[APRisti]

  I am lately listening to Keith Greeninger's Blue Coast recordings in FLAC and .wav formats through the Hd800's and the Oppo HA-1. A/B'ing the two versions which are both 96/24 sampled it is striking how much better the .wav files sound on the HD800's. The ruthlessness of the HD800's is friendlier to the higher bitrate and more of the original data without the compression, i.e. a "monitor" headphone shines when the recording being heard is as close as possible to the original recording data and the original studio production is top notch. I have learned a little bit about what truly good recording is with the 800's.
 
 

 
nice, what source are you using ? 

 

[kkcsm]

  In my personal experience, the HA-1 needs to be burned in. Mine settled down after about about 20 hours of playtime. I am also playing mine through JRiver Media player with all of the PC native sound card and other extraneous effects disabled. JRiver is also configured to allow the Oppo to determine optimum frequency and bitrate for a given recording. Of course, that data displays on the Oppo status screen.

In my home setup vs. my office (oppo) setup, the source is different.  My source at home is iTunes (high bitrate apple music) on mac pro, optical to bifrost, pyst to lyr.  The oppo was iPhone 6, apple music high bitrate, lightning cable to the front usb port to the device.  I don't believe these should be significantly different but I could be wrong.
 
I do have all of my music ripped to flac at home and the same music converted to mp3 via lame.  I don't remember the exact settings but it was high, variable bitrate.  I cannot discern a difference between the flac and the mp3 on my home setup (I may not have "golden ears"  I also could not discern a difference between the single ended and balanced output of the oppo, but I did not spend a lot of time trying. 

 

[fidelioX2]

"nice, what source are you using?"
 
Desktop PC. Also burning CD's via JRiver Media player for my Yamaha CD-600, old Denon receiver from late 90's, and old but still sonorous Advent floor speakers in the living room and new Polk Audio shelf speakers in the kitchen (wife very happy about that) - not audiophile grade stuff but sufficient to my tastes which are unfortunately evolving on an almost daily basis.

 

[combat fighter]

With regards to the Oppo USB audio control panel what settings do you owners use with the 'usb streaming mode' and 'Asio buffer size'?

 

[Sinarca]

Does anyone want to sell his HA-1 (only black) ? Pm me and I will evaluete

 

[wood1030]

https://www.oppodigital.com/proddetail.asp?prod=ZHA1

This might be your best bet on finding a used HA-1.
Like new, manufacturer warranty, etc. etc.

 

[Opethian10]

https://www.oppodigital.com/proddetail.asp?prod=ZHA1

This might be your best bet on finding a used HA-1.
Like new, manufacturer warranty, etc. etc.

 
Fully agree.  I purchased a refurbished unit and highly recommend to others who want a save a little bit of money.  It's essentially the same price you would expect to find if you were buying a used unit from someone on head-fi, and you are purchasing directly from Oppo, with the full warranty.

 

[Sinarca]

   
Fully agree.  I purchased a refurbished unit and highly recommend to others who want a save a little bit of money.  It's essentially the same price you would expect to find if you were buying a used unit from someone on head-fi, and you are purchasing directly from Oppo, with the full warranty.

I knew about this, but Oppo doesn't send in others countries refurbished units...

 

[obzilla]

 
I knew about this, but Oppo doesn't send in others countries refurbished units...

 
Well, to be fair, they do ship them to here, in Canada. And Mexico as well. Looks like the rest of the world is out of luck though.

 

[Sinarca]

   
Well, to be fair, they do ship them to here, in Canada. And Mexico as well. Looks like the rest of the world is out of luck though.

Yes, it maybe. They told me this :
 
"Unfortunately we do not ship refurbished product Internationally as there is always a possibility of a defect being in the device that we could no detect, and International shipping is cost prohibitive if we needed to repair or replace product"

 

[urbino]

Hey, guys.  I'm getting ready to rip a bunch of CDs.  I've got an optical cable from the cd player to the HA-1, and RCA outs from there to the 1/8" line-in on my computer.
 
The HA-1 is also hooked up, via the XLR outs, to my active monitors.  Do I need to disconnect those?  I'd swear I read that the HA-1 will only drive one set of line-outs at a time, but I just scanned through the manual again and don't see anything about it.
 
I won't be running the speakers while I'm ripping, anyway, since the line-outs will be set to HT Bypass Mode for a full line-level signal to the computer.  But I'm wondering if I actually need to physically disconnect them.

 

[polecrab]

Hey, guys.  I'm getting ready to rip a bunch of CDs.  I've got an optical cable from the cd player to the HA-1, and RCA outs from there to the 1/8" line-in on my computer.

The HA-1 is also hooked up, via the XLR outs, to my active monitors.  Do I need to disconnect those?  I'd swear I read that the HA-1 will only drive one set of line-outs at a time, but I just scanned through the manual again and don't see anything about it.

I won't be running the speakers while I'm ripping, anyway, since the line-outs will be set to HT Bypass Mode for a full line-level signal to the computer.  But I'm wondering if I actually need to physically disconnect them.

Just out of curiosity, why are you having such a complicated set up just to rip CDs? Why don't you rip directly from your computer disk drive to the hard drive?

 

[Opethian10]

Just out of curiosity, why are you having such a complicated set up just to rip CDs? Why don't you rip directly from your computer disk drive to the hard drive?

I too am wondering the same thing.

 

[urbino]

Just out of curiosity, why are you having such a complicated set up just to rip CDs? Why don't you rip directly from your computer disk drive to the hard drive?

 
Because my brains are turning to mush and leaking out my ears. 

 
My computer's drive is not very reliable, so I was trying to figure a way around using it.  There's probably not really a good way, though.

 

[craftyhack]

   
Because my brains are turning to mush and leaking out my ears. 

 
My computer's drive is not very reliable, so I was trying to figure a way around using it.  There's probably not really a good way, though.

I would recommend using EAC (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/) to rip straight from your computer's drive, it is(or used to be?) the gold standard for ripping redbook CDs.  I have ripped thousands of my own, and the great thing about EAC is that it confirms the quality of what it rips, way better than having to listen to a rip to see if there are any issues as when "ripping" LPs where there is no other option.  If there are issues with your drive, as long as they are correctable EAC will help with that as well.  Note that there are a few audio CDs with copy protection, literally only one or two out of the over 5000 I own, so maybe you won't have to deal with this.  Depending on how many CDs you have to rip, it may be worth purchasing another DVD-ROM (external USB if you don't have a place to install it internal to the PC being ripped), easy to find a good drive from $20-$40.  Just like everything else, this rabbit hole can go a lot deeper though, here is a thread talking a bit about ripping:  http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f7-disk-storage-music-library-storage/best-cd-drive-rip-22530/index2.html