Official OPPO BDP-105 Owner's Thread - Page 132

 

He will net a higher profit margin and more money in his pocket if you buy the Cambridge made in China as well by the way

There's been a bit of chatter on this thread recently about other Blu-ray players - mostly higher end variations of the 105.

I have a different question and will ask here and also on the general Blu-ray threads.

I am very happy with our 105 in our main home theater room but want to upgrade our blu-ray player in our bedroom which feeds our Samsung LE46A956 (this is about 4 years old and has a 1920 x 1080 panel).

My main issue is I want to stream video files (mkv, avi etc) from our Windows 8 mediaserver to the Samsung which supports avi but not mkv. The mediaserver is running JRiver and is set up as a DLNA server and can render to a DLNA renderer.

My initial thought was to spend about 100 bucks and get a WD TV Live. However, the Panasonic blu-ray we have connected to the Samsung is a first generation model and is making the most awful groaning noises every time it spins up a disc.

So....I've been thinking a smarter move would be a new blu-ray player that can also be streamed to or rendered to and can play .avi, .mkv files etc. etc.

That got me thinking of a second Oppo (the 103 model as our bedroom set up just runs through the TV speakers). Problem is the 103 here in Switzerland is about 750 bucks so about 500 bucks more than I want to spend.

I realize this is the Oppo 105 thread, but do any of you good people have a recommendation for me on a good blu-ray player around the 200 dollar price point which can be streamed or rendered to by our mediaserver, and plays all the latest video formats (flac would be a plus so I could also stream music)?

One other feature that would be killer would be some scaling capability to scale mkv files that are less than 1920 x 1080 resolution to take full advantage of our Samsung panel.

Thanks,

Dave M

If you have any old computers/laptops lying around, you can spend $50 on a second Jriver license, slap it in the bedroom closet, and run it as a Jriver "client" machine. Only $50 out of pocket, unless you need adapters...still no more than $70 after adapters..

dear sirs,

I'm using an M-dac with my music server connected by coaxial 75ohm cable.

I have not sacd player at all, I've sold my OPPO 95, I use 90% my music server running by FOOBAR.

Can I have the same performance using the OPPO 105 as external DAC?

So I can have a stand alone player too even for the video too.

Thanks for you kind replies to this question of mine.

I can empathize with you as I have had my share of power surge issues, blew out my desk top computer. Thankfully I have my a/v equipment protected. I have the Pioneer Kuros Elite 151 FD 60" it must be close to 5 years old and the last one Pioneer made. Initially thought it was too big, now I am wishing it was bigger. I eventually would like to get a 3D capable display but I like the picture on the 151 so much it's going to have die before I replace it.
Edited by mt14942 - 3/1/13 at 8:32am

I believe the Cambridge is based on the Oppo. Same build quality, same DACs, etc. Whether implementation of the DACs or other internal processing is different, resulting in a noticeable difference in PQ or AQ, is anybody's guess. Personally, I bet they will perform the same. I asked this same question in the Cambridge thread, where someone from Cambridge was posting, and he never responded, leading me to believe there is no significant difference between the 2 units.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1459457/cambridge-audios-azur-752bd#post_23001185

there are differences, OPPO has sabre dac, in Cambridge audio is boosted by five Wolfson audio DACs, and no xlr output...

If you're talking about the discrete on and off commands then, like mentioned above, you have add the OPPO 83 to your list of devices and then use it's commands which does have those. The discrete on/off do exist for the 103/105 but have not been added to the Logitech for some reason. I'm guessing the new-ness and the fact the Logitech is dropping the line is the reason.

You are correct (my bad). The reviews of the 751 and 95 put them pretty close in terms of performance. I suspect the 105 and 752 will similarly be pretty close - same PQ and more a matter of personal taste for analog AQ. They both go for an identical price on Amazon.

It's off topic, but there's no need to purchase a 2nd JRiver license to install it multiple times in the same (single family) house.

Many thanks for the windows 8 USB driver. It works! I used the driver in Asio and/or WASAPI mode,sounds the same to me. I'm glad Oppo came up with the fix even if its a beta. I was losing it...

I Angelo, I still own Audiolab M-DAC and now got Oppo BDP-105.
After Oppo's 4 days burn in I tried to audition them side-by side.
I expected the to sound more or less the same (same 9018 Sabre DAC used in both).

I was very surprised - Oppo sounded significantly better in my system (I've got EMotiva XPA-2 power amp and Mirage OMD-15 speakers - decent cables and good power).
I've asked my wife and my audiophile friend to listen too - they came to the same conclusion.

It may very from system to system but in my case I am going to keep Oppo.

