[balcmeg]

Got mine today and even if I do not have much experience in Amp/DAC for portable use I was stunned! I did honestly not think it could be this good.
I used both my Takstar 2050 and Shure SE325 with good results, both on iMac and iPhone / for now only spotify and 320mbps music but it gave the songs a real lift, more details, tighter bass and more details and space. My reference here is mainly my iPhone/iMac original outputs, but also AMB M3 amp and Gamma2 DAC. It doesnt beat my AMB setup in total sound, but on a price/performance level I think I let the Oppo win!
Will see later how it compares when I switch to high/res music and my Shure SE846.
 
So, now Im forced to retire my Takster to match... Shure 940 or 1540 might be a good bet.
 
In any case, I can recommend this Oppo, I am very happy I did not go for the Denon or Onkyo as I hade some plans to do..

 

[Earbones]

How's that? I check everyday and it says available mid March which is soon, but still nothing.

I have my ways, ha ha. Hopefully it will arrive Saturday. I'll post some initial thoughts then, with a full review to follow.

 

[georgelai57]

Review just out http://www.headfonia.com/oppo-ha-2-2007-all-over-again/

 

[shigzeo]

Review just out http://www.headfonia.com/oppo-ha-2-2007-all-over-again/

You're fast, George.

 

[georgelai57]

You're fast, George.

Idle minds.

 

[Sonic Defender]

  Got mine today and even if I do not have much experience in Amp/DAC for portable use I was stunned! I did honestly not think it could be this good.
I used both my Takstar 2050 and Shure SE325 with good results, both on iMac and iPhone / for now only spotify and 320mbps music but it gave the songs a real lift, more details, tighter bass and more details and space. My reference here is mainly my iPhone/iMac original outputs, but also AMB M3 amp and Gamma2 DAC. It doesnt beat my AMB setup in total sound, but on a price/performance level I think I let the Oppo win!
Will see later how it compares when I switch to high/res music and my Shure SE846.
 
So, now Im forced to retire my Takster to match... Shure 940 or 1540 might be a good bet.
 
In any case, I can recommend this Oppo, I am very happy I did not go for the Denon or Onkyo as I hade some plans to do..

But how do you know had you gone for one of those you wouldn't have liked it as much or even more?

 

[Sevenfeet]

I had written earlier that the HA-2 would play anything I threw at it.  I should have known that there was one caveat to that...I've been using my 128 GB iPhone 6+ to store a lot of my HD music and play it through the Onkyo HF Player.  So far, this has worked but I realized after I wrote my last entry that playing of DSD256 files through the iPhone doesn't seem to be possible without conversion.  The DoP standard among DAC makers that wraps DSD data inside a PCM stream and sends it to the DAC where proper play happens seems to only be defined for DSD64 (2.8) and DSD128 (5.6).  The HA-2 will take DSD256 in "native mode", which I'm not sure is possible from an iPhone.  At least it's not in the Onkyo app yet.
 
So I said to myself, well it's time to try some of the PC/Mac based music players or add-ins to see how they handle DSD.  So far my world has been entirely iTunes (my career began at Apple in the late 80s).  And since my life is mostly Mac based, I decided to download two of the leading players that link to iTunes, Pure Music and Amarra.  Both had 2 week trial versions and retail for about $100.
 
In a nutshell, I've never been so disappointed in software in a long time.  I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but I'm pretty technical and I've not been able to get either program to work reliably...and when I mean reliably, I mean most of the time it doesn't work at all...or sends bad data to the DAC getting a piercing buzzing sound through the speakers...or random freezes, refusing to play a track, etc.  All the while I'm presented with horrible user interfaces.  Seriously, this is the best high end music players we have to use?
 
So I decided to go to JRiver's Mac player (the PC version is very popular) and that version doesn't really work for me either.  All the while, iTunes by itself plays anything without incident and reliably.
 
Very frustrated...

 

[Sonic Defender]

  I had written earlier that the HA-2 would play anything I threw at it.  I should have known that there was one caveat to that...I've been using my 128 GB iPhone 6+ to store a lot of my HD music and play it through the Onkyo HF Player.  So far, this has worked but I realized after I wrote my last entry that playing of DSD256 files through the iPhone doesn't seem to be possible without conversion.  The DoP standard among DAC makers that wraps DSD data inside a PCM stream and sends it to the DAC where proper play happens seems to only be defined for DSD64 (2.8) and DSD128 (5.6).  The HA-2 will take DSD256 in "native mode", which I'm not sure is possible from an iPhone.  At least it's not in the Onkyo app yet.
 
