TO +1, and THATS IT!!! This will cause the QDEO starts to run its engine, give the picture a night and day difference in terms of clarity.

Anyway, I will leave this to CA 751BD users, they will see how it works out and benefit from it, CA tried to tell us to do this in the manual, but in a way quite obscure. Unbfortunately they didnt take the liberty to set it to +1 in factory, I almost trade the unit away the next day when it first came aboard.

I am talking about CA 751BD. Wonder why you will try that on Oppo 95, it may not need it, its a different manufacturer implementation anyway, isn't it?? - actually it might be worst if you do this, like you mentioned.

Here you go, manual Pg.34 -

Sharpness – To set the sharpness of the video output (Detail/Edge
Enhancement), this a video processing function that can control the
image sharpness but if overdone may cause unwanted artifacts.
For HDMI 1, the sophisticated QDEO video scaler is used sharpness level
can be set between -16 and +16. The default is level 0, which turns off
sharpness enhancement. The negative levels may be used to reduce or
eliminate overly sharpened video, the picture being progressively
softened.
The positive levels increase the sharpness. At level 1, the player applies
low level Detail Enhancement, during which the video processor isolates
the detailed parts from the original image, processes them separately
and integrates back before the final output. At level 2, the player
increases Detail Enhancement to a higher level. Generally, to make an
image “sharper”, we recommend using level 1 and 2. At level 3 and
above, the player adds Luminance Transition Improvement (LTI) and
Chroma Transition Improvement (CTI), which further sharpen the
luminance transition and chroma transition. However, we do not
recommend using level 3 and above unless the source content is from a
poor source.

The +1 or +2 setting works well on the 95 as well producing a crispier picture and I use them on my personally tweaked settings with one setting set to default, cool thing is the side effects are minimal if none

Mabe it depends on the chip doing the post processing, in which the Marvel chip is no slouch, I've played around with the Contrast enhancement(+1) as well as sharpness and dialed in a picture at least to the naked eye very pleasing of course you have to dial back some of the display's settings, In some cases ( I use the term loosely) the altered signal from my 95 yeilds the better result even if Bluray. If you decide to check these out I did notice once the settings are pass the +2 on the above mentioned settings +3 in the sharpness pattern via Spears & Munsil produced less ringing than +1 or +2

Going back to my review, with the sharpness control set even at 0, there was extra edge enhancement being applied that could be noticed on resolution wedge patterns. I could set it all down to -16 and still have it pass a sharpness pattern but also reduce the amount of noise in the resolution wedge, which shows higher resolution than with it at 0.

Increasing any sharpness control is going to make certain objects stand out more, but to do that it has to adjust the pixels around those objects, which them removes detail from those. Perhaps you like how it looks more than without it, but adding detail to something is going to remove detail from something else, since there aren't extra pixels to use. In certain scenes the effect won't have as many negative impacts as others, but if you put up some really high resolution test patterns, it becomes easy to see what the sharpness control actually affects.

In this case, you're reducing the dynamic range available on the Blu-ray (you only have bits 16-235 to use, and adjusting the contrast from the player requires losing some of those bits to adjust the contrast) and trying to compensate with the display. Fine if you prefer it, but the image will not be able to be as dynamic, because those bits have been lost.

I do keep the default reference settings for primary use so you'll get no argument from me there! and that even includes the defeat of EE in my Mitsu/73738 dlp as well. There are very noticeable effects when the enhanced settings in the player are on, it can of course be overkill but when applied tastefully in can seem its for the better when the source or disc encoding is less than reference in terms of picture softening

How are the comparisons to other players faring now people have had a while to live with the 751BD? I'm pretty keen on the Cambridge unit but interested in opinions before plunging in. Also is anyone using all analogue out and how is it? Seems pointless buying this unit to use HDMI for audio.

5 Stars from Whathifi.

http://www.whathifi.com/review/cambr...dio-azur-751bd

It was the best player, for audio and video, I'd tested since the Oppo 93 and 95. If you prefer the audio to those two, I'd suggest going to listen as it was better than the 93, and since I no longer had the 95 on hand, I could only compare it to the 83SE. They were a little different from each other, but both were fantastic.