The only thing - with Oppo I stopped using coax cable - I am using Ethernet connection - Foobar drives Oppo via UPnP or even Oppo SMB access - in both ways Oppo cashes and decodes the files elliminating even slight possibility of jitter or clock getting out of sync affecting the sound.
Didn't even bother to configure USB

Looking for input on these 3 amps to be directly connected to an "Oppo 105" in a 3.1 combo hometheater/2 channel system with the Oppo acting as a preamp.

Speakers: 3 "Gradient 5.0" bookshelf speakers
Frequency Response: 60-20000Hz +/-2dB, 45Hz -6dB
Impedance is 8 ohms with dips to 6-7 ohms
Sensitivity is 86dB/2.83V/1m
Recommended Amp Power is 20-150

As my speakers are a very easy load to drive, I'm not sure which of these 3 amps will mesh well in my given setup. Oppo recommends that the input impedance for directly connecting an amp to the 105 be 47k ohms. Both the Stratos and the Synergy have an input impedance of 22k ohms. Any thoughts as to why Oppo would be so specific in recommending 47k?
I like Class A amps, so that would give the nod to the A31 and the Odyssey. The A31 also has a gain adjustment for each channel of +/- 6, and this might come in handy when using the 105 as a preamp and mixing XLR and RCA connections.

The question is really if I can get away with not spending $3000 for the Halo A31 vs spending roughly half $1500 for the Synergy or Stratos.

Thanks for providing input on my setup!

Right now i have my 0ppo105 hooked up to my old Yamaha RX-V1 receiver through the 5.1 analog connections. I'd like to know if the signal goes to the Dacs of the oppo and then to the receiver does the analog signal go straight to the power amps of the receiver or does the receiver convert it back to digital, then send the digital signal to the receivers Dacs, and then to the power amps.

I would say It goes directly to your preamp section via analog then to poweramp. The preamp section will trim your speakers volume based on distance. This depends on how you set them up initially in your AVR.

Will you dealer let you try it at home.
There aught to be some advantage to having a dealer.

I have not heard it but I really do not think you can go wrong with the 105.

- Rich

I'll be requesting the audible fast forward too, because I'm using my oppo remotely a lot from another room.

They also need a discrete code (hidden or whatever) to turn off pure audio whether it's on or off. Because now, there seams to be no way to program a logitech or other intelligent remote to make sure pure audio is off when changing activity.

I have the A-31 hooked to my Oppo BDP95 (same DACs as the 105) and the amp is driving 3 PSB Goldi speakers L/C/R. The Golds love power and the A-31 delivers. The Oppo has never sounded better since I acquired the Halo about 3 months ago.

I'm not familiar with your other two choices.

Thanks for your reply Torq,
Do you find that your amp/speaker/oppo pairing allow you to listen at your preferred listening level? Do you listen close to 100 volume level on the oppo? I can't recall if the oppo 95 has a 32 bit volume or not.

Oppo said:

""Based on our own testing of Apple products, we are assuming at this time that the audio drops are not from the Cambridge Audio iD100 or BDP-105, but from the huge jitter on the SBCLK signal generated by the Apple devices. We have measured up to 377 ns jitter on Apple products. A good value should be less than 10 ns jitter.

High-end DAC chips, like the ESS9018 used in OPPO BDP-105, are very sensitive to these jitter levels, which could result in the DAC failing to lock the input data and lose the audio output.

The audio drops stopping after about 5-10 minutes could be either the Cambridge Audio iD100 or OPPO BDP-105 being unable to eliminate the jitter and correctly lock the input signal."

But according to Cambridge, the iD100 reclocks the audio, so how could the iPad's jitter affect the Oppo?

"http://support.cambridgeaudio.com/faqs/view?QuestionID=240

The iD100 overcomes this sound quality barrier by totally bypassing the iPhone, iPod or iPad’s internal DACs, re-clocking the audio data, and providing a low jitter, high quality pure digital audio signal from the iPhone, iPod or iPad, which the customer can then send to their own dedicated Hi-Fi DAC or AV receiver which will have been optimised for analogue conversion."

Oppo replied to that question with:

"It is possible the reclocking is still at a higher jitter rate than the player was designed for. We unfortunately have no Cambridge Audio equipment to test, so we are not able to measure the jitter to see what the outgoing signal to the BDP-105 is."

That's a much weaker statement than the original statement.

And when I pointed that out, Oppo said:

"It is a much weaker statement because we do not know why you are experiencing the issues with the Cambridge Audio iD100 as we do not have one for testing. Our previous statement is more detailed because we had first hand experience using Apple designed products like an iMac, iTV and Airport Express/Extreme that we could connect to our analyzer equipment to measure the jitter and other signal information."
Edited by jimshowalter - 3/9/13 at 4:12pm

Actually, I'm running the Oppo through my Parasound Halo C-2 pre-pro using analog bypass. Looking at my last post I guess I wasn't clear about that.