So I said to myself, well it's time to try some of the PC/Mac based music players or add-ins to see how they handle DSD.  So far my world has been entirely iTunes (my career began at Apple in the late 80s).  And since my life is mostly Mac based, I decided to download two of the leading players that link to iTunes, Pure Music and Amarra.  Both had 2 week trial versions and retail for about $100.
 
In a nutshell, I've never been so disappointed in software in a long time.  I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but I'm pretty technical and I've not been able to get either program to work reliably...and when I mean reliably, I mean most of the time it doesn't work at all...or sends bad data to the DAC getting a piercing buzzing sound through the speakers...or random freezes, refusing to play a track, etc.  All the while I'm presented with horrible user interfaces.  Seriously, this is the best high end music players we have to use?
 
So I decided to go to JRiver's Mac player (the PC version is very popular) and that version doesn't really work for me either.  All the while, iTunes by itself plays anything without incident and reliably.
 
Very frustrated...

Apple locks you into Apple somewhat, you shouldn't have to be constrained to one player. I guess we could look at it in two ways, one being that the software companies have done a poor job porting to Mac OS, or perhaps Apple makes it more difficult than it should be for other companies to author software. I guess it could be a little of both, no company is perfect, not Microsoft and not Apple either. For the record, I do use some Apple products and enjoy them quite a bit so I am not a hater, but I'm also not a devotee either.

 

[HasturTheYellow]

  when will this item be back in stock?

 
You can now purchase the HA-2 as a back-order with an expected shipping date of March 20th. May be sooner, but should be no later than March 20th.

 

[c1umsyb3ar]

   
You can now purchase the HA-2 as a back-order with an expected shipping date of March 20th. May be sooner, but should be no later than March 20th.

Thanks for the heads up! I can't wait to get this paired up with the PM-3 and test it out. 

 

[Sevenfeet]

 
Apple locks you into Apple somewhat, you shouldn't have to be constrained to one player. I guess we could look at it in two ways, one being that the software companies have done a poor job porting to Mac OS, or perhaps Apple makes it more difficult than it should be for other companies to author software. I guess it could be a little of both, no company is perfect, not Microsoft and not Apple either. For the record, I do use some Apple products and enjoy them quite a bit so I am not a hater, but I'm also not a devotee either.

Both Pure Music and Amarra are Mac OS only applications.  I might agree with your point regarding platform ports (although many of have done quite successfully over the last 20 years), but there's no excuse for having badly designed, poorly functioning apps like this.  Again, maybe I'm doing something wrong.  But if I cannot figure it out quickly, I imagine there are a lot of frustrated audiophiles who agree.
 
As for Mac OS X authorship, Xcode is a very nice tool which is also the tool for iOS app development worldwide.  I've not heard too many complaints from developers, other than the learning curve for Objective-C.

 

[Sonic Defender]

 
Both Pure Music and Amarra are Mac OS only applications.  I might agree with your point regarding platform ports (although many of have done quite successfully over the last 20 years), but there's no excuse for having badly designed, poorly functioning apps like this.  Again, maybe I'm doing something wrong.  But if I cannot figure it out quickly, I imagine there are a lot of frustrated audiophiles who agree.
 
As for Mac OS X authorship, Xcode is a very nice tool which is also the tool for iOS app development worldwide.  I've not heard too many complaints from developers, other than the learning curve for Objective-C.

There you go, well if they are Mac platform software they should work for sure. I suspect you are quite computer literate so without knowing more I would agree that likely the software is to blame.

 

[miceblue]

Just FYI, no software in Mac fully supports DSD256 via DOP. I think Audirvana Plus is experimenting with it since the creator helped make the DOP protocol and likewise for Larry Ho at Light Harmonic (the Geek products don't play DSD256 period despite having the same DAC chip as the HA-2).

 

[Sonic Defender]

Just FYI, no software in Mac fully supports DSD256 via DOP. I think Audirvana Plus is experimenting with it since the creator helped make the DOP protocol and likewise for Larry Ho at Light Harmonic (the Geek products don't play DSD256 period despite having the same DAC chip as the HA-2).

Bloody hell. Thankfully I don't care about DSD anyway, but that is indeed good information.

 

[miceblue]

Review just out http://www.headfonia.com/oppo-ha-2-2007-all-over-again/

The volume pot is slaved directly to internal DAC functions

I don't think that's accurate. The HA-2 has digital volume control, and analogue. The volume knob isn't a digital one like the JDS Labs C5 as far as I'm concerned since there aren't discrete volume increments, it's continuous.