FYI, although I received my HA-1 on Friday, I have only opened the box, not yet even plugged it in. An unfortunately collision with other things (Sporting Clays tournament was this weekend, the NCSA US Open is next weekend, plus a presentation to prepare to many hundreds for next Tues and Wed, and then of course life stuff!). Same thing with my AK240.
First a question. You can see what cans, IEMs, preamps, amps, and DACs I own in my inventory (plus I have JRiver of course). I am looking to add to my collection for review purposes, and I want to add what are considered the standards as defined by what most people own that purchase this price level of gear. For example, I am going to pickup a set of AlphaDogs, PM-1's, HE-400s, 500's, 560's, or HE6, HD-800, etc. For amps I am thinking WA7, Asgard 2, Burson, Soloist, etc., etc. So as not to derail this thread please PM me with your thoughts on what "the standards" are so I can improve my reviews. My other task is to get good gear to perform reviews with, including cables, transparent cables switchers/preamps, measuring devices (something like what is used to make binaural recordings would be awesome with mics to measure db, freq response, etc. from the listeners perspective with the cans on their head). I will soon post this request in an appropriate forum after I have done some more research with some more detail and proposals, this is just a preliminary request for feedback for those interested in this particular amp.
That said I will start with my unboxing impressions. Pics and a vid or two will be inserted later when I have my photo/vid station setup(backdrop, lighting w/gels, camera gear with right lenses and flashes figured out and timed, etc.).
Opening the box the first thing you see is a poster sized very high quality stock color printed piece of collateral about the HA-1; a nice preview with pictures and presentation of notable features, a nice touch. You also get the standard HDTracks 15% off coupon postcard (digital15) for your first HDTracks purchase. Once removing those you are presented with the manual in an inset of the packing foam insert. This packing foam is not standard styro like much HT gear is shipped with (even pieces costing upward of $10k!) that is prone to breaking, rather the very permanent, robust and protective single pieces of foam, one for the top and one for the bottom pieces, so the HA-1 is protected on all sides by at least 2.5 inches of very good foam. Unless the carrier ignores the bright red fragile stickers on the exterior of the box and runs over it with his truck, this unit will not be damaged in shipping, nice job on that Oppo! This is an often, inexplicably overlooked component in the Hi-Fi world (or was)... making sure that the product makes it safe to its ultimate owner, where said owner can easily reuse the packing for storage, moving, or resale as we often do
.
Removing the top piece of foam, you are presented with the HA-1 in the center, yet it cannot be seen as it is 100% enclosed in a very finely woven white cloth bag for protection, another nice touch.
To one side is a nice thick (2mm) black box with a slide off top (another 2mm of thickness) so again easy to re-use, which contains all of the accessories, which include:
- The excellent silver machined from one piece aluminum remote with the battery already installed, a CR2032 cell. Replacement is covered in the manual, please note that it take a good amount of force with the paper clip to eject the battery compartment the first time but it does work! Just be sure not to apply any pressure to the black plastic tray whatsoever when trying to get leverage as you will work against the tray having clearance to pop out.
- A gold plated 3.5mm to 6.3mm(1/4" to 1/8") SE plug.
- A gold plated Bluetooth screw on antenna with a male RP-SMA connector. The use of this industry standard (for wi-fi) connector means that extension cords or even potentially gain boost antennas can be used, although bluetooth specific boost antenna's are rare relative to wife boost antennas. I will experiment with some of my wifi boost antennas in a later review, it would be nice to have your iPod in your pocket while anywhere in the house and control the output of the system. This is useful if say your HA-1 is part of your primary multizone HT system that has zones throughout the house as mine does (currently via a 4 zone Pioneer Elite SC-68 used as a pre-amp, even though I have at least one dedicated receiver in every room of the house as well, and many more in boxes
). It won't be the best quality, but sometimes you just want the same tunes throughout the house for get togethers, etc. so this is a nice feature it it works as I am thinking it might.
- A 5 ft (usable) standard 3 conductor 14 gauge pretty stout power cable. I tried a Pangea AC-9 I picked up in a package deal that I have plugged into a Belkin PF60 which then goes through a pro-grade managed APCC Smart-UPS and it works just fine. As a side note, plugging an expensive power cable into the wall accomplishes nothing other than aesthetics from an EE perspective, given you still have the relatively terrible power delivery system starting at the wall socket all the way to the power station that you haven't dealt with. Rather one should pay attention to power delivery from the wall with something that can isolate (like a finely tuned APCC unit or other regulated power source which included a LARGE amount of capacitance or even better a very robust battery). The PF60 is a bargain device at $100 when I got it (rather 6 of them) where they are $200 now where you get 13 plugs, some power filter voodoo, but more importantly triggers and programmable delays/behaviors for all plugs and a visual indication of line voltage among other things... and many other nice features... but that is a review for another time .
Now for the main event, removing the 13.0 lbs, 5.9 kg, HA-1 from the box. This is a satisfying after the long wait from its first introduction which for me for me was 5 months ago at at CES 2014. There isn't a single mark, smudge, or fingerprint on the chassis, and mine was manufactured in May 2014(or so says the sticker), so I literally have one right from the factory floor that looks as though it was immaculately conceived. With dimensions of 10.0 x 4.8 x 12.2 inches, or 254 x 80 x 333 mm it will be interesting to figure out how to integrate into my HT stack, but I think it will be worth it to figure it out. I have powered it on, and yep it works, where I am first greeted with the Oppo logo via an extremely clear and nice display (don't know the tech on the display yet but will find out), and then it defaults to the status screen.
The Oppo HA-1 is sleek, very well made, I can find no fault whatsoever to complain about at this price point with this feature set so far. I won't use the word giant killer, but I will say that for the money I cannot remember the last time I purchased a piece of gear new at full MSRP and was this satisfied with the value of the purchase!
That is it for my first draft of part 1(still to be edited but other duties call, so please forgive and spelling or grammar issues), but I will say that I tested it with my LCD-3's and with my Roxanne's using some hi-res classical music, and it does indeed sound fantastic. More to come!
. Don't worry about grammar, mixed tense issues, confused subjects vs. predicates, etc., I will edit those out.