I have tried running the Oppo direct to the amp and started with the Oppo volume at 50%. It sounded excellent but not much better than running the Oppo through my pre-pro using analog bypass. I have other stuff like my satellite receiver, turntable, tape deck etc etc that there's no practical way to avoid my C-2. The volume control on the 95 is identical in function to the volume control on the 105.

Thanks for clarifying your setup.
That's pretty good praise to say that the A31 direct to 105 is as good or marginally better than the Halo preamp.
I plan on keeping my setup very clean with 105/A31/speakers and have no extra analog or legacy devices to worry about.
If you feel like messing around with your system one weekend, you could turn down the bias for all 3 channels on the A31 and increase the volume on the oppo closer to 100. This might give you an even better sound than when you first tried, at least thats what others have said.

I need some help with streaming wirelessly from JRiver 17 to my new Oppo BDP 105.

I had it all working fine earlier today - I could both push and pull (and at 24/192 I think). Then I updated the firmware on the Oppo, put it through a factory reset as the update requested and tried to use JRemote on an iPad as one ring to control it all and I have had nothing but trouble since.

The most annoying and perhaps emblematic thing is that, from both ends (JRiver and Oppo screens) what happens when I try to start playback is that the display just scrolls down the list of album tracks, pausing for a few seconds on each one before going to the next, but nothing at all plays. Indeed, this scrolling seems to cross from album to album, at least sometimes. I had this problem yesterday as well but got past it somehow - but it is back.

Seems like some problem with the indexing perhaps, but JRiver does play my library fine on the local computer. Probably just one setting is off, but which one? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

thanks dear sir.

I'll use oppo 105 with my music server connected by coaxial cable, I let my EMU1212 do the upsample job, all my software has by EMU the upsample to 192khz/24bit.

To buy OPPO I've to sell MDAC...no money...so...what kind of information the OPPO display let you know during reproduction using the OPPO as external DAC?

You know, the MDAC let us know frequency, levels etc....

what about headphone section?

bye & thanks

Angelo

 

According to the ESS whitepaper (http://www.esstech.com/PDF/sabrewp.pdf), the ESS9xxx dacs are supposed to be very jitter tolerant, neglecting jitter at their inputs through a nifty process that regenerates data and the clock, so why the jitter sensitivity?

 

" In addition to the simplified analog section, care is taken in the digital signal processing (DSP) to ensure that jitter rejection is essentially perfect: a patented technique is used to re-create the audio data in a crystal-controlled low phase-noise clock domain completely isolated from the clock domain of the transport medium and so not at all related to the clock domain in which the data was sampled. This latter feature ensures that there is zero jitter transfer from the various interface clocks to the digital data and that the digital clock of the DAC."

I haven't tried Coax with Oppo or headphones.

About Coax - M-DAC has a clock output to drive EMU's clock externally via separate coax cable (I have EMU as well).
I don't think Oppo has a clock output which may or may not impact sound over COAX (I haven't tried myself).

thanks


what kind of information the OPPO display let you know during reproduction using the OPPO as external DAC?

You know, the MDAC let us know frequency, levels etc..

Edited by eusoro - 3/2/13 at 5:49am

When I use Jremote I do not get any lists of music on my 105, only track duration shown on oppo video. All track listings appear on the Jremote. I have experienced same symptom you describe on my 105 when viewing music files over network uPnP. The skipped over files were incompatible format. Maybe the oppo update changed the order and types of files it sees via uPnP. Another thing I did was upgrade to jriver 18. It's been absolutely problem free using jriver and Jremote and it has been the one ring to rule them all for me.

I think those are two different aspects of the signal processing chain. The SABRE DAC rejects jitter while processing the signal, however that's after achieving a lock on the signal.

I presume that bad cables have been ruled out?

In my experience problems with locking are often simply a defective piece of gear.

S/PDIF Limitations (from Wikipedia)

The receiver does not control the data rate, so it must avoid bit slip by synchronising its conversion with the source clock. This means that S/PDIF cannot fully decouple the final signal from influence by the analogue characteristics of the source or the interconnect, even though the digital audio data can normally be transmitted without loss. The source clock may carry inherent jitter or wander, and noise or distortion introduced in the data cable may further influence the process of clock recovery. If the DAC does not have a stable clock reference then noise will be introduced into the resulting analogue signal. However, receivers can implement various strategies which limit this influence.