New Oppo BDP-95 - Page 2

so how did the 95 work out for everyone?

Quote:

Originally Posted by tme110 

so how did the 95 work out for everyone?

 

I'm curious too about the Oppo 95, especially for audio.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by tme110 

so how did the 95 work out for everyone?

 

[EDITED: Re 120 Hrs Burn-in]

Out of the box, the sound is too bright and sterile sounding like a typical SS product.

Well, I did spend 1 Grand and decided to give it the benefit of the doubt.

So I left it to burn-in over 1 week before seriously listening to it again.

Based on my experience, you need at least 60 hrs of burn-in before the sound is acceptably smooth. As per one other reviewer in another hifi forum, he mentioned that the player reaches another significant sonic milestone upon the 120 hr mark. Yes, it is true, the soundstage has widened considerably at the 120 hr mark. Female vocals are very much less strident and bright sounding especially between the 60 and 0 hr burn in mark, and even more so between the 60 and 120 hrs burn-in!

So my conclusion is this. To really know what this player is capable of, it needs a minimum of 60 hrs burn-in before it becomes it becomes very detailed and smooth. It is just like my Jasmine Phono preamp which was designed to be tube-like in sound but is a SS device.

If you are in the market for a universal product which can also function as a 3D blu-ray player, this is the new benchmark product.

BTW, I purchased a multi-region version which switches regions automatically on its own.

This is much more convenient than the EBAY multi-region version out there which requires one to manually (i.e. have to press a sequence of buttons to) set the region b4 playback.

You can always PM me if you are looking for such an automatic region free BDP-95 player. 

Some extra feedback for anyone in case they were looking. Every opp 95 forum I see there are people complaining about fan noise and it does seem like many may be referencing other reports and not using personal experience.  I got to try a 95 for the weekend and after several hours of playing music the fan never came on once.  It did come one while watching a movie where the 95 was decoding HDS-HD but I had to use a flashlight to verify it - I could here no fan noise from the bdp-95 unless I was right beside it.  So it is much quieter than the standard laptop.  They may have improved them since the first run but I see the fan as a non-issue.

edit: Ok, the fan does eventually come on when listening to music but when it came on I didnt even notice.  I  kept testing - if you switch to streaming music the fan goes off again - though I guess it could have anyway...

Anyone have feedback on comparing the SE and balanced outputs?

How easy is it to use the Oppo streaming from an eSATA/USB source?  Is the interface user friendly?

that's not streaming - it's just reading off an attached hard drive but it is user friendly. It's basically the same thing as using windows explorer - and older and slower version of windows explorer - so it doesn't have search or fancy pictures or anything and having thousands of songs in one directory wont work very well. But you plug the drive in, the oppo will see it and then you use the remote to navigate through whatever file structure is on the drive - so you don't have to configure anything or set it up to make it work.  It would be nice to get a more up to date interface though or something like an iphone app would be awesome.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to build a playlist. You can select many tracks (I've done dozens), but there is no way to save them. As tme110 says, you will benefit from some form of folder organization.

I'll maybe post a review, but I've been disappointed with higher bit-rate FLAC playback using the DAC in this thing. There are glitches or drop-outs that don't happen when in passthrough to an Onkyo TX-SR706. So I'm reasonably certain the problem is not the attached hard drive. The same files, converted to ALAC play flawlessly on my Macs. Weird. That said, I do prefer the sound of the BDP-95's DAC to that of the Onkyo. I prefer the Schiit Bifrost (USB) above either.

Oh, yeah. The weirdest thing is that those decoding glitches never seem to happen with SACDs. Maybe I have a bad unit?

Kind of wish that I had gone with the BDP-93, and left the non-optical stuff to an old Mac and a dedicated DAC. YMMV.

I wonder if the issue you are seeing is that the OPPO is actually do more than your other systems. 

My Marantz AVR also has a Saber32 DAC and it can technically do 24/192 but it only has that capability so that it can play multi-channel sound.  It down converts hi-res files to 24/44 or 24/48.  Though this is not in the manual or covered anywhere that I've found, if you send it 24/96 it does give the appearance of playing it - but I can't verify it.  I can verify that the OPPO is playing and sending data over coax and optical at all rates up to and including 24/192.  When I was using a NAS, I was getting delays and hesitations when playing 24/192 files but that stopped when I stopped using the NAS.  There is a 1 or 2 second delay when starting a hi-res song when streamed from my main computer compared to using an attached hard drive but that's it.  Since you say you use ALAC I am assuming you may be using iTunes - and when I use iTunes to play a 24/192 file it ONLY sends it out at 16/44 though it does not tell you that it is down converting.  Same thing from an airport express or appleTV too.

I have an external DAC (nfb-1) that I also use connected to my Oppo but I've found that the OPPO is just so much easier and less of an issue with hi-res files that I don't bother with the external anymore.

No. You may have been a little hasty with reading my message.

I said I am using FLAC with the OPPO, but did mention using converted ALAC versions of the FLAC files on my Macs. I should have been clearer that the comparison using the Macs is using a completely different setup (see my sig for most common setups). In any event, I can verify the Onkyo's processed output on the Onkyo's display; assuming the Onkyo is not fibbing about what it is doing.

iTunes on OS X can most definitely output exactly what you feed it, if you care to manually futz with the MIDI settings when sample rates change. And that is a royal PITA. This is why Pure Music and similar add-ons are useful (they automatically switch the settings for you!), and you can verify what is going to the external DAC . . . unless Pure Music is fibbing.

You are correct that anything streamed from a Mac to another device using AirPlay is never better 16/44. And, to complete the general Apple fail with high def content, nothing iOS does better than 16/44 with stereo audio. I am not sure about AppleTV and 5.1 content.

That said, I will try playing the FLAC files from the same USB hard drive using one of the Macs. That should rule out any hard drive or USB related issues that are the fault of the drive or the USB cable.

I did catch most of what you wrote but I wanted to make sure.  I have no idea what your AVR does but something else I have run across is DACs displaying bit-rate determined from metadata and not what is actually being played.  Though I have no idea if that's common or very rare.

Pardon my ignorance about the BDP-95. Its specs don't include ALAC/AAC (protected) as being supported but I gather that's only for these files sitting in eSATA.

If I were to have to connect my iMac -> USB -> BDP-95, would I be able to play protected AAC/ALAC?

Quote:

Originally Posted by MtnSloth 

As far as I can tell, there is no way to build a playlist. You can select many tracks (I've done dozens), but there is no way to save them. As tme110 says, you will benefit from some form of folder organization.

 

I'll maybe post a review, but I've been disappointed with higher bit-rate FLAC playback using the DAC in this thing. There are glitches or drop-outs that don't happen when in passthrough to an Onkyo TX-SR706. So I'm reasonably certain the problem is not the attached hard drive. The same files, converted to ALAC play flawlessly on my Macs. Weird. That said, I do prefer the sound of the BDP-95's DAC to that of the Onkyo. I prefer the Schiit Bifrost (USB) above either.

 

Oh, yeah. The weirdest thing is that those decoding glitches never seem to happen with SACDs. Maybe I have a bad unit?

 

Kind of wish that I had gone with the BDP-93, and left the non-optical stuff to an old Mac and a dedicated DAC. YMMV.

Can you tell us how you output the signal to your Onkyo?  My understanding is that HDMI, Balance, Toslink, Coax, RCA out put all have their own limitation.  The Oppo-95 manual indicated that if you use certain output method, it may not do good high hires stuff.  I think they recommend HDMI.

It does not play protect AAC (which should be expected) or apple lossless which is unfortunate but similar to most other non-apple products.