Did you happen to test the 651 as well? How does that stack up against the 751?

Haven't used the 651 at all.

Thanks folks. My main concern is audio as I dont think there is much in it video-wise between any of the decent players. Did you test using the analogue outputs?

Reference Audio performance

http://www.avforums.com/review/Cambr...sc-Player.html

My full review is up here:

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/blu-r...ay-player.html

The audio was very, very good.

Sweet. Waiting for a price from my dealer. Its surprising how much difference the upsampling makes on these players. I was skeptical until I tried my 740C over both analogue and digital. My amp (LX90) shares very similar Wolfson DAC's as the 740C & 751BD so the upsampling is the only real variable. Over analogue, the 740 sounds MUCH bigger, wider soundstage, deeper, sharper bass etc. I keep a digital connection hooked up so that I can switch over if I fancy using surround modes for music (pointless decoding to analogue, back to digital then back again...) but for 2ch sound, analogue is king with the 740 so I cant wait to hear this kindof effect over 7 channels...

Using the same parts really doesn't mean anything I've found over the years now. You can have totally different implementations, and much different circuitry after them, with higher or lower quality components and design, that lead to a totally different sound. I've had Blu-ray players come in with the same chipsets, and where one passes every single benchmark I throw at it, another one failed over half the tests because the implementation was different.

The DAC is just the most recognized component in the audio chain, but there are far more parts than just that, and they're all going to have some effect on the sound, good or bad.

Any Aussies here can offer an opinion on whether theres much value in ordering the multi-region version of the 751BD? I've looked online and prices of BluRays dont seem to be hugely different overseas, especially when factoring in shipping.

Your audio benchmarks for THD+N and IMD show the Oppo 83NE, 93, 93NE, 95 and CA751 all have very similar figures in the region or a hundredth of a percent or less on the digital output which isn't surprising and the differences are very likely inaudible. Your impression of how it sounds which also involves the upsampling, DAC and analogue stages remain purely subjective. You haven't addressed what contributes to the difference in sound and there is no measurement - no FR at the very least - to support your impression. If it sounds very good to you does it matter what measurements it shows on the digital output? You base your video assessment precisely on objective digital output measurements and test patterns but in audio you are back to relying on subjective impression in your brief comment for the analogue output. There is a dichotomy of standards between your video and audio review.

I say this because on AVS there is a very vocal and aggressive 'audio sceptic' group that dominates various forums and try to preach all DACs measure flat, all SS amps have flat FR and sound the same before clipping, all CD players sound the same etc., any measurement differences are so small to be inaudible, you can't tell them apart in double-blind tests and so on. This causes a great deal of argument over time.

I'm not an audio sceptic but there is a great big hole between subjective impression and objective measurement. There is a need to fill this hole to bring audio review to the level of the video, otherwise the argument won't settle.


Don't assume the 751 will sound the same or necessarily as good as the CDP for 2CH.
740 & 840 CDP: 24/384 upsampling, 2 DACs for 2 ch;
751BD: 24/192 upsampling, 5 DACs for 10 channels

In any case upsampling isn't anything special as oversampling (to 192kHz or higher) commonly occurs inside modern DACs. If audio is upsampled before going to the DAC it is oversampled less to achieve the same high sample rate.

I'm keeping my 740C. Although I'm excited to hear the 751BD, I dont expect it to beat the dedicated player for 2 ch audio

Worth cashing out for the upgraded multi-region 751BD?

Yes I think so. I just exchanged my 651 to the 751BD. Looking to use the analog outputs this time, although the HDMI sounding very nice.

Not a lot of activity on this thread is there.

dreaux: Have you noticed a difference in PQ going from the 651 to the 751?
I'm maybe buying a 651 today, so any impressions would be appreciated

I believe there is no difference in PQ form the 751 to the 651, at least from what I have read. The real difference is the 751 analog audio outputs, and the 751 comes with a Wifi dongle. If you are using HDMI for video and audio there should be no noticeable difference. I am not expecting to see a difference in the PQ.

I am getting it today so I will know more and report back.

The first thing you will notice with the 651 is the incredible audio quality.
I sent back my Denon 2012 to exchange for the 751. Denon had a beautiful picture but not AQ of a Cambridge